In Praise of the Mother Tongue

African countries must value African languages

“Language was twisted into a mechanism that separated children from their own history because their own heritages were shared only at home, relying on orature in their native language”

Lazarus Sauti

The slow development of African languages in most African countries is a cause for concern. It means that Africa cannot effectively preserve and promote the cultures and histories of her people.

As the storage box of culture and identity, language is the most critical, indispensable and universal feature that characterise human development in all societies. Language carries culture and culture carries the entire body of values by which we perceive ourselves and our place in the world.

Therefore, the death of African languages is a gross violation of a basic human right. Ngugi wa Thiong’o says depriving Africans from learning in their mother tongue amounts to a human rights violation. 

In “Decolonizing the Mind”, Ngugi Wa Thiong'o discusses the importance of African languages to Africans. From Ngugi's perspectives, you cannot study African literature without studying the particular cultures and oral traditions from which Africans draw their plots, styles and metaphors.

The blindness to the indigenous voice of Africans is thus a direct result, according to Ngugi, of colonisation.

Ngugi says, “During colonisation, missionaries and colonial administrators controlled publishing houses and the educational context of novels.”

This means that only texts with religious stories or carefully selected stories which would not tempt young Africans to question their own condition were propagated.

Africans were controlled by forcing them to speak European languages - they attempted to teach children (future generations) that speaking English is good and that native languages are bad by using negative reinforcement. This is a process recognised by the great Martiniquen writer, Franz Fanon.

Fanon says: “Language was twisted into a mechanism that separated children from their own history because their own heritages were shared only at home, relying on orature in their native language.

“At school, they are told that the only way to advance is to memorise the textbook history in the coloniser's language.

“By removing their native language from their education they are separated from their history which is replaced by European history in European languages. This puts the lives of Africans more firmly in the control of the colonists.”

Is it independent for sovereign African nations to give higher status to the language of the conqueror… a language that is alien to and cannot be functionally used by the majority of the people?

Mashingaidze Gomo, in his book A Fine Madness explicitly says: “It is not democratic that everything meaningful to the African people should be done in the alien language of the minority.” 

Colonisation is not simply a process of physical force. During the colonial era, "the bullet was the means of physical subjugation. Language was the means of the spiritual subjugation."

Thus, language is now used to force Africa to submit to western wills.

In Kenya, colonisation propagated English as the language of education and as a result, orature in Kenyan indigenous languages whithered away. This was devastating to African literature because, as Ngugi writes, "language carries culture and culture carries the entire body of values by which we perceive ourselves and our place in the world."

The marginalisation of African languages is in effect a security measure on the part of the enemy. It is a security measure ensuring that even if Africans are to ever remove the shackles of slavery from their ankles, waists, wrists and necks they would still be shackled in the mind.

Due to colonial hangover, Africans still believe that it is important to speak and understand exotic languages better, both to be accepted socially.

There is still this shyness about speaking local languages especially in public places. Hence this belief that African languages are for speaking at home.

Meanwhile, the route to continental and sustainable development is paying special attention to the development of African languages. This development should be tied to social justice, which is an indispensable element of nation-building.  

Teaching of indigenous languages to avoid the "death of cultures" should be prioritised because it is nothing short of a tragedy to see indigenous African languages disappearing. The fact is crystal clear that with the death of a language comes the death of a culture. Honestly, children can succeed in schools with few books, no desks and no proper classrooms – but no child can succeed if he or she does not understand the language used for teaching.

African states should fund their local publishing industries to help promote and protect African languages. A more vibrant local publishing industry in African nations can as well support writing in African local languages. Ngugi says “publishing in African languages is a necessary step toward cultural identity and independence from centuries of European exploitation.”

To ensure that African languages are not dead, African policy makers and learners should view them as conditions of social acceptance in social settings. If indigenous languages are not seen as languages that can bring riches to one’s life, no one will really care about whether they live or die

Unless Africa starts putting political will, money and effort into promoting and recognising African indigenous languages, the continent will not only see continued failures in education and the economy at large. As a rising continent, we need to localise and globalise at the same time. For us to develop, we should treat our local languages as our soul and preserve this part of our identity.

The day of the linguistic freedom fighter in now to rise up and stop the effective colonisation of African culture and to speed up development by imparting knowledge in African indigenous languages through which the majority think and reason effectively.