Why hasn’t Kiswahili united EA?

South Africa President Jacob Zuma speaks at a past Comesa-EAC-SADC function. Photo/FILE

What you need to know:

  • The first of such questions is: why hasn’t Kiswahili, the language of trade, colonial adventurism and colonial occupation integrated the region and made us into a community?
  • Kiswahili is the language that brought education, religion, the government, business to many communities in the interior of East Africa from the Coast.

There was a conference at the University of Nairobi. Not in the recent past but a full generation ago. It was in 1974. Many who are reading this note weren’t born then.

That conference was organised by Ngugi wa Thiong’o and the Department of Literature. It was for teachers of English and Literature in Kenyan schools.

That conference was definitive because it sought to set the terms on which literature would be taught in Kenyan schools.

Then, literature was a subject that anyone who sought to be seen as having gone to school followed keenly.

That is why doctors, engineers, lawyers, scribes, priests etc wrote poetry, short stories, novellas, novels, memoirs, literary criticisms etc; good or bad, they wrote something about literature.

In September, this year, 41 years later, there was a conference at the University of Nairobi focusing on the topic, “A Celebration of Histories and Futures.” The caucus was an academic celebration of East Africa at 50 years since the end of colonialism.

This conference brought together scholars from universities in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, South Africa, South Sudan and Botswana among others.

So, the impression given in the Kenyan media that Taban lo Liyong was in Kenya to excoriate against Kenyan scholars is wrong.

Taban was in Kenya to attend this conference together with about 100 other scholars, young and old.

There were more than 80 academic papers read at the conference, on varied topics including language, media, political economy, film, music, literature etc.

But the bigger subject for this conference was the question of “cultural mobility” as reflected in the keynote speech given by the respected Tanzanian professor, Euphrase Kezilahabi, “Swahili Literature and Cultural Mobility.” Kezilahabi is the author of a novel that was quite popular in this country in the 1980s, Rosa Mistika.

THE LANGUAGE OF ENCOUNTER AND CONVIVIALITY

Kezilahabi captured the spirit of the conference, and raised a number of questions that East Africans should be asking at this point in history.

The first of such questions is: why hasn’t Kiswahili, the language of trade, colonial adventurism and colonial occupation integrated the region and made us into a community?

Kiswahili is the language that brought education, religion, the government, business to many communities in the interior of East Africa from the Coast.

So, why is it that this language of encounter and conviviality in many cases hasn’t helped us to overcome the suspicions such as that between Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda on the one hand and Tanzania and Burundi on the other?

The second question would be: why hasn’t Kiswahili helped us to forge an East African identity? Cultural identities are functions of speech. We speak and, therefore, become.

What are we, nationally and regionally, if we remain confined to the hundreds of languages that are found in the region? Why couldn’t we have forged a “local” relationship that defines and separates us from others through Kiswahili?

Thirdly, one would have asked, after listening to the different papers at the conference, and especially after a roundtable conversation between Prof Kezilahabi and Prof Kithaka wa Mberia of the University of Nairobi, moderated by Prof John Habwe of the University of Nairobi: why are our critics obsessed with literature in English at the expense of Kiswahili literature?

This is an old question which gets dismissed by the tens of East African critics weaned on literature in English and ignorant of the incredible strides in writing in Kiswahili.

One wonders whether it is just the school system in Kenya and Uganda which insists of Kiswahili being an examinable subject that is to blame for the disinterest in Kiswahili literature or is it just a matter of laziness? For instance, Kiswahili poetry remains outstanding and most entertaining but I continue to hear that because it is written in a tradition that is “outdated” it is difficult to interpret and enjoy!

Indeed, the key question at the conference was a banal one: what can we learn from our history if we intend to forge a more productive future? This is a question that perceptive generations always ask themselves.

This is a question that Frantz Fanon suggests must be asked by all serious generations when he exhorts, “Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it.”

ULTIMATE AIM

This conference was about intergenerational conversations between authors and critics, old scholars and emerging ones, scholars from different generations etc.

The ultimate aim that one sensed in the sessions was how to identify the mission of the generation that will take scholarship on East African literature, art, media, music, film and related studies, or cultural studies, into the next fifty years.

Undoubtedly there is a lot of work to be done to restart conversations across the countries of the East African community; conversations that naturally should include Sudan, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Somalia.

To bring together generations is also a task that must be undertaken. But of utmost significance is the work reinstituting cultural studies to its rightful space in the school system and public discourse in the region.

This conference was hopefully the beginning of such an undertaking.

Tom Odhiambo teaches literature at the University of Nairobi.