It is time leaders and officials took Kiswahili language seriously in and out of school

A few weeks ago, Teachers Service Commission Secretary Nancy Macharia was hosted to a television programme where she talked in fluent Kiswahili for one and-a-half hours. She gave the commission’s stand on many issues. Hers was a refreshing Kiswahili, and it greatly surpassed the variety of ungrammatical and strange Kiswahili that many people in public offices speak.

When they speak in Kiswahili at all, many educated people in senior positions will often talk trivia, jokes and banter and issue insults to their employees and workmates. This is likely to be at social functions. When it’s time for “serious issues,” they will frequently adopt an official stern face (sura ya kazi) and switch to English. They will invoke a peculiar Kenyan corporate line: “What I am about to say is serious and therefore I have to say it in English!”

Regrettably, many teachers, except the Kiswahili ones, rarely endeavour to speak in good Kiswahili in schools. This is unless they are cheering their students and pupils in the sports fields. And even then, it will not be proper Kiswahili but a smattering of Sheng will often do.

This casual treatment of Kiswahili reaches a zenith with some head teachers, who like many corporate leaders, cannot speak a single sentence in Kiswahili. They routinely rubbish some traditions in some schools where certain days are set for speaking in Kiswahili by delivering their speeches in English.

So, after half-hearted preliminaries in Kiswahili, they will adopt the sura ya kazi pose and declare: “What I want to say is very important and I have to say it in English.” This way, they portray Kiswahili as a language for communicating lighter issues to their pupils and students. And children, being good at imitating adults, adopt the same attitude towards the language with disastrous results in national examinations.

TECHNICAL EXCLUSION

Matters often take a comical angle in some school functions when head teachers and their boards of management members speak in English to parents who may not understand it. Nobody bothers to translate for them in Kiswahili or local languages and there is ignorance galore especially when crucial decisions are being made. Is there a possibility that some court cases are lost because the litigants don’t understand the proceedings that are conducted in stifling English and less than accurate translation?

Tragically, except for a linguistic or teaching course, there is no university programme that categorically requires a candidate to have passed well in Kiswahili. The Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS) strokes Kiswahili with English, meaning that one would be home and dry with a pass in either language. With this window, many candidates give more attention to English than Kiswahili.

Whereas many of our elected leaders speak functional Kiswahili, some of them don’t pretend to hide their disdain for the language. Apart from the Machakos and Makueni governors Alfred Mutua and Kivutha Kibwana, respectively, and the governors of the coastal counties, there are few other county leaders that I can think of who can sustain speeches and conversations in proper Kiswahili.

When our leaders don’t use Kiswahili they don’t reach the common man. The result is a technical exclusion of certain cadres of people from the development agenda. Some key decisions affecting the public such as scrutiny of funds are passed largely without public participating because nobody translates what it’s all about to the masses.

There are many benefits in speaking Kiswahili. Locally, Kiswahili cuts across all ethnic groups and speaking it fosters national unity. As the most spoken lingua franca in East and Central Africa, Kiswahili transcends boundaries and is a unifying factor. Through it, we stand to understand most things affecting us as a nation. This way we shall participate better in all development agendas.

As a start, all public officials must emulate the TSC secretary and aspire to conduct business in Kiswahili in all public forums. More so, we should adopt the practice of speaking in Kiswahili in schools, especially when we have parents meetings.

MULTI-LINGUAL NATION

Another way of fostering the use of Kiswahili would be the translation of all signage in public places into Kiswahili. Kudos to the ministry of Health for translating the service charters in public hospitals into Kiswahili. The Huduma Centres have also done well in their signage that is in both English and Kiswahili.

The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) has put up its signage in both languages at Nairobi’s animal orphanage and nature trail. All self-respecting banks have the option of using either Kiswahili or English in their Automated Teller Machines (ATMs). But a lot needs to be done on the signage at our airports, roads, hotels, schools, churches, stadia, markets and other public places to communicate with the common man.

It is the norm nowadays to display uplifting and cautionary messages in school compounds. Often these are in English. We must start in school by translating all these messages into their Kiswahili equivalents. It’s only when we speak in Kiswahili in and out of school and display signage in it that the language will stop being associated with unimportant matters like cheering and issuing insults and regain its lost glory. 

Ms Mugo, the 2016 Teacher of the Year Award winner, teaches Kiswahili at Karatina Girls High School in Nyeri County.