Is English an African Language?
Is English an African language? Scholars have taken a wide range of approaches in pursuit of the answer to the so called ‘language question’ in African studies. There is the problem as seen through the lens of ownership, where the answer becomes contingent on what one believes constitutes ownership: indigeneity or appropriation. This argument risks delving into, at best, philosophical abstraction and otherwise, polemic chauvinism. More pragmatic approaches have faced the question from the perspective of usage. Who uses English and how it is used become the qualifying characteristics for whether it might be considered an African language. Here too there are vulnerabilities: how closely must English use on the continent resemble English use in England to be considered an English language. What is the role, and, indeed, definition of ‘vernacular’ in this context? How does the strata of African society and the complexity of an African reality affect our ability to resolutely answer this question? This paper critically analyses a seminal text in this debate, Decolonising the Mind by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, disputing his argument to show that English is both indispensable and inadequate as a language of and for African realities.
Arguably the most famous (and most forceful) answer to our question–an emphatic ‘NO’– comes by way of the Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. In his Decolonising the Mind, the writer takes a stance that is more polemic than pragmatic: the sustained use of English, French, or Portuguese is tantamount to the preservation of colonial systems of cultural oppression. Moreover, since, according to Ngũgĩ, language acts both as a communicator and carrier of culture, Africans using English become alienated from themselves, identifying instead ‘with that which is furthest removed from themselves…with other peoples’ languages’. (wa Thiong'o, 1986:3) Those of us Africans who are native English speakers must ‘eschew the habit of expressing my thoughts first in English’ at all costs, for to retain the language of the coloniser is to have remained in an assimilationist state of mental subjugation. (1986: 8)
His work is received in varying ways. Biodun Jeyifo at first rejects his contention on the basis that it frames indigeneity as tantamount to ownership of a language and makes no room for the adoption of exogenous languages, as well as ignoring some obvious facts. For example, that English is the most spoken and written language in Africa and that not all languages are conducive to the establishment of a robust literary tradition. (Jeyifo, 2018) John Mugane summarises/synthesises the range of perspectives within this debate well, arguing that the scholarship must move beyond the question of language ownership towards an appraisal of what is foregone when we opt for a language which comes into usage through colonial imposition. (Mugane, 2018)
Other studies have taken as starting point the forms of language use on the continent, removing the question of ownership from the debate, and in doing so grounding it in a more ‘tangible’ yet more nebulous world of transnational linguistic appropriation and exchange. Msia Kibona Clark’s Hip Hop in Africa is one notable example of such work. Using examples of the adoption of hip-hop language (Black-American English ‘slang’) and culture in Africa, as well as the methods of linguistic synthesis and code-switching employed by emcees, Clark shows the ways in which hip-hop culture constitutes performance of Pan-African identities which echo throughout the continent and its diaspora. (Clark, 2018)
Rotimi Fasan’s paper ‘Wetin dey happen?’ similarly takes music and popular culture as a point of departure, showing the potentialities of genres like afrobeat and hip-hop–specifically with code-switching between English, Pidgin, and vernaculars (therein referring to local languages)–to transcend class distinctions signalled by differing degrees of command over ‘Queen’s English’. (Fasan, 2015) By contrast, Stephanie Newell and Onookome Okome’s study Popular Culture in Africa: The Episteme of Everyday takes class distinctions as sacrosanct. Led by Karin Barber’s appeal to study to popular culture as an acanonical reflection of history, the authors look to the ‘Africa of the streets’, finding almost contradictory evidence for the adoption of English at that stratum of society. On one level, English is alive and entrenched in Africa. On the other, English is performed by street dwellers to merely signal intellectual sophistication. (Newell et. al., 2013)
To answer the set question of this essay I shall return to Ngũgĩ’s text Decolonising the mind, embarking on a close reading of ‘the Language of African Literature’ to make a case against his claims that English, like French or Portuguese, are some ‘other peoples’ languages’, rather than being African by virtue of its importance in the realities of numerous Africans. (wa Thiong'o, 1986:3) This text is chosen for its explicit location of the language problem in the legacy of colonial oppression, as well as its implications for the identity and sense of belonging of both native-English-speaking Africans and Africans whose first language originates in their ethnic group.
In an effort to move away from what he deems to be a reductive explanatory method too often employed by scholars of African studies in which events are explained as a result of tensions between ethnic or tribal groups, Ngũgĩ begins his Decolonising the Mind by stating that he will examine the language problem instead through the lens of a ‘struggle’ between social classes: the ‘international bourgeoisie…the flag-waving native ruling classes’ who uphold the imperialist order on one side, and the ‘peasantry and proletariat…the petty middle class’ who resist imperialist oppression in the realm of national culture. (wa Thiong’o: 1986: 2) Written as a farewell to the English language, Ngũgĩ skilfully lays down his argument against the acceptance of English as an African language. He uses the 1884 Berlin Conference (the moment which foregrounds the so-called Scramble for Africa) as an example of an instance in which Africans were excluded from decisions about Africa, quickly juxtaposing this with a 1962 Conference of African Writers of English Expression in Makerere College to which he was invited. Here, questions like ‘What is African Literature’ were posed but no Africans who wrote in languages indigenous to the continent were in attendance at the conference. (1986: 4-5) He then stresses, almost to explain the effects of such an absence, that at no point during this gathering of African writers did he feel that the dominance of English in African literature was questioned:
‘The question was never seriously asked: did what we wrote qualify as African literature? … English…was assumed to be the language of literary and even political mediation between African people in the same nation and between nations in Africa and other continents…[English was] seen as have a capacity to unite African peoples against divisive tendencies inherent in the multiplicity of African languages within the same geographic state.’ (1986: 6-7)
Ngũgĩ frames the attendees of this conference, the African writers who adopt the English language as their own, as this international bourgeoisie class, the equivalent to those Europeans who gathered in Berlin to instigate the scramble. The missing writers are the ‘real’ Africans whose ‘pure’ indigenous-language literature stand as testament to the struggle against the imperialist order. Ngũgĩ himself, once identifying with the native ruling classes, now is a member of a petty middle class because he has endeavoured to ‘eschew the habit of expressing [his] thoughts first in English…in order to capture the vivid images of [real] African speech’ (emphasis mine). (1986: 8)
Once he has absolved himself of the original sin, Ngũgĩ proceeds to formulate the cornerstone of his argument: that the impartation of language onto the colonised constitutes the deadliest and longest lasting blow to the culture of the colonised. In his words, ‘Language was the means of spiritual subjugation’. (1968:9) This justifies his portrayal of the Africans who write in English as maintaining the state of imperial domination. Biodun Jeyifo in his argument both for and against Ngũgĩ, reads this portion of the author’s argument as a product of Fanonist theory. (Jeyifo, 2017 :135-136) Fanon prescribes three stages of decolonisation, or normative progressions of resistance to colonisation. These are 1) an assimilationist stage; 2) a nativist revolt; 3) a final stage of revolutionary revolt, where all the tools of resistance (including those of the colonising force) are used to overthrow the imperialist order. (2017: 136) Ngũgĩ’s portrayal of English usage as a legacy of colonial oppression is thus interpreted as a scathing assessment of Africa’s journey toward decolonisation as only having progressed to the first stage. (2017:137)
This is how such a remark answers the language question: if the use of English in literature is tantamount to African writers being unable to liberate themselves from mental colonisation, then it follows that the very notion of Africanness is diluted by the imposition of language. So long as English is spoken and written on the continent, Africa (that is, a real, free, native Africa) does not yet exist. In reverse, English is not and can never be an African language because what it means to be African cannot be attained without first eschewing the ‘unassailable position of English’ in African culture. (wa Thiong’o, 1986: 9) This is why Ngũgĩ recalls, in the meandering detail that only a great writer can offer to the reader, his childhood experience of the imposition of English in his life and that of his contemporaries during his childhood. (1986) He wishes to show us that his Africa disappears with the coming of English.
I do mean to suggest that Ngũgĩ’s argument is vulnerable to criticisms of espousing romanticised conceptions of the native peasant African, for he appears to assume that this class have not yet invested in English the ‘life and vigour’ of their culture. (1968:8) Yes, Jeyifo points out that Ngũgĩ departs from Fanon in that he is not nativist in his approach to the language question, nor does he leave space for a nativist turn by this so-called bourgeoisie, or for that matter a synthesis of native and imposed tools for cultural emancipation. (Jeyifo, 2017: 137) Still, it is a worthwhile exercise to ask where in this framework for decolonisation Ngũgĩ would place himself. Since his solutions to the language problem are purported to decolonise the mind, it would be reasonable to say at or near the final stage. If this is so, and he is situated there whilst his fellow attendees to the 1962 Makerere conference remain in the assimilationist state, what separates Ngũgĩ from these individuals? It is not only the willingness and ability to write in an indigenous language, but his capabilities of near perfect translation, brought about by his hard-won ability to think in his indigenous language. Ngũgĩ betrays an affinity for ‘native’ culture which he implicitly conflates with his peasantry, and in doing so, claims to have access to privileged information which these African English writers do not.
This claim to knowledge of native/indigenous culture, and the use of such knowledge to criticise Africans who operationalise their European style education in service to their cultural produce evokes the category of criticism Chinua Achebe has likened to the views of the colonialist who maintains that the idea of Africa is fundamentally divorced from any universalist conception. (Achebe, 2018) He contends that the criticism often levelled at authors who adopt ‘European’ literary conventions is that they are alienated on one hand from that literary tradition of the coloniser to which they can never totally assimilate, and, on the other, estranged from an indigenous cultural heritage which their works exploit to offer novel literary formulations to the coloniser in ‘their’ language. (Achebe, 2018) Achebe, like Ngũgĩ before he eschewed the habit of writing and thinking in English, or like the author of this essay, are ‘men of two worlds’ who never truly belong in the native colony or sophisticated metropole. Achebe’s men of two worlds theory points to the failure of the colonialist critic, and, in this case, Ngũgĩ, to recognise the reality of cultural synthesis which–for better or worse–emerges from the colonial intervention. The result of this failure is to render invisible to the critic the authenticity or indigeneity of cultural produce from the intersection of the African context and European education.
In terms of the theoretical underpinnings of his work, Decolonising the Mind divulges not only an affinity to Frantz Fanon, but also the philosophy and analytical structure of Karl Marx’s teachings. Ngũgĩ’s affinity to Marx is made clear from the outset when he adopts a ruling class/peasantry framework for analysis of the imperial legacy in Africa over and above a tribe-versus-tribe framing. (1986: 1-3) He makes explicit reference to Marx in his articulation of the constitution of language as both a carrier of culture and a means of communication. In his description of the latter he cites Marx’s ‘language of real life…that is, the relations people enter into with one another in the labour process…’ (19886:13) That Ngũgĩ’s conception of the language problem and its possible solutions are grounded in a Marxist logic is not inherently contradictory, considering Ngũgĩ is open to engaging with the work of scholars the world over, albeit from the focal point of a given African reality. What is at best ironic is the heavy-handedness of his application of Marx’s framework of social stratification to the African context. The idea of a society made up of an assimilationist ruling bourgeoisie and resistant underclass is uncritically transplanted to the African context. This point is best explained with reference to decolonial theory, in this case within the context of South Asia. Citing the work of Ranajit Guha on political modernity in India, Dipesh Chakrabarty deconstructs the supposed historicity of political modernity as evolving from a Eurocentric focal point. In his text Provincializing Europe, he references Marx as an example of a theory imbued with this logic of developmentalism. He writes:
One could not, in the manner of some nationalist historians, pit the story of a regressive colonialism against an account of a robust nationalist movement seeking to establish a bourgeois outlook throughout society. For, in Guha’s terms, there was no class in South Asia comparable to the European bourgeoisie of Marxist metanarratives, a class able to fabricate a hegemonic ideology that made its own interests look and feel like the interests of all. (Chakrabarty, 2007: 15)
Chakrabarty’s contention problematises the philosophical foundations of Ngũgĩ’s arguments against the adoption of language in Africa. Indeed, Marxist thought produces unique insights in analysis of the capitalist modes of colonial domination, but in its conceptions of the development of society into stratified classes it is deeply flawed for application in the African context. Ngũgĩ’s application may appear to be successful in his particular context, but this is likely because the advent of settler colonialism effectively imports a dominating ruling class onto societies like Kenya’s. This is by no means the case across the continent, where, in many nations, administrative colonialism has left independent states with an obscure entanglement of class relations, or, as Guha puts it in Chakrabarty’s text, ‘dominance without hegemony’. (2007:15)
In adopting this theory, Ngũgĩ illustrates the pitfalls of imposing external meaning-making frameworks on the African continent uncritically. However, the shortcomings of his argument galvanise his initial sentiment: that to simply accept the dominance of English over African languages is to submit to colonial oppression anew. Not only does Ngũgĩ implicitly accept the historicist logic embedded within Marxist notions of social development, but in applying this to an African context that does not truly sit within this analytical framework, he enriches Marx’s theory, stretching it to fit within novel contexts whilst neglecting the nuance of African realities, much like the English-writing African’s use of English to tell African stories. Ngũgĩ’s answer of ‘no’ to the language question–on the basis that English is itself an indicator of continued colonial domination of an internationalist bourgeoisie by an imperial order–is weakened by the notion that the ruling class is not so separate from Ngũgĩ’s hero class of peasant resistors. Yet, his argument that the use of English over and above indigenous African languages leeches the lifeblood from such languages rings true.
So, is English an African language? If indigeneity is our main criterion, like it is for Ngũgĩ, the answer is no. If one’s view of linguistic and cultural decolonisation is constituted by a return to indigeneity, any products of synthesis where imposed external languages or cultures are imbued with indigenous qualities are rendered invisible. Think of what we lose from our conception of African culture if we adopt this criterion as a universal heuristic for Africanness. How are we to make sense of, for instance, ‘African print’ textiles, wax cloth originally produced in Indonesia circa sixth century and brought by Dutch traders to Africa centuries later? To this day we refer to these textiles simply as ‘African cloth’. To this day the very finest of this cloth is produced in the Netherlands. What this example shows is that if the application and usage of language is our guiding light, we cannot deny that English is an African language. Indeed, in this sense it can be said to be more of an African language than a European one! However, this sets in motion a relationship with English that privileges it as the carrier of African culture, over and above indigenous African languages. This has the potential to exclude individuals from full participation in society, whilst also, in the worst case, eventually rendering the indigenous languages ‘dead’. In an attempt to find some definitive solution to this language problem, I leave the reader with an answer inspired by Chakrabarty’s Provincializing Europe: viewed through lens of the African experience English is both indispensable and inadequate as a language of everyday life. Indeed, such is the paradox of the colonial intervention.
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