South Africa adopts Kiswahili as an optional language to be taught in schools. ‘Africa has more than 2000 languages and is home to over 2 billion people’
The month of September, which is hailed as the beginning of the academic calendar in many African countries, saw South Africa adopt Kiswahili as an optional language to be taught in schools. The East African language will be taught alongside French, Mandarin, and German from 2020.
The adoption of Swahili in South Africa, albeit as an optional, comes at a time when Africa’s giant body AU, is on the verge of introducing a common African passport to bring about cohesion on the continent, where, half a century after decolonisation still grapples with a sense of commonality. South Africa adopting Swahili just adds pressure to this continued struggle for African unity, an idea first hailed by the first president of Ghana and pan Africanist Kwame Nkrumah and former Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi; the United States of Africa campaign.
Prior to the announcement by South African Education Minister Angie Motshekga, the country's opposition leader, Julius Malema, had hinted at Swahili being promoted as the African official language, if not in this generation, then for the ones to come. Kiswahili is one of the leading languages in Africa. Recognised as one of the official languages by the African Union, Kiswahili boasts of having over 200 million speakers in the world. Although Africa has been grasped by colonial languages, ergo French, English, Portuguese and of late with the China buzz Mandarin, the continent has always struggled to have a language of its own.
Africa boasts of over 2000 languages, a majority of which are still in use. Of late, though, some language groups, like the Abasuba of Kenya, have been declared endangered as their language group is absorbed by larger tribes like the Luo. In this regard, there have been efforts by writers like the legendary Kenyan literary guru Ngugi wa Thiong’o, who believe in keeping such languages alive. Although Ngugi’s Advocacy is in the field of literature, it touches on language, which is the basic construct of a society. Ngugi believes that, if Africa has to forge forward and decolonise herself, she must adopt patriotism around local languages. His book, ‘Decolonising the Mind’, speaks of a freer mind as that mind that has adopted an African thinking through African languages.
Ngugi’s thinking was not supported by Chinua Achebe, whose book ‘Things Fall Apart’, originally written in English, has been translated into over 30 languages in the world, but ironically not in Achebe’s native Igbo. According to Achebe, he had not been forced to learn the English language and nor had he been forced to write in it. Language to him, in this case, English was a weapon, and he intended to use it and not fight it. To this day, the majority of African writers still write in English, French and Portuguese, while some have diverged into Kiswahili or their native language, led by Ngugi, whose latest works and most of his works are in his native Gikuyu language. Manny Kiswahili writers, as it were, still reign from East Africa.
Born on the coast of East Africa, Kiswahili borrows heavily from Arabic and Bantu languages from the coastal and the interior of Kenya. A language that was created out of the need to trade during the East African Trade would develop a culture around it and a people born from the interaction of Coastal Africans and visitors from the Middle East and Asia. The language, therefore, borrowed heavily from both the Arabic and Portuguese languages. In written work, the first attempt at documenting Swahili in Arabic characters was where the language would find its expression in poetry and music.
By the turn of the 19th century, the language would find its use in modern writing when Ludwig Krapf published his first book on Swahili Grammar around 1850. From there, the language has picked on more characters, remodelling around its founding languages and finding its voice in poetry, music and written literature.
Among the early Swahili writers was Shabaan Bin Robert, whose works have been extensively used in the study of literature. Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, the first president of Tanzania, would painstakingly translate The Merchant of Venice and Julius Caesar, plays by William Shakespeare, into Kiswahili as Mabepari wa Venisi and Juliusi Kaisari, respectively. This feat not only showed the maturity of the language but its inevitable force as a language.
Come 2020, most South African children will start to make conversation in the language, for the Economic Freedom Fighters led by Julius Malema, this is a win it advances their cause for a united Africa and the continent ‘freeing itself from colonial chains’.
Though it won’t be easy to do away with the English language adopted by more than 50 states as a national language, it is a first step to making Swahili a key language in Africa, and indeed would serve to unite the people of the great continent. It is relatable, with African ties, but it remains to be seen if other countries will go the South African way.
Africa has more than 2000 languages and is home to over 2 billion people.
|Afroway
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