KIRUKU: You’re Gorgeous, beautiful… tell her in Kiswahili

The far-sighted founding President of Tanzania, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, must be smiling in his grave at the news that Kiswahili is finally being considered for adoption as an official language of the East African Community.

For more than any other leader, Nyerere campaigned vigorously for the adoption of Kiswahili as a unifying language for Tanzania and the region. Regrettably, his ideals were not shared by his more Western-leaning contemporaries.

The resolution by the East African Legislative Assembly recommending amendment of the EAC Treaty to make Kiswahili an official language, alongside English, therefore serves as a vindication of Mwalimu’s ideals, who no doubt lived years ahead of his time.

Despite various setbacks, the use of Kiswahili has continued to grow across the region as the language of hawkers, market women, carpenters, farmers and other ordinary citizens. Spoken by over a million people as their first language, the use of Kiswahili is today widespread as the lingua franca in East and Central Africa – from Mombasa to Bujumbura and Tanga to Goma.

All this is extremely good news for lovers of Kiswahili and African culture. In fact, Kiswahili, which has its roots in the Bantu language, is reputedly the fastest-spreading language on the African continent.

Like any growing language, Kiswahili has borrowed heavily from other languages and has had to coin new words to keep up with science, technology and our ever-changing lifestyles. In the process, it has also spawned numerous dialects, and speakers of the language from the Democratic Republic of Congo put a twist to it that makes it quite different from that spoken in Zanzibar, for example.

The youth have not been left behind. Sheng, a somewhat convoluted mixture of local languages, English and Kiswahili, is predominant in the slums of Nairobi. This development, in particular, has raised concern among Kiswahili scholars on the future of this beautiful language.

But how is all this important to the cause of regional integration? A common language breaks the barrier of communication between diverse peoples targeted for integration. Moreover, using a local dialect as opposed to the language of the oppressor raises the self-esteem of citizens.

Encouraging a language that is understood by all will hopefully raise greater interest in issues to do with integration. Leaders should lead the way by holding their deliberations and releasing statements and communiqués in Kiswahili. Women, especially, because they constitute the highest percentage of illiterate persons, will be brought on board to participate in Community-related issues.

A Kiswahili Learning Centre could assist staff, members and all stakeholders involved in the integration process to fully comprehend the language. Progressively, the discourse on integration should be conducted in our own language.

Kiswahili is recognised as an official and national language in Kenya and Tanzania; it is also widely spoken in the rest of the EAC partner states. Promoting this language will ensure that nobody is left behind in the integration debate.

Adopting Kiswahili as an official language of the Community, in other words, will negate the perception that integration is the business of presidents. Kiswahili provides a critical link towards embracing a people-centred community.

With the African Union having already made the welcome move to admit Kiswahili as one of its official languages, the Summit should now proceed with speed to correct the anomaly of not recognising this language at home.

This is why the motion by Abubakar Zein at EALA should be seen as an exciting initial step in the development of Kiswahili, one that fits neatly within the jigsaw of recent events in the development of the language.

Only a couple of months ago, the newly-formed East African Kiswahili Commission held a workshop at the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development in Nairobi where a range of key milestones were achieved. These ranged from the formation of various associations to encourage networking among concerned stakeholders to the formulation of a draft policy on university staff-student exchange programmes in East Africa and beyond.

With that high-level recognition, our sons and daughters will also take greater pride in Kiswahili, which at present remains one of the poorest-performed subjects in national examinations. The era when students were punished for speaking African languages, thus demonising our own cultures while promoting foreign ones, needs to come to a screeching halt.

Countries where the language is not widely spoken – Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi – will hopefully attract special attention from the Kiswahili Commission. Regional governments, through the EAC Secretariat, must also increase the budgetary allocation to the Kiswahili Commission to ensure that it carries out its mandate effectively.

At national level, governments should form Kiswahili language committees and Kiswahili National Councils to promote the language. In particular, opinion leaders – administrators, teachers, middle-class managers, the whole lot – must be decolonised from their contempt of anything local, beginning with language. The task ahead is huge, but not insurmountable.