The following column from the Kampala paper, The Monitor, was seen on AllAfrica.com at http://allafrica.com/stories/200703201089.html . It is a reply to an earlier opinion article about the role of Swahili in East Africa from an Ugandan perspective. Don
East Africa: Kiswahili Weak Basis for East African Unity The Monitor (Kampala) http://www.monitor.co.ug/ OPINION March 21, 2007 Posted to the web March 20, 2007 Michael J. Ssali The ideas expressed in the opinion article, "Putting Kiswahili on the East African agenda" (February 27) lacked genuine basis. The writer, Ms Agnes Kabajuni, made some self-defeating arguments such as quoting a French MP, Monsieur Myard who insisted on others learning the French language if they wanted to do business with France. She then went ahead to ask why Uganda does not adopt Kiswahili as a unifying language like Tanzania. She also attempted to tie regional economic co-operation and unity to a common language. If that were true then Somalia, Rwanda, or Burundi, each one of which speaks a common language, would be shining examples of unity and tranquillity. Was the lack of a common language the basic cause of the collapse of the East African Community? Julius Nyerere kept his friend Milton Obote close to him in Dar-salaam and vowed never to sit at the same table with Idi Amin. He introduced ujamaa (socialism) and Amin declared the economic war that for years was to destabilise the countries' economies. Jomo Kenyatta stuck to capitalism, but it got increasingly difficult for the three countries to get along. The former East African Community therefore collapsed more because of economic and political differences than the absence of a common language. The European Union to me seems a good example of economic co-operation. But, as Kabajuni ironically pointed out, the Frenchman insists on speaking his language, the German too speaks his, the Englishman prefers English as does the Italian his own. In Canada, which surprisingly Kabajuni gave as an example of national unity, one part of the country speaks English while the other speaks French. Some Canadians are bilingual but a good many others speak either French or English. But they remain Canadians, loving and respecting one another. During my close to ten years stay in both Kenya and Tanzania, I made some effort to acclimatise myself with the Kiswahili language, and its history. If the language is so entrenched in both countries it is not merely due to the efforts of a single man such as Nyerere, much as we are beholden to him for his brilliant Kiswahili translations of Shakespearean drama. Kiswahili is today an indigenous language in both Tanzania and Kenya, having developed several centuries ago (from the 9th century) on the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba and along the mainland coastline both in Tanzania and Kenya. Together with the language also a culture and a people came into existence following prolonged trade and intermarriage between the Bantu language speaking Africans and visitors from Arabia, Persia, India and Europe. These people whether from Mombasa and Malindi in Kenya or Dar-salaam, Pemba, and Zanzibar in Tanzania have an equal claim to the origin and formation of Kiswahili. Mixed language history The Christian missionaries intending to evangelise East Africa and others intending to colonise and plunder the region regarded Kiswahili the lingua franca and hence devoted a lot of effort to forming an alphabet, an orthography, and grammar for it. Scholars like Frederick Johnson, Secretary of the Inter-territorial Language Committee, and earlier Kiswahili scholars such as Steere and Madan got to work and came up with a dictionary (kamusi). It was the first local language in East Africa into which the Holy Bible was translated and it was the language that the Germans thought they would use to colonise Tanganyika. This was much, much before Nyerere became president. So, in Uganda Kiswahili does not have the kind of history that it has either in Tanzania or in Kenya. Its wide presence in Congo could be due to the vast resources of that country which attracted prolonged visits of Arab traders. In Uganda it arrived with the Nubian soldiers of Capt. Frederick Lugard at the start of the last century and remained the language of the security forces, which later became associated with brutality to the civilian population. Hence the fright for it in the country. Agreed, Tanzania has adopted it as a medium of instruction in its school system, but why are so many wealthy Tanzanian parents bringing their offspring to Ugandan schools? The East African Federation calls for more political will, more democratisation, peaceful change of governments, and total absence of civil wars. The writer is Daily Monitor's correspondent in Masaka. Copyright © 2007 The Monitor. Plot 29-35, 8th Street,Industrial Area, P.O. 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