Ngugi wa Thiong'o Decolonising the Mind The Politics of Language in African Literature

123 Pages·2007·0.36 MB·English

ZPH WRITERS SERIES
1Waitinc for the Rain 24 Maru
Charles Mungoshi -JBessie Head
2 Coming of the Dry Season 25 The Grass is Singinn
Charles Mungoshi Doris Lessing
3 Up in Arms 26 So Long a Letter
Chenjerai Hove Manama Ba
4 House of Hunger 27 Unwinding Threads
Dambudzo Marechera ed. Charlotte Brunei
S Baltlefront Namibia 28 Tsanga Yembeu
John ya-Otto Ngugi wa Thiong’o
6 Umzenzi Kakhalelwa 29 On the Road Again
Lenah Mazibuko Freedom Nyamubaya
7 Runako Munjodzi 30 I Win Marry When I Want
N.M. Mutasa Ngugi wa Thiong’o
8 Bandiet: Seven Years in and Ngugi wa Mini
a South African Prison 31 Tenderness of Blood
Hugh Lewin Mandia Langa
9 Petals of Blood 32 The Lion and The Jewel
Ngugi wa Thiong’o Wole Soyinka
10 No Easy Walk to Freedom 33 A Wife for My Son
Nelson Mandela Ail Ghalern
11 Down Second Avenue 34 And Night Fell
Ezekiel Mphahlele Molefe Pheto
12 Tell Freedom 35 We killed Mangy-Dog
JPeter Abrahams Luis Bernardo Honwana
13 The Trial of Dedan Kimathi
Ngugi wa Thiong’o and
Micere Mugo
14 Devil on the Cross
Ngugi wa Thiong’o I Will Wail by Bertha Msoia and
15 The Non-Believer’s Journey Kulongwa kwaDedan Kimathi by
Stanley Nyamfukudza Ngugi \va Thiong’o and Micere
Mugo are also published by ZPH.
16 Kunyarara Hakusi Kutaura?
The River Between by Ngugi wa
Charles Mungoshi
Thiong’o, Things Fall Apart by
17 The Identity Card
Chinua Achebe and No Longer at
J.M. Adiaffi
Ease by Chinua Achebe are
18 Mayombe
published by Zimbabwe
Pepetela
Educational Books and are
19 A Grain of Wheat available through ZPH.
Ngugi wa Thiong’o
20 God’s Bits of Wood
Sembene Ousmane
21 Shadows on the Horizon
Stephen Mpofu
22 Zvairwadza Vasara
Gonzo H. Musengc/i
23 A Storm is Brewing
Krislina Rungano
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Decolonising the Mind
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Dedication

This book is greatefully dedicated to all those who write in African languages,
and to all those who over the years have maintained the dignity of the
literature, culture, philosophy, and other treasures carried by African
languages.
iv
Ngugi
wa Thiong’o

Decolonising the Mind
The Politics
of Language
in African Literature

ZIMBABWE PUBLISHING HOUSE
v
Zimbabwe Publishing House (Pvt.) Ltd.
P.O. Box 350
Harare, Zimbabwe

Ngugi wa Thiong’o 1981

First published 1987 by ZPH.
Reprinted 1994

ISBN 0 949225 38 X

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission
of the publishers.

Printed in Zimbabwe at 14 Austin Road, Workington, Harare
vi
Contents

Acknowledgements vi
Preface vii
A Statement xi
Introduction : Towards the Universal
Language of Struggle 1
1. The Language of African Literature 4
2. The Language of African Theatre 34
3. The Language of African Fiction 63
4. The Quest for Relevance 87
Index
vii
Acknowledgements

"The Language of African Literature' has a long history. Part of it was
originally given as a paper at a conference organised by Trie Writers
Association of Kenya in December 1981 on the theme 'Writing for our
Children'. A slightly altered version of the original paper was also given at a
conference on Language and African Literature at the University of Calabar,
Nigeria in 1982. The same version - again slightly altered - was tabled at the
Zimbabwe International Book Fair in 1983 and subsequently published in an
African Writers Association (AWA) newsletter in the same year. The present is
an expanded version and goes very much beyond the scope of the one
preceding it. An abridged version of this paper was first read at a university
seminar at the Bayreuth University in July 1984. The same, only slightly
changed to suit the occasion, was read as the opening speech at the Conference
on New Writing from Africa, at the Commonwealth Institute in London in
December 1984. The paper, slightly abridged, was first published in New Left
Review no. 150 in 1985.
"The Language of African Theatre' was also read at the University of
Zimbabwe in August 1984 under the auspices of the Literature Department and
the Zimbabwe Foundation for Education with Production.
'The Language of African Fiction' has also been read in Harare, Zimbabwe
under the auspices of the Institute of Development Studies in August 1984 and
at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, in February
1985.
viii
Preface

I was glad to be asked to give the 1984 Robb lectures in honour of Sir Douglas
Robb, former Chancellor of Auckland University and one of New Zealand's
most distinguished surgeons. Universities today, particularly in Africa, have
become the modern patrons for the artist. Most African-writers are products of
universities: indeed a good number of them still combine academic posts and
writing. Also, a writer and a surgeon have something in common - a passion
for truth. Prescription of the correct cure is dependent on a rigorous analysis of
the reality. Writers are surgeons of the heart and souls of a community. And
finally the lectures would never have been written, at, least not in the year
1984, without the invitation from Auckland University.
I want to thank the Chancellor, Dr Lindo Ferguson, the Vice-Chancellor,
Dr Colin Maiden, the Registrar, Mr Warwick Nicholl and their staff for both
the invitation and the warm reception. Professor Michael Neil and Mr
Sebastion Black were meticulous and helpful in all the arrangements. They,
together with Professor Terry Sturm and the staff of the English Department,
made me feel at home. Thanks also to Wanjiku Kiarii and Martyn Sanderson
for their friendship and constant attention during the visit. and for readily
participating in the lectures as actors with only short notice; to Professor Albert
Wendt, the Samoan novelist, and his wife Jenny, who laid on a big reception
for us at their home at the University of South Pacific, Fiji, and took time to
drive us around Suva; to Pat Hohepa who arranged a very, moving Maori
welcome; and to all the Maori people inside and outside the University who
welcomed us in their houses or places of work. A sante sana!
I felt particularly touched by the welcome I received from the Maori
people and it will long live in my memory. There is a lot to learn from the
culture of Maori people, a culture which has such vitality, strength and beauty:
the vitality, strength and beauty of resistance. I was happy therefore that my
lectures on The Politics of Language in African
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Literature' coincided with Maori language week. Long live the language and
the struggling culture of the Maori people!
Apart from the stimulus of the New Zealand invitation, the lectures owed a
lot to the time I spent at the Bayreuth University in West Germany as a Guest
Professor attached to the Department of English and Comparative Literature
from 15 May to 15 July 1984. I want to thank Professor H. Ruppert, co-
ordinator of the special research project on identity in Africa, and the German
Research Council for the invitation; and Professor Richard Taylor and the
entire staff of the English department for their warm reception. I would like to
single out Dr Reinhard Sander (who arranged the visit), Dr Rhonda Cobham,
Dr Eakhard Breitinger, Dr Jurgen Martini and Margit Wermter, for making
their time available and for providing me with a cosy and stimulating
intellectual atmosphere for work. To Dr Bachir Diagne from Senegal, with
whom I shared the house at St Johannes village, I feel a special indebtedness
for all the sessions on mathematical logic, Louis Althusier, Michael Pecheux,
Pierre Macherey, Ferdinand de Saussure, Leopold Sedar Senghor, Wolof,
African philosophy and much more. He also did translations of some passages
from French into English.
The fact that these lectures were ready in time for delivery owed a lot to
Eva Lanno. Although the first lecture was written and the general framework
of the rest worked out in Bayreuth, the actual composition and writing of the
other three and the typing of all four was done in New Zealand. Eva typed
them, the last two as I was writing them, amidst working out the travel plans
and appointments and rushing to the libraries and bookshops for urgently
needed references.
And finally these lectures would not have been possible without the
inspiring patriotic friendship of all my Kenyan compatriots abroad, particularly
those in Britain, Denmark, Sweden and Zimbabwe; and to all the friends of
Kenyan people's struggles for democratic and human rights. I don't mention
their names here for reasons that lie outside this book. But the strength to write
the lectures and other books I have written since 1982 under the harsh
conditions of my present existence has come from them.
Over the years I have come to realise more and more that work, any work,
even literary creative work, is not the result of an individual genius but the
result of a collective effort. There are so many inputs in the actual formation of
an image, an idea, a line of argument and even sometimes the formal
arrangement. The very words we use are
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