1 - Wars of Words: Enlisting Colonial Languages in the Fight for Independence in Africa

Summary

Depart white man… .

Do not ignore, dismiss, Pretending we are foolish… .

We know your language.

Edwin Thumboo, from “May 1954” (1979)

Introduction

When Africans fought European colonialism, it was perhaps fitting that armed struggle was most often required against the Portuguese, those Europeans who, first in, seemed determined to be last out. However, throughout the world, local patriots in the colonies of Europe relied on words as well as guns in their fight to liberate themselves from the shackles of empire. As in Singapore in 1954, where a young Edwin Thumboo fresh from the bloody riots sweeping the colony made “We know your language” an anticolonial battle cry, throughout the far-flung European imperial possessions, European languages were often used to reject their native speakers and everything they stood for.

This chapter examines ex-colonial languages in the context of the current controversies surrounding their use by Africans. It explores the issue of language and identity and examines it from a precolonial African perspective. The chapter, then, considers the introduction of European languages to Africa, focusing on colonial policies, the philosophies they reflected, and the contradictions inherent in each. Examining the changing relationship of language and identity in Africa during the colonial period, the chapter analyzes the use of colonial languages in the fight for independence, leading to a discussion of Kwame Nkrumah as an exemplary case. The discussion concludes with an examination of the unique relationship between language and identity epitomized by this “Greatest Generation” of African patriots, a unique speech community indeed, who successfully waged wars of words against the foreign governments they sought to drive out.

Ex-colonial Languages in the Context of the Current Debate

Even before the colonial period had ended, Africans from the educated elite were formally considering the issue of the use of European languages. The Second Congress of Negro Writers and Artists, convened in Rome in 1959, drafted a resolution stating

(1) that free and liberated black Africa should not adopt any European or other language as a national tongue;

(2) that one African language should be chosen … [and] that all Africans would learn this national language besides their own regional language.