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The English Language and Political Consciousness in British Colonial Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Ali A. Mazrui
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Extract

SEVERAL years ago, Wilfred Whiteley, the linguist and Africanist, argued that ‘to some extent the nature of political action… may be related to people's conception of what constitutes politics’.1 Formulated in this way, Whiteley's argument seems to assume that all people have some conception of what constitutes politics—the only difference being what kind of conception. But can this be taken for granted? In 1952— to take an example almost at random—Nnamdi Azikiwe, the Nigerian leader, referred in a speech at Port Harcourt to ‘the growth of political consciousness’ in Nigeria. What did he mean? Had the Africans of Nigeria known no political activity until then? If they had, had they not been ‘conscious’ that the activity was ‘political’? Or was it a case of having no special name for this kind of activity as something distinct? If none of these hypotheses apply, what then was meant by this kind of reference to ‘political consciousness’ as if it was something new among Africans?2

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , November 1966 , pp. 295 - 311
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1966

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References

Page 295 note 1 ‘Political Concepts and Connotations,’ in Kirkwood, Kenneth (ed.), St. Antony's Papers. No. 10 (London, 1961).Google Scholar

Page 295 note 2 See Zik, : a selection from the speeches of Nnamdi Azikiwe (Cambridge, 1961), p. 85.Google Scholar

Page 295 note 3 Sankoh, L., Politics for the People (Freetown, n.d., 1952?), p. 2.Google Scholar

Page 296 note 1 Wraith, R. E., East African Citizen (London, 1959), p. 51.Google Scholar

Page 296 note 2 Ibid. p. 7.

Page 296 note 3 Bennett, George, Kenya, a Political History: the colonial period (London, 1963), p. 1.Google Scholar

Page 296 note 4 See the Bow Group study, Race and Power (London, 1956), p. 58.Google Scholar

Page 297 note 1 For accounts of the development of Nigerian parties, see Coleman, J. S., Nigeria, Background to Nationalism (Los Angeles, 1958), pp. 251–365,Google Scholar and Sklar, Richard L., Nigerian Political Parties (Princeton, 1963).Google Scholar See also Azikiwe, , The Development of Political Parties in Nigeria (London, 1957),Google Scholar produced by the Office of the Commissioner in the U.K. for the Eastern Region of Nigeria. For an account of West African parties generally towards the close of the colonial period, see Hodgkin, Thomas, African Political Parties (Harmondsworth, 1961),Google Scholar in the Penguin African Series.

Page 297 note 2 See, for example, Fortes, M. and Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (eds.), African Political Systems (London, 1955).Google Scholar

Page 299 note 1 Jahoda, Gustav, White Man: a study of the attitudes of Africans to Europeans in Ghana before independence (London, 1961), p. 24.Google Scholar Jahoda explains: ‘The reason for this widespread misconception is partly the fact that the British formed the major non-indigenous group; furthermore, the term used during the interviews was blofo, a Ga word that can be literally rendered as “white men's language”, and thus the notion also receives semantic support’.

Page 299 note 2 Kimble, David, A Political History of Ghana: the rise of Gold Coast nationalism, 1850–1928 (Oxford, 1963), pp. 87–93.Google Scholar

Page 300 note 1 Minute of 6 February 1875 by A. W. L. Hemming (later Head of the African Department of the Colonial Office), CO/96/115; cited by Kimble, ibid. p. 91.

Page 300 note 2 Swahili did have a word for ‘politics’, siasa, but no single word for ‘politician’. And even the former was derived from Arabic and was not completely assimilated into the African language. Siasa also meant ‘policy’, ‘cunning’, or ‘prudence’. One term for ‘politician’ which has now emerged is the term mtelezi, which literally means ‘one who struggles for something or on behalf of somebody else’. Another modern improvisation for ‘politician’ is mwana-siasa, or ‘child of politics’.

Page 300 note 3 George Padmore discusses this phenomenon in his Pan-Africanism or Communism? (London, 1956), esp. pp. 211–20.Google Scholar

Page 300 note 4 Steele, A. T., in New York Herald- Tribune, 4 10 1952.Google Scholar

Page 300 note 5 Lloyd, Lord, Egypt Since Cromer (London, 1933), vol. II, p. 358.Google Scholar

Page 301 note 1 ‘Caretaker,’ in Sunday Post (Nairobi), 25 02 p. 62.Google Scholar

Page 301 note 2 Sarbah, J. Mensah, Fanti National Constitution (London, 1906), p. 239.Google Scholar

Page 302 note 1 Kemp, D., Nine Years at the Gold Coast (London, 1898), pp. 74–5;CrossRefGoogle Scholar cited by Kimble, op. cit. p. 91.

Page 302 note 2 Makonnen, T. R., ‘The Greek Word for Colour Bar,’ in Pan-Africa (London), I, 6, 06 1947.Google Scholar

Page 304 note 1 Gold Coast Legislative Council Debates, 27 February 1941; cited in Metcalfe, G. E. (ed.), Great Britain and Ghana: doouments of Ghana hitory, 1807–1957 (London, 1964), p. 665.Google Scholar

Page 307 note 1 Royal Institute of International Affairs, Nationalism (London, 1939), pp. 5–6.Google Scholar

Page 307 note 2 Panikkar, K. M., Asia and Western Dominance: a survey of the Vasco da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498–1945 (London, 1953), p. 329.Google Scholar

Page 309 note 1 ‘Balandier, G., ‘Social Changes and Social Problems in Negro Africa,’ in Stillman, C. W. (ed.), Africa in the Modern World (Chicago, 1955), p. 66.Google Scholar

Page 309 note 2 Kimble shows how this type of distinction started to occur in Colonial Office memoranda from quite early in the political history of the Gold Coast; cf. op. cit. p. 89.

Page 309 note 3 Christianity and Race (London, 1956), p. 521.Google Scholar

Page 309 note 4 The ‘political’ differences between these civilisations were partly derived from a more basic difference in intellectual temper. See Henri, and Frankfort, H. A., Wilson, John A., and Jacobsen, Thornkild, Before Philosophy, The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man (Baltimore, 1963; first published in 1946).Google Scholar

Page 310 note 1 See Coleman, op. cit.

Page 311 note 1 Whiteley, op. cit. pp. 8, 12–13 and 15. See also his ‘Language and Politics in East Africa’, in Tanganyika Notes and Records (Dar es Salaam), nos. 47 and 48, 06 and 09 1957.Google Scholar For a more comprehensive discussion of linguistic problems in Africa, see Spencer, John (ed.), Language in Africa, Papers of the Leverhulme Conference at Ibadan on Universities and the Language Problems of Tropical Africa (Cambridge, 1963)Google Scholar. See also Scotton, Carol M. M., ‘Some Swahili Political Words,’ in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), III, 4, 12 1965.Google Scholar