The Crisis of African Languages in the Context of the Formation of Modernity in South Africa

CULTURE © iStockphoto.com The Crisis of African Languages in the context of the Formation of Modernity in South Africa With the hegemony of the Sophiatown Renaissance intellectual constellation whose mode of creative practice was only in the English language, and whose cultural gaze and historical outlook was focused on Harlem and Hollywood rather than on their own literary landscape and cultural history, much was irretrievably lost. By Ntongela Masilela ne incontestable tragic fact of writers and artists. Many of the critical endorse and practically celebrate the African cultural history across texts and philosophical discourses hegemony of the European languages Othe twentieth century has on the nature of the African literary over the African languages. For all been the progressive diminishment project, including those written intents and purposes this cultural in the utilisation of African languages and articulated by Africans (the tragedy is practically confined to the as linguistic instruments of literary ideological position of the majority African continent. A comparison and expression by African intellectuals, of Europeans is obvious) confirm, delimitation in relation to the situation 32 THE THINKER CULTURE in India indicates the enormity and historically understood by tracing, African literature in the European glaring nature of the African tragedy. however schematically given its languages over African literature in The choice of India is appropriate complexity, the historical form that the African languages. The question because of the indisputable consensus enabled Europe to dominate Africa, of modernity imposes a fundamental that India is a postcolonial society like or for that matter, the Universal question to us Africans today: could many African countries which were the ‘Other’, from the first moment our predecessors in the eighteenth, former colonies of England and France, of the encounter: modernity. It nineteenth and twentieth centuries whatever specificities, particularities is with this historical and cultural have entered European modernity and possible deviations one could formation invented by Europe itself through the African languages or was possibly adduce. that has made the this ‘continent this only feasible through the European The prevailing Orientalist view that of Christianity’ impose itself on languages? My fundamental thesis is Indian literature written in the Indian ‘universal history’ through force and this: Africans could only have entered Diaspora in the English language is ideological persuasion from the time European modernity through the superior to that written in the nine of the European Renaissance (fifteenth European languages not through the major indigenous Indian languages and sixteenth centuries) through the African languages. The crisis of the in India is strongly contested by two Enlightenment (eighteenth century) and African languages today is largely an formidable Indian scholars: Aijaz Romanticism (nineteenth century) and expression of this historical conundrum. Ahmad and Amit Chaudhiri. Though modernism (twentieth century) to our The seemingly irrational attacks on there are pertinent other reasons African languages by the New Negro for choosing India for comparative intellectual Alexander Crummell contrast with Africa, one of the most The late Mazisi in the nineteenth century and the critical is the one that makes it possible Kunene (1930-2006), New African intellectual R. V. Selope to pose a fundamental issue regarding Thema (1886-1955) in the twentieth our continent: why was India, as well the great Zulu poet century as ‘heathenistic’, ‘barbaric’ as a few other countries, able to retain who passed away in and ‘backward’ were an expression its religious beliefs and metaphysical of this traumatic awareness of the systems despite the massive assault of 2006, one of the most impossibility of African languages being English imperial domination, whereas eminent poetic voices the cultural facilitators of entrance into Africa has not been able to do so after to come from Africa in modernity. suffering under the English and French At this juncture we would like to imperial systems? A related issue poses the twentieth century, shift from a ‘continental’ perspective itself here: is the crisis of the African was unyielding in his of Africa to the ‘bilateral’ perspective languages among the African literary between United States and South elite connected to the destruction belief that all linguistic Africa and subsequently to the of indigenous religious beliefs and implements and all ‘national’ perspective of my country metaphysical systems among the South Africa itself. The point here is to masses of the African people? Even in cultural expressive ascend to ‘historical specificities’ from those countries which have embraced forms which were not ‘general abstractions’. Islam, the crisis of indigenous languages The historical representatives of is profound and persists to the present. ‘indigenous’ to Africa European modernity who were its A matter that need not concern us were ‘Carapaces of agency at the moment of its turbulent here but its seriousness compels encounter with the ‘Other’ in South one to mention it in passing: Is Islam Occupation’. Africa as well as in much of Africa an ‘African’ religion any more than were the colonial administrators and Christianity is supposed to be? moment of postmodernism (twenty-first the missionaries. Although mutually The late Mazisi Kunene (1930- century). As this calendrical structure in agreement on the historical project 2006), the great Zulu poet who passed should make obvious, the temporality of the ‘civilising mission’ through away in 2006, one of the most eminent of the whole world is determined by capitalism, imperialism and colonialism poetic voices to come from Africa in the European history. The real question which was taken as a given in the twentieth century, was unyielding in for world history is: can the emergent interests of European domination and his belief that all linguistic implements China disrupt this temporality and in superiority, they were not always in and all cultural expressive forms which the process construct a new one? agreement about the process of its were not ‘indigenous’ to Africa were Undoubtedly, the imposition of realisation. This was precisely because ‘Carapaces of Occupation’. European modernity on African history the colonial administrators were Given the continuing matter of the by means of capitalism, colonialism principally engaged with the material intractability of the crisis of African and imperialism is at the centre of interests to be had from exploiting, languages in the twenty-first century, the African historical imagination: dominating and repressing the Other, the search for origins of this unending the crisis of the African languages, while the missionaries were concerned cultural trauma can perhaps best be and the seeming hegemony of with transforming the spiritual world Volume 39 / 2012 33 CULTURE of the Native as a consequence of in order to facilitate the change the as being incapable of proselytising the imposition of and proselytising on historical consciousness of Old Africans properly for Christianity because of the behalf of Christianity; the realm of the into that of New Africans. It was truly racism that was naturally engrained in former was in the mines (the material extraordinary the way the missionaries their consciousness. With this charge world) and that of the latter in schools learned the linguistic structure of many against the missionaries, Crummell was (the spiritual world). The history of African languages so that they could beginning to appeal to the principles the colonial project in Africa was translate the Bible into a multiplicity of emergent proto-Pan Africanism that characterised by a constant dialectical of African languages. In so doing, not it was in the best interests of black tension between these two agents only did they enhance literacy and people in the world for Africans to of European modernity, now and the reading of literary texts, they also enter modernity. then ruptured by intense hostility began constructing the understanding The literary culture that the between them. of linguistic structure of African missionaries preferred was that Despite this contradictory unity languages. Although they sought largely of antiquity, the Classics that they of interests, they were unified by to confine the historical and intellectual diligently taught the emergent New their mutual interests in their belief imagination of the emergent New Africans. Despite the dispute among of European superiority as well as Africans solely around the horizon of themselves, the religious education that determination to break the resistance the Bible, the controversial intervention the Xhosa Intellectuals of the 1880s, they initially encountered from of the New Negro intellectual the first collective group of black South Africans. Equally, among Africans Africans to enter modernity, received there was no singular unity of response from the missionaries, and the ideology to the violent entrance of European Undoubtedly, of literary culture they emulated from modernity into African history; those the imposition of Alexander Crummell, albeit tinged aligned with traditional interests European modernity with ‘blackness’, made this intellectual never compromised their perpetual constellation really unusual in its hostility to European intrusion, on African history by constant

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