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Decolonising the Mind

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Decolonising the Mind 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 16 Kunyarara Hakusi Kutaura? Mugo are also published by ZPH. Charles Mungoshi The River Between by Ngugi wa 17 The Identity Card Thiong’o, Things Fall Apart by 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 i ii Decolonising the Mind iii 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 ix 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 x a product of a collective history. So, too, is the present work. I owe a lot to the people who have contributed to the great debate on the language of African literature, in particular to the late David Diop of Senegal, and to Obi Wali of Nigeria who made the historic intervention in 1964. There are many others. African linguists for instance have been more progressive in their outlook on the language issue than their counterparts in creative literature.
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