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Negotiating of Identities in Multilingual Contexts Aneta Pavlenko and Adrian Blackledge (eds) Please contact us for the latest book information: Multilingual Matters, Frankfurt Lodge, Clevedon Hall, Victoria Road, Clevedon, BS21 7HH, England http://www.multilingual-matters.com MULTILINGUAL MATTERS 126 Series Editor: John Edwards English in Africa After the Cold War Alamin M. Mazrui MULTILINGUAL MATTERS LTD Clevedon • Buffalo • Toronto • Sydney To my parents, Bwana Badi and Mama Ima, whose generosity of heart and mind knew no bounds. In loving memory Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Mazrui, Alamin M. English in Africa: After the Cold War/Alamin M. Mazrui. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. English language–Africa. 2. English languagen–Social aspects–Africa. 3. English language–Political aspects–Africa. I. Title. PE3401.M34 2003 420'.96'09049–dc21 2003008654 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 1-85359-690-6 (hbk) ISBN 1-85359-689-2 (pbk) Multilingual Matters Ltd UK: Frankfurt Lodge, Clevedon Hall, Victoria Road, Clevedon BS21 7HH. USA: UTP, 2250 Military Road, Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA. Canada: UTP, 5201 Dufferin Street, North York, Ontario M3H 5T8, Canada. Australia: Footprint Books, PO Box 418, Church Point, NSW 2103, Australia. Copyright © 2004 Alamin M. Mazrui. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed and bound in Great Britain by the Cromwell Press Ltd. Contents Acknowledgements . v Introduction . 1 Part 1: Continental Africa 1 Post-Cold War English in Africa: Between Complementarity and Competition . 13 Introduction . 13 Globalism with an American Face . 13 Intra-NATO Competition . 16 The Decline of State-Nationalism . 20 Exit from Ethnicity . 24 The West and Dissident Islam . 26 The Tide of Pluralism . 29 The World Bank and IMF Factor . 33 Conclusion . 34 2 English and African Education: Between Linguistic and Intellectual Dependency . 40 The World Bank and the Question of Instructional Media . 43 Language, Education and Development . 49 The Problem of Intellectual Dependency. 54 Towards Decolonization . 59 Part 2: Global Africa 3 English and the Pan-African Experience: In Search of Unity . 65 Pan-Africanism and English: Between Slavery and Colonialism . 66 English as a Divisive Force. 70 English and ‘Black’ Rights . 75 Pan-Africanism and English in the Era of Globalization . 79 Pan-Africanism Beyond the English Language . 80 The Expansion of Global Africa . 84 Pan-Africanism and the Rainbow Coalition . 89 Conclusion . 90 v English in Africa Contents vi English in Africa 4 English and the Afrocentric Voice: In Search of Authenticity . 94 Introduction . 94 Between Afrocentricity and Pan-Africanism. 95 Between Relativism and Functionalism . 96 Between English and Kiswahili . 98 Between Islamophobia and Swahiliphilia. 104 Conclusion: Towards the Democratization of Afrocentricity . 107 Conclusion: Linguistic Appropriation and Beyond . 111 Appendix: The Asmara Declaration on African Languages and Literatures . 129 References . 131 Index . 140 Acknowledgements This book has grown out of several years of intermittent reflections on the state of English in Africa and the Black world since I joined the Department of African American and African Studies at the Ohio State University in 1990. My academic background as a sociolinguist, combined with my language-related experiences both in East and West Africa and later in the USA, and my encounters with a very wide range of informed people during my travels in Africa, have all led me to look at the role of this ‘impe- rial’ language in new ways, to appreciate its political complexity and see important connections across the seas. Two of the chapters in this book are extensively revised versions of essays that were published elsewhere. Chapter 2 is an expansion and a re-crafting of ‘The English Language in Education: Beyond Decoloniza- tion’, which first appeared in Tollefson (2002: 267–281). Chapter 4 started as a co-authored article with Ali Mazrui entitled ‘Linguistic Dilemmas of Afrocentricity: The Diaspora Experience’, that appeared in a collection edited by Dirven, Hawkins and Sandikcioglu (2001: 141–164). In the process of revising the chapter for this book, however, I omitted Ali Mazrui’s contributions altogether (partly because they were not directly relevant for the theme of this volume), with the exception of parts of the section sub-titled ‘Between Islamophobia and Swahiliphilia’. The original source of Ali Mazrui’s ideas in this section is duly acknowledged in the text. I thank the publishers for permission to re-use this material. The book is a also a product of many interactions – too many, in fact, to acknowledge them here. None of these, however, have been more impor- tant than Professor Ali A. Mazrui of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies at Binghamton University, whose intellectual challenges and generosity continued to nourish my mind in this reflective exercise, and my wife, Professor Ousseina Alidou of the Department of Africana Studies at Rutgers University, whose inspiration and constructive feedback were indispensable to the project from its very foundation. To them both I owe a monumental debt of gratitude. vii English in Africa Acknowledgements Introduction In the course of the 20th century, many languages died or became severely weakened – the highest proportion of these being located in the southern hemisphere. It is even possible that the 20th century had a higher casualty rate in languages than any other century in history. Of the thousands of languages estimated to exist in the world today as many as 50% are said to be in danger of extinction (Wurm, 1996: 5). If this is indeed true, the situa- tion makes it all the more necessary that the 21st century should try its best to engage in ‘language conservation’ instead of permitting reckless ‘lan- guage erosion’. As elsewhere in the world, of course, language displacement and language obsolescence have been part of Africa’s history over the centu- ries. It is reasonable to assume that even in the pre-colonial period languages of conquering peoples – e.g. Mandingo in Mali, Kanuri in Kanem-Bornu and Twi in Ashanti – may have repeatedly landed death blows on the languages of subjugated and assimilated peoples as they moved into new territories. The effects of population decimation caused by enslavement on the language picture in Africa may also remain one of those permanent gaps in Africa’s sociolinguistic history. When all is said and done, however, the 20th century within which the colonial and post-colonial phases of Africa’s history have been located, precipitated new forces whose threat to linguistic diversity may be unprecedented. Combining linguistic, archeological and genetic data, Cavalli-Sforza (2000: 168) has demonstrated that the oldest linguistic families to have emerged in the world are in fact African. As the continent that ‘invented’ language, is Africa now threatened with the possibility of linguistic attrition? One of the major forces behind the consolidation of some languages and the reconfiguration of the linguistic world map has been, no doubt, the process of globalization. By globalization I mean the process by which regions of the world become linked, at various levels of society, through an expanding network of exchange of peoples, goods, services, ideas, tradi- tions etc. across vast distances. The change in economic fortunes and the decreasing ideological 1 English in Africa Introduction 2 English in Africa polarization precipitated by the end of the Cold War, for example, have stimulated new efforts towards regional integration between Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.