Keypoints
- Native tongues are Africa’s lifeblood
- Colonial languages still dominate power
- Liberation needs decolonised language use
NGUGI wa Thiong’o points the way to total mental, political and economic liberation through the discipline of decolonising the mind by way of language. Language, our parent tongue, is our uniting force. Our ruling elites have debased our languages as a force of division and therefore have enforced English, French and Arabic as the lingua franca. The ruling elite cannot reason that language is intelligence and it is the suppression of it that retards our coherent growth and development.
The proof of cultural unity
Cheikh Anta Diop has proven the cultural unity of our languages which have evolved astronomy, philosophy, agriculture, science, mathematics and technology. It is language that creates and innovates. Thus, Our Glorious Ancestors saying: in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Such is the essence of kasa and the ka and the sa (speaking is an expression of your spirit) in the Akan language.
Colonialism as mental enslavement
Colonialism is a serial killer of the mind of Africa. Colonialism is dehumanisation. To humanise Africa we must decolonise. This is the essence of the philosophy and ideology for decolonisation and development – Consciencism. Yes, such is the meaning of Sankofa and Ubuntu.
The tragedy of suppressed tongues
What is sad is that there are some members on the ‘left’ intelligentsia I know who, though brought up and educated in the Asante region of Ghana, now refuse to speak or converse in Twi because, in their enlightened opinion, doing so promotes an ‘Akan hegemony agenda’. What a travesty? Why suppress intelligence and to spite who but yourself? Such is the crisis of the left in Ghana who have left themselves so far behind and beyond reason because of the folly of their colonised intelligence. Yes, the folly of the intellectual who suppresses the faculty of language.
Language as cultural essence
Who are they who would consciously deny themselves and their children command over their own parent tongue and other indigenous languages? The state that the colonialists supplanted in their own image, interest and security abused and denigrated our language, yes, our cultural essence. The state we inherited with its English language, as the lingua franca and mark of civilisation, continues to instruct and define our path of growth and development in servitude to the rentier colonial masters.
The dominance of English in power
English is the language of parliament, the executive, judiciary and the fourth estate at the expense of local languages, some faced with extinction. Political platform diction is English even when our politicians mount platforms in our communities and constituencies.
Without language, no future
Without the force and faculty of our languages Africa is doomed, as language is the font of education. Yes, language or vernacular is the origin of education and civilisation.
Akyaaba Addai-Sebo is an independent consultant on national interest and development. He is also the founder of UK’s Black History Month, which is celebrated every October. Email: addaisebo1@gmail.com
