Introduction
The debate about using indigenous A frican languages in writing is not new and I am not about to review the many subm issions and counter subm issions made for several decades, from Obi W all’s to C hinua A chebe’s, from Ngugi wa T hiong’o ’s to W ole Soyinka’s.
However, some of the most exciting sessions in the language debate that I m yself witnessed were at the 1997 African Literature Association annual conference at Austin, Texas. A huge audience repeatedly asked C hinua Achebe why an authentic A frican writer w ouldn’t jettison colonial language and adopt his m other tongue.
He responded again that A frican w riters had to make their own choices, and could only write in the language that they knew best, local or foreign. D uring another session, Ngugi wa T hiong’o was, practically spitting fire and declaring another war, pushing for the adoption of African languages by A frican writers. A chebe and Ngugi are giants of A frican literature and I m ight not be qualified to challenge their views. Nevertheless, their views im press upon A frica’s march to socio-cultural and econom ic em ancipation.
From reports com ing from post-A bacha Nigeria, Chinua Achebe seems to have slightly changed his approach with recent rounds of public perform ances and lectures, speaking in the Igbo 1 This paper was originally presented at the International Conference on
“Against All Odds: African Languages and Literatures into the Twenty-First Century” in Asmara, Eritrea, January 2000.
Modern African Writers 85 language in Nigeria.2 Perhaps, Ngugi wa T hiong’o would no longer insist that writers in African languages are the only
“genuine” A frican writers, given what seems to me an altered position from his Asm ara address.3 He had referred to their works as A fro-European literature (Am uta 1987: 112), and I wonder if he would say the same thing today.
M ost of the following questions have been asked before, but I will ask them again here, as a parody for many defined agendas.
Should African writers and critics of African writing leave the choice of language in their writing to the forces of nature? Should there be a declared African agenda? An agenda sim ilar to P resence A fricain e's and the N egritudists’ (see Irele 1981: 67 -88), where the m otto would be “I am В lack/African and I am writing in the African tongue. W hoever is not proud of his/her m other tongue is not fit to w rite.” Or can we take the Tigritudist option, and say,
“there is no need for the Tiger to proclaim its tigritude!” .4 In other words, can we over dram atize the issue o f indigenous language writing?
The Yoruba people have a philosophy, cast in two different adages, and I will apply it here. It is that a debater or worker hits the nail right on the head, bi ise о ba p en i enikan kii p e ’se, and, ibi p eleb e laati mu oole je . The first oral tradition insists that there is no need for a person to delay what is a straightforw ard case. The second prods: “start your discussion from the easiest and juiciest point.” O ole is a Yoruba spice, and it tells a lot why the Yoruba rhetorician carefully chooses this metaphor.
There are three types o f African writers, each according to the choice o f language in his/her creativity. Sometimes, each of these categories is colored by the w riters’ polem ics about their language choice. In other words, we can have a colored sentiment. The word 2 Reports from Nigeria indicated that Chinua Achebe, among a series of
speeches since visiting home from the United States, wrote and gave public addresses in the Igbo language.
3 My January 2000 converzation with Ngugi wa Thiong’O touched on this issue (Forthcoming publication).
4 Soyinka gave this speech at a certain Scandinavian conference in 1967.
“colored” may be well known to the South A fricans and the Am ericans. But, yes, we do have some “colored classes” in the African indigenous language debate, the superior/inferior argu
mentation. The three types are as follow:
1) W riters in Colonial languages, with strong foreign cultural backgrounds;
2) W riters with a m ixture of foreign and A frican languages, usual
ly poets who explore the oral tradition and blend it with con
temporary or past African and European styles and thoughts;
sometimes m ixing African and European linguistic elem ents;
3) African indigenous language writers.
Each of these writers cannot claim ultim ate superiority in literary creativity in A frica as each owes the African oral artists a huge debt for exploring from their modes and m aterials. The Yoruba culture, for example, has different kinds of oral poetry, narratives, and drama; thus, brands o f oral artists who, either as professionals or freelancers, are bearers o f their peoples cultures. Olatunde Olatunji and Ulli Beier give various classifications o f Y oruba oral genres — Ijala, rara, iwi egungun, etc. (see Olatunji, Beier and Ogunjimi & N a ’Allah).
It is often argued that Africans who write in colonial languages bring newness and freshness into their writing regardless o f how much African cultural background or education they have had. The most fam iliar praise from critics is that this set o f writers have enriched European languages by bringing into it traditional African m etaphors and symbols. However, as A biola Irele argues, their purported contributions to the European languages may actually be a mirage:
Our writers are carrying over into the European languages a whole stock of symbols derived from the African environment; it is difficult to judge whether, as has often been claimed, these European languages are in fact being truly enriched in the process. If we are to go by the example of Yeats, who abandoned his early efforts to differentiate his poetry through recourse to Irish mythology, we may well doubt whether the effort of our writers will turn out to have any significance to it. (Irele 1981: 54)
Modern African Writers 87 W hether A frican writers have contributed to European culture, or have enriched European languages with A frican language re
sources, it is important for African literary critics, and the general readers/audience of African literature to determ ine what is more important for themselves. Is it the laurels and gold medals African writers win abroad? Or is the gratitude o f a successfully m obilized African population who, through spirited dialogue with the writers, are able to turn their lives around as Africans and citizens of the world? W hat is more important? Is it the African w riters’
contributions to foreign culture, or a creativity that helps in deve
loping African languages and cultures?
Another reason some of these writers often give for using colonial languages is that they are able to reach wider and more cross-cultural audiences, especially in A frican countries where there are often many native languages. Some writers have, therefore, seen the European language as a neutral language, hence acting both as a unifying factor and a vehicle for a wider audience.
M odem African w riters’ choice to write in non-African langua
ges, particularly the colonial languages, is a lazy choice. Virtually all those who insist on “foreign language and foreign language alone” usually give another reason, such as asserting they could write better in European languages, or that they couldn’t write at all in their m other tongues. They claim they had missionary and colonial education and were never taught to write in an African language. They give this reason as if it is im possible for them to take some lessons in African languages. Yet, most of them, in studying for their degrees abroad, were forced by their universities to satisfy additional European language requirem ents. W hat is wrong with taking time off to acquire expertise in one’s m other tongue? W ithout fear of being labeled an autocrat or called a person prescribing what African writers must do, I strongly believe that the glaring failures of African writers in the twentieth century have led A frican critics and audiences to dictate what they want to see from their writers.
Contem porary African writers have a huge indigenous tradition to learn from. W riting in indigenous languages in Africa predates colonization. Am ong the earliest writing systems were E gypt’s H ieroglyphics, the Geez, the Arabic writing (A jam i), and many
others. These were popular in some parts o f Africa. In Nigeria, for exam ple, indigenous language writing in Arabic script started as far back as the 11th century. It expanded through B om o, Sokoto, Kano, Zaria, Katsina, Ilorin, Oyo, and many Y oruba parts of N igeria (see Abdul-Rasheed N a’Allah, forthcom ing). Enorm ous amount of literary and religious work has been produced in A jam i.
W ith colonization and the introduction o f the Rom an script, indigenous language writers sprang up from all parts o f Nigeria, especially in areas where orthographies were developed for the indigenous languages. These include Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Nupe, Tiv, Ijaw, and so on. In most of the instances, the use of the Roman script in an indigenous language started with the transla
tion of the Bible. The indigenous language w riting developm ent in Nigeria is perhaps sim ilar to its developm ent in other parts of Africa. Northern and Eastern A frica have a much m ore sophis
ticated tradition of native script and native language writing, and the developm ent of the Geez script is a good example. In the words of A lbert Gerard, the indigenous language writing has actually been a great blessing to African cultures:
In their nascent state, the vernacular literatures of Africa contribute powerfully to the spread of literacy.
As they swiftly mature they help their readers to
wards more sophisticated awareness of their own experience, emotions and values. With such gifted writers as Thomas Mofolo in Sotho or D. O. Fagunwa in Yoruba, they have already provided models for major aesthetic achievements that will convey the specificity of African cultures. Clearly several Afri
can societies have managed to eschew the “glot- tophagic” process that affected Western autochtho
nous cultures under the Romans. (Gerard 1990: 21) Other examples of important contributions to A frican indigenous language writing were the translations and adaptations into Swahili by Julius Nyerere in Tanzania, and into H ausa by A bubakar Imam in Nigeria.
W hatever the achievement in indigenous language w riting, it is a drop in the ocean to what, in my view, would still accrue to
Modern African Writers 89 A frica if m ost o f the current non-African language A frican writers would write in the African languages. The level of their expertise in foreign languages, and the honor their works have won for them abroad are exam ples o f the kind o f energy they could bring into African language literature. Again, let me invite G erard’s view:
Many writers throughout Africa have achieved un
common control of Western languages. Wole Soyinka’s Nobel prize could have been awarded with equal justice to several Europhone authors [Gerard’s name for non-indigenous language African authors].
In fact the linguistic-literary conquest of the continent marks the acme of the phased expansion of Western languages to planetary proportions; the next stage, if any, can only be extra-terrestrial! In the perspective of world literature, it is Africa’s specific contribution that in a mere half-century she has produced a double corpus of imaginative writing: in vernacular and in exogenous languages, (ib. 22) [parenthesis mine]
Gerard submitted further that “a far larger proportion o f African poets, playwrights and novelists have chosen English as their literary mediums than has been the case in Southern A sia” (ib. 21).
We must note that Gerard has not included in his statistical calculations African writers in French, Portuguese and in other non-African languages.