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Kiswahili: Past, Present and Future Horizons
Rocha Chimera
(First published 1998)
Background
Kiswahili's rapid rise to prominence, from the second half of the 19th Century onwards in the East and Central African region and beyond, is a historical phenomenon that has impressed scholars and other interested parties of varied schools of thought. It is a matter that has captured the interest os sociolinguists, administrators, educationists, writers, anthropologists, geographers and historians alike.
The greatest tribute has been the short duration it has taken to spread across the length and breadth of such a large territory without the resources and backing that the metropolitan languages (e.g. English, French, Portuguese and even German) have for centuries enjoyed. While English has the British Council, French has the French Cultural Centre(s) and German has the Goethe Institute(s), all powerful sponsors, Kiswahili has no equivalent in all the countries where it is spoken. The language, thus, depends on its natural appeal and governments' support where the latter spot the need.
This is a typical case of Chema chajiuza, kibaya chajitembeza, a Kiswahili saying which (in English) means a good thing sells itself while a bad one depends on the advertiser.
There have been heated debates on factors regarding the language's success. In the final analysis, however, people from different schools of thought generally seem to be in agreement about the influence of three factors: trade, religion, and politics.
Trade
It has been established that Kiswahili was spread inland by its coastal mother-tongue speakers who have been, for centuries, very adventurous entrepreneurs. The Waswahili were adventurous seafaring people who sailed as far away as Arabia and possibly India. As their literature suggests, while inland, they explored the interior of Tanzania going as far west as Eastern, Southern and North-Eastern Congo. Southwards, they reached Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique and Madagascar.
Whereas the available evidence does not show any significant traces of their language in Arabia and India (except in Oman where it was imported by East African dwellers not more than three decades ago, and Kathiawar, India, where a Kiswahili dialect described as sidi was imported by slaves from East Africa and is to this day spoken by descendants of these people there) the full impact of Kiswahili, particularly as a second language owing its spread primarily to trade is heavily experienced in Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo where it is spoken by all or a large percentage of nationals.
In Kenya, the Waswahili were, in the beginning, not successful in their attempt to trade with the interior peoples. This lateness in opening up the Kenyan hinterland is often attributed to the Maasai, who, it is claimed, did not easily permit "foreigners" to traverse their territory. On the other hand, there were the Mijikenda and, later, Kamba middlemen who turned out to be as aggressive as the Waswahili in trade. Thirdly, it appears that while the Tanzanian Waswahili had a strong sponsor in the Sultan of Zanzibar, Kenyan Waswahili were not that lucky and had to depend on their own resources. Consequently, their language was not spoken by many people outside its coastal native environment until the 20th Century.
Religion
It is common knowledge that all ethnic Waswahili and Swahilisied peoples (except partly Swahilised former slaves) are Muslims. Islam is the native religion of these people as it is the native religion of various non-Arab people around the world such as Hausa, Fulani (West Africa), Malays (Malaysia), Turks (Turkey), Indonesians (Indonesia), Pakistanis (Pakistan), Iranians (Iran), etc. It is not Islam, nevertheless, that gets the credit for Kiswahili's phenomenal development in the East and Central African region where the religion was not as successful as in North and West Africa. Ironically, the credit for Kiswahili's good show in the region goes to Christianity, Islam's arch-rival here.
Christian missionaries were the first to reduce Kiswahili grammar into writing; and here, the works of Ludwig Krapf and Bishop Steere are the best references. The United Mission to Central Africa headed by the latter was wholly responsible for the standardisation of this language - a difficult and arbitrary task, given its 15-plus dialects. East Africans today owe their standard form of the language to Dr. Edward Steere and his mission in Zanzibar.
Kenyan missionaries were generally pro-Kiswahili even though some were against it (viewing it as a vehicle of Islam). This was clearly reflected in the views of the Binns and Beecher educational reports of 1940s-50 which blocked the language's development as a medium of instruction because, as it was argued, such development would retard the growth of English and the other African languages . However, in earlier decades of the 20th Century, this fear was not prevalent among missionaries. Mombasa missions, through Rev. John Arthur and the town's Bishop, passionately pleaded a strong case against English displacing Kiswahili as the lingua france. The missions used Kiswahili as a language of instruction in classes IV and V.
In Congo, Rwanda and Burundi, Swedish Missions attempted something like what Dr. Steere had done, namely: to standardise a Kiswahili in that sub-region so that it could conform to the East African Standard Kiswahili. Although the attempt failed to capture the enthusiasm of Kiswahili speakers there, who viewed the dialect as foreign to their locality, the whole effort was not a complete failure as the missionaries' determination appears to have positively influenced the people's attitudes towards the language.
Although Uganda Missions were generally against using Kiswahili for evangelical and other purposes, some individual missionaries were strongly supportive of it. Lumbasio cites Bishop Willis who was of the opinion that Kiswahili's proper status in Uganda be nothing short of a lingua franca. Another Uganda-based missionary, Father J. Bergman, a Catholic priest, was not only against teaching English at the elementary level of education but openly advocated Kiswahili as the medium of instruction at that level. Probably as a result of his campaign, or because of the fact that the Bible had already been translated into Kiswahili in Zanzibar, and not as yet in the local languages of Uganda, instruction in some areas of the country was, to begin with, in this language.
Politics
From the onset, the colonists realised that they needed a "common language" they could use to communicate with their African "subjects". While they probably could have preferred their own languages, language policies that could be required to convert colonial languages into mass languages in the colonies would have required the unequivocal support of the "subjects" themselves, which would have required a lot of energy, vast amounts of resources and great amounts of easily accessible funds, among other things. Language development had to be the number one priority. As this was not easy, rulers in Tanzania (Tanganyika) and the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, opted for the next sensible option: to choose from among hundreds of African languages one that claimed a majority of speakers without being too controversial.
In Tanzania mainland (then Tanganyika), the Germans had no difficulty in choosing Kiswahili, because it had recorded great success and was satisfactorily widespread. In Congo, the Belgians were daunted by the idea of having to choose from over 200 languages, with four of them: Kiswahili, Lingala, KiKongo and Tchiluba being spoken widely in four different regions of that vast country. The rulers decided that the chosen language must not be a language d'importation Europeene but rather une langue veritable, neither a lingua franca nor a sabir. Some circles on the Belgian side strongly supported Kiswahili.
In Kenya and Uganda, however, the situation was quite different. On the one hand, the British rulers imposed their language, while on the other, they appeared to give recognition to a localised language policy (the vernacular theory) in both countries. yet again in both countries, the policy dictated that the so-called vernaculars should have a very limited, ill-defined role, which could not necessarily undermine English's super-ordinate position. This was more so in Kenya than in Uganda where the role of local languages was less vague. Nonetheless, in both cases, what ensued was a sharp rivalry, not between the local languages and English but among local languages.
The picture we have, as this juncture, is that whoever wielded political power determined the nature of language policies. He also had all the say as to which language was to influence the people's lives and to what extent; the actual number of it speakers and how wide or narrow its geographical spread notwithstanding. Such was the case during the colonial era as it may to some extent still be the case today.
With independence, however, there has been some evaluation of language policies, particularly in East Africa. Kiswahili is, today, Tanzania's, Kenya's, and even Uganda's national language (at least in theory so far in the latter country). Many a young, highly educated Tanzanian and Kenyan (including people with doctorates from prestigious Western universities) are opting to write their fiction in their national language.
