#Opinion; The Promotion of Swahili Language to be Taught, Spoken in the Community and Schools in Uganda is in Bad Faith.

This is an article initially published in 2015 and again in 2019.

Here again it is.

#We #inform the #uninformed.

………………………………………….………………………………………………………………………….

About 3000 years ago,  the Indian ocean was busy with wooden boats carrying traders from Arabia, Persia, and north-western India to the east African coast for trade in ivory, slaves, spices, etc. Later the Phonicians, Romans and Greeks also joined the trade. Its the Arabs who opted to settle on the East African coast. After the death of Prophet Mohamed in 632 AD, the spread of Islam coupled by internal wars led to Arab Muslims to settle on the East African cost.

Many indigenous African people of the East African Coast (Somalia to northern Mozambique) adopted Islam. Islam coupled by intermarriages between Arabs and the indigenous people of the East African cost gave rise to the Swahili people. Swahili comes from the Arabic word word Swahil which means boundary, coast thus coastal dwellers. The prefix Ki – is attached to make it Kiswahili (coastal language). 30% of the words in Kiswahili are of Arabic origin, 30% of its vocabulary is derived from other Bantu languages in East, Central and Southern Africa.

Due to contact with traders, slave dealers and colonial officials, the language was further developed to include words of English, German, French, Portuguese, and Hindi. Kiswahili has many dialects spread along the east African Coast, the islands of Unguja and Pemba (Zanzibar), Comoro, Secyles and Congo. For example, the Kiswahili spoken in Congo is of the Kingwana dialect; there is the Kikeya dialect derived from the soldiers who served under the KAR during colonial era. In June 1928 an international conference took place at Mombasa at which the Zanzibar dialect – Kiunguja was chosen to be the basis for standardizing Kiswahili.

Because of the spread of Islam and trade, Kiswahili spread to the interior of east Africa. About 40,000 are found in Oman following the migration of Zanzibaris to Omanis after the 1964 Zanzibar revolution, in South Africa at Chartworth around Durban there are about 3000 Kiswahili speakers who are descendants of people taken from Zanzibar and northern Mozambique between 1873 – 1878 to work as gardeners and they retained their Muslim faith. Maritime trade, caravan trade into the interior from the coast, urbanization, migrant wage labor (plantation economy), and infrastructure (roads and railway) helped to spread Kiswahili.A good number of people in Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia also speak Kiswahili.

In Uganda, Kiswahili was brought by the early Arab traders and their Swahili associates who wanted to spread Islam. Religious wars and rivalry that saw Christianity triumph hindered the development of Kiswahili language in Uganda. The British colonialists favored the spread of Kiswahili language because they were aiming at an East African federation. In 1927 Governor Sir WF Gowers recommended thus: “Kiswahili whould be adopted as the lingua franca throughout a considerable part of the protectorate….for purposes of education in elementary schools and on the lines adopted in Tanganyika…….Kiswahili is the only vernacular language in East Africa which can provide in the long run anything but an educational cul-de-sac, in Uganda, Kenya, and Tanganyika.”

Consequently, it was taught and imposed as the lingua franca in vast parts of eastern, northern and West Nile regions. However, the Kabaka (King of Buganda) and the church feared the spread of Kiswahili because of its association with Islam. The schools that were supposed to teach Kiswahili were controlled by the Church. By 1953 when the British colonialists abandoned the push for the Kiswahili language, it had become the language for the armed forces because the whole of East Africa had one army – Kings African Rifles (KAR).

After independence the Kiswahili campaign was resurrected; in 1967 President Milton Obote gave a speech on Language and Nation Building at a conference on national Unity at Makerere University. He stated thus: ” …..and yet I consider that Uganda’s policy to teach more and more English should be matched with the teaching of some other African language. Currently, we are thinking of what that language should be.  So the adoption of of any of our present languages in Uganda may just go to endorse our isolation.  We cannot afford any kind of isolation.

We are surrounded by five countries. We can easily talk with them, and as they say here, walk across Rwanda village, walk across Congo village,walk across Sudan, Kenya and Tanzania and drink water by the simple words “mpa maji” “give me water”. It is possible today for people of Uganda to communicate with the neighboring countries in broken Kiswahili but it is impossible to communicate with neighboring countries in broken Luganda.”

In 1973 under President Iddi Amin a vote was carried out whereby 12 districts voted for Kiswahili as a national language as opposed to only eight which voted for Luganda. Iddi Amin declared Kiswahili as the national language on 7th September 1973. Though he did not enforce it, the Decree still stands because it was not repealed. The 1995 Uganda Constitution Article 6 stipulates thus: “The official language of Uganda is English. Subject to Clause (1) of this article, any other language maybe used a sa medium of instructions or for legal, administrative or judicial purposes as may be prescribed by law.” A 1992 government white paper on education policy review recommended both Kiswahili and English to be compulsory throughout the primary school cycle.

In 1997 Universal Primary Education (UPE) was launched and it aimed to enroll 5.4 children. As of now, UPE is proving to be a failure as the gap between the few rich and the majority poor continues to widen. Better primary schools (both public and private) tend to be attended by elite children from privileged backgrounds. For most of the rural public primary schools, use of the indigenous language for the first four years is a must. A Kiswahili Commission meant to facilitate the enforcement of Kiswahili lessons in schools and to facilitate the teaching,learning and speaking of Kiswahili was initiated.

In Tanzania, there are 120 different indigenous languages. For centuries Kiswahili had been a language of the people of the coast and the Island of Zanzibar. After independence, President Nyerere declared Kiswahili a national language. With the introduction of Ujamaa (African Socialism) and Self Reliance in 1967, Kiswahili was adopted as the official language. The policy included creation of factories, state farms and Ujamaa villages which brought together people of different linguistic backgrounds hence enhancing the use of Kiswahili.

The government made it compulsory that all subjects in Primary School were to be taught in Kiswahili. It became a national language through popular proclamations and practice but not legally. There is no law that was passed by parliament declaring Kiswahili a national language. The constitution of Tanzania 1977 written in Kiswahili does not even mention it as the national language. Currently both the Draft and the Proposed constitution documents have slightly and lightly mentioned English as one of the international languages that may formally put in use when circumstances demand.  Tanzania’s new proposed constitution Article Four clearly makes Kiswahili as the national language and one of the core national values under Article 5(a). English is fairly used in Tanzania albeit as a medium of instruction in and it the official language of the Judiciary – law courts still conduct business in English for records but Kiswahili is used by litigants. Almost 95% of Tanzanians speak Kiswahili.

It is one of the compulsory subjects at “O” level and it forms some of the combinations at “A” level. Six out of the seven public universities offer it as one of the study disciplines. In Tanzania English is a medium of instruction from Secondary school upwards. With economic liberalization came the very expensive private schools whose medium of instruction is English right from Primary One thus the gap in terms of standard between the public schools and those so called English Medium schools.

70% of Kenyans understand Kiswahili more than English. It has spread over the centuries due to the interaction of the Swahili people from the Coast with the inland. The 2010 Kenya Constitution made it a national language under Article 7(1). Article 7(2) stipulates that the official language of Kenya shall be Kiswahili and English. Kenyans speak Kiswahili but officially write in English only. It is taught in both Primary and secondary school.

Back in Uganda, the National Curriculum Development Center run a pilot program on the Kiswahili syllabus in Primary Schools and recommended it to start at Primary Four. Teacher Training Colleges’ syllabus was revised to include teaching of Kiswahili to all Pre-service teachers. At some few Teacher Colleges like Kakoba, Gaba, and Kabale teaching of Kiswahili was started. Kyambogo University was to train teachers in batches of 35 for a two years course and the first batch was supposed to have been disseminated in 2007. An estimated 100 Kiswahili teachers were to be produced per year. In 2008 the government developed a Kiswahili curriculum  for “O” level. In 2009 it hired a Kiswahili specialist for NCDC.  Gayaza Cambridge  School offered Kiswahili when they had about 50 students from Tanzania but when they left it was abandoned. In 2009 Ministry of Education discussed ten subjects including Kiswahili to be dropped from the list of compulsory subjects starting with Senior One.

Those pro argued that the potential for Kiswahili to promote the desired national unity, patriotism and Pan Africanism was far greater than that of any other Uganda language. In 2012 government hired a Kiswahili specialist for the Uganda National Examination Board (UNEB). In 2013 government developed a Kiswahili curriculum for “A” level. Since Kiswahili is optional, UNEB examines it in about 5000 schools out of 50,000 secondary schools. It 2012 government had intended to make Kiswahili a compulsory subject in Primary and secondary schools as a way of enhancing integration within East African Community partner states. In September 2013 the Minister for EAC Affairs Mr. Shem Bageine announced that educational institutions from primary to secondary would be required to start offering Kiswahili lessons the following year. During the same year, Members of Parliament on the Education Committee while meeting the NCDC opposed the introduction of Kiswahili in Primary schools against the government directive for teaching Kiswahili.

In May 2015, during the marking of the world Heritage day, the Ministry of Gender, Labor and Social Development announced that government was in the process of tabling a law that would compel Ugandans to speak Kiswahili. The Commissioner Culture Eunice Tumwebaze said that the said legislation was aimed at easing trade, employment, and wealth creation among Ugandans in line with the regional integration road map. The line Minister Muruli Mukasa said that government planned to reactivate a National Kiswahili Council charged with effecting policies regarding Kiswahili.  English is the official language of the East African Community (EAC) but Kiswahili is recognized in the treaty as the lingua franca. Burundi and Tanzania proposed an ammendment of Article 137 (1) to provide for French and Kiswahili as official languages. English is the doorway to science and technology.

Former President Nyerere who so much advocated for the development of Kiswahili contended that: “If we change the medium of instruction in secondary schools from English to Kiswahili, English would die, since there would be no incentive to learn it.”  In Poverty of the Nation – A sustainable solution, Wyne Grudem and Barry Asnus: 2013 wrote: “By contrast, nations that fail to acquire fluency in English in their educational systems guarantee that each succeeding generation of children grows up to find itself linguistically incapable of participating easily with the commercial, technological, and scientific interractions that occur each day in the most economically advanced countries of the world.” Intra Africa trade and interaction is low not because of language barrier but because of poor infrastructure.  That is why the volume of trade between Uganda and Japan or China is higher than the neighboring countries.

A national language tends to spread more easily on its own rather than through a legislation because of its usage in a country. A national language is a language widely spoken, understood and accepted by a given national community as constituting their common heritage, serving as their collective cultural and political symbol and identity, and expressing their common ideals and aspirations. It should not be imposed to the detriment of local languages in order to preserve identity. Luganda has spread to almost all corners of Uganda not by legislation but because of factors beyond anyone’s control and direction.

Initially it was due to religious wars that dispersed some Muslim Baganda to parts of Ankole and also the Buganda model of administration and the Baganda chiefs that were used by the colonialists to extend their administration. The Luo speaking people of northern and eastern Uganda have been able to speak some level of Kiswahili yet it does not contain Luo words unlike their Bantu counterparts whose languages contribute greatly to Kiswahili language. Tanzania succeeded because it does not practice religious discrimination – Islam which has alot of Swahili words was allowed to flourish. For Museveni, Islam is associated with terrorism and Madarasas for children are being labeled breeding grounds for Islamic fundamentalism and closed down.

In 1977 the EAC did not collapse because of lack of a common language. Kiswahili language could not help avert the recent ethnic killings in Kenya. In Somalia, they use the same language; same applies to the chaotic Middle East. In Rwanda and Burundi they all speak only one indigenous language but they are as divided as heaven and earth. In Canada, there are two languages and geographical locations i.e English and French speaking but they live in total peace. The two antagonistic Koreans speak Korean.

The Congolese have had Kiswahili and Lingala for centuries but they are divided along tribal lines. The European Union is comprised of English, German, Spanish, Italiano, Spanish, Dutch Swedish etc. Rwanda disbanded French in favor of English thus did it lose uniting with the bigger French speaking neighboring Congolese and their Burundian cousins? Traditionally Kiswahili in Uganda is prevalent in the army, mines like Kilembe, Hima, Tororo, plantations like Kinyara, Lugazi, and Kakira, industrial and commercial centers like Jinja and Kampala and among Muslims not because of legislation but natural interaction, need and convenience.

Ugandans need to learn Kiswahili as soon as possible. With either regional peace or instability, Swahili will spread to Uganda from Kenya, South Sudan, Rwanda and Congo, The returning West Nilers from refuge in Congo brought with them a good amount of Kiswahili. The current refugee figures in Uganda – 460,000 people from Sudan, Somalia, Congo, Rwanda and Burundi coupled with the 721 urban refugee households in Kampala alone carry with them a lot of Kiswahili.With the development of infrastructure like roads and railway to ease trade and free movement of people Kiswahili will have to come to Uganda automatically.

The current high volume of trade between Ugandans and South Sudanese is conducted in both English and Kiswahili. Museveni’s rush to enact a law for using Kiswahili is ill motivated. He is aiming at forcefully assimilate certain migrant communities who are currently identifiable by their native languages. Secondly, it part of the final nails on the coffin for education which he has killed and it is just awaiting burial. He is also trying to contain the Buganda and Luganda influence as a supplement to the larger scheme of finishing off Buganda Kingdom first through land grabbing.

Giving Kiswahili priority over the English language has the potential of undermining the development of the English language. Maybe Ugandans who are in the know should ask themselves why our neighbors are sending thousands of their children to Uganda for primary and secondary education some as young as 12 year old. Ugandans should resist his machinations to introduce it in schools but should welcome any efforts to disseminate it through adult literacy. For example AZAM TV based in Tanzania has extended its operations to the  Ugandan audience and with several of its stations broadcasting in Kiswahili, Ugandans who are interested will automatically learn the language.

INFORMATION IS POWER