The Waswahili celebrating their language and mourning their guru

There was a colourful “Saba Saba” maandamano (demonstration) in Kampala last Friday, July 7. The march started from the Constitutional Square, the heart of the city, and majestically made its way down to the Hotel Africana at the foot of Kololo Hill, just below the Independence Grounds.

That is a distance of about two kilometres, and the march was characterised by the cheerful and peaceful orderliness of the participants and the protective cooperation of the security personnel accompanying them.

There were none of those violent confrontations, destructive tendencies, kibokos (whips), tear gas or even bullets that we have, sadly, come to associate with such demonstrations in many of our cities.

Anyway, this maandamano was held by the Waswahili of East Africa to celebrate the International Day of their language, Kiswahili, and wherever there are Waswahili, there is uungwana (civility), because a Mswahili is a cultured person (Mswahili ni mwungwana).

But who are the Waswahili? The perennial question arose again at the three-day Kampala event, and I will return to it. Suffice it to say for now that the celebrations in Kampala, hosted by the East African Kiswahili Commission (KAKAMA, as the Kiswahili acronym has it), were particularly uplifting and inspiring, especially for me, for a number of reasons.

First, the occasion offered us a rare opportunity to meet and make friends with a host of fellow workers and scholars in Kiswahili from all over the world, as well as renew old acquaintances in the field, some of whom one had not seen for years or even decades.

Among my old colleagues, for example, were Dr Denis Bukuru from Burundi, Profs Shani Omari, Mussa Hans and Fikeni Senkoro from Tanzania, and our eminent don and prolific novelist, Prof John Habwe of UoN.

Prof Senkoro, who delivered a powerful keynote speech on the future of Kiswahili, was for many years head of TATAKI (the Institute of Kiswahili Studies), the successor to TUKI (Institute of Kiswahili Research) at the University of Dar es Salaam, to which many of us trace our roots.

Prof Hans is one of the top leaders of CHAUKIDU (Global Association for the Promotion of Kiswahili), which will be holding its annual conference in Arusha in December this year.

This brings me to the second reason for my elation about the Kampala celebrations. You know about my enthusiastic advocacy for the growth of Kiswahili in East Africa, and you have probably heard about Uganda’s long-time indifference, if not active resistance, to Kiswahili.

The country has come a long way from that reactionary position, and it was really uplifting to see the country and its top leadership not only warmly welcoming the East African Kiswahili Council’s function to Kampala but also actively participating in the events. Along with this came the promise that the Waganda will actively support the promotion of Kiswahili, which they have formally adopted as an official language, and they will soon form a National Kiswahili Council.

Even more reassuring was the articulate and lively participation of young Ugandans in the marking of International Kiswahili Day. The young participants came from not only the universities but also from schools, publishing, the media and the general public.

Incidentally, most of the officials leading the celebrations were young Kiswahili scholars from Makerere and other universities, with a rich crop of PhDs recently returned from Kenyan and Tanzanian institutions. These included the current Executive Secretary of the E.A. Kiswahili Commission, Dr Carol Asiimwe.

Maybe with such a strong squad of Kiswahili professionals on the scene, we old activists and agitators can afford to retire in peace. Waswahili halisi wameshika hatamu (the real Waswahili have taken charge), and it is a joy watching them steer the dhow forward from success to success.

Speaking of Waswahili, two poignant points come to mind. The first is the “Waswahili question”, to which I promised to suggest an answer. This is actually at the prompting of my friend Prof John Habwe, who thought that what I proposed at the celebrations was worth sharing for consideration.

You know that whenever we speak of Kiswahili, the question of who the Waswahili are crops up. This was the case in Kampala, where I even heard, again, the fallacy that “Kiswahili has no native, indigenous speakers”. We of course know that there are millions of native Kiswahili speakers, among them the Wa-Amu, Wamvita, Wavumba, Wapemba and Waunguja (Wazanzibari).

Where does that leave us other Kiswahili speakers? My take, inherited from my Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, is that all of us East Africans are “Waswahili”. We can identify ourselves as “Waswahili asiliya” (indigenes, like those mentioned above), “Waswahili wa kimalezi” (those raised within predominantly Kiswahili environments) and “Waswahili wa jumuiya” (those who have other languages but habitually use Kiswahili). The motion is tabled for your discussion and debate.

Finally, please, join me in mourning and honouring our great Mswahili patriarch, Prof Mohamed Hassan Abdulaziz, who passed away last Monday, July 10. I guess no one even vaguely aware of African linguistics and Kiswahili studies needs elaborate introductions to Mohamed Abdulaziz, “Mkilifi”.

Though arguably the humblest of people I have met in my long life, this quiet-spoken and sometimes stammering man has dominated East African language studies for more than half a century. He was one of one of my most trusted advisers and mentors.

He taught me Linguistics, and introduced me to Kiswahili Literature, in the 1960s, at Dar es Salaam University, before he relocated to UoN to start the Department of Kiswahili and African Languages. The rest, as they say, is history. I do not think that even Prof Abdulaziz himself could count the number of students he taught, or supervised, at every level of scholarly study, in his unique career. Though originating in the Swahili community of Kilifi, hence the moniker “Mkilifi”, he spent most of his early working life in Mombasa, which explains his strong interest in Kimvita poetry.

For a gentle, polished, cultured, generous Mswahili model, I point to Mwalimu Mohamed Abdulaziz. Mola amlaze mahali pema peponi.

- Prof Bukenya is a leading East African scholar of English and [email protected]