Ngugi Wa Thiong'o (1998) - Decolonising The Mind

Decolonising the Mind*
Ngugi wa Thiong’o
The question is this: we as African writers have always complained aboutt

the neo-colonial economic and political relationship to Euro-America.
Right. But by our continuing to write in foreign languages, paying
homage to them, are we not on the cultural level continuing that neo-
colonial slavish and cringing spirit? What is the difference between a
politician who says Africa cannot do without imperialism and the writer
who says Africa cannot do without European languages?
While we were busy haranguing the ruling circles in a language
which automatically excluded the participation of the peasantry and the
working class in the debate, imperialist culture and African reactionary
forces had a field day: the Christian bible is available in unlimited quan-
tities in even the tiniest African language. The comprador ruling cliques
are also quite happy to have the peasantry and the working class all to
themselves: distortions, dictatorial directives, decrees, museum-type fos-
sils paraded as African culture, feudalistic ideologies, superstitions, lies,
all these backward elements and more are communicated to the African
masses in their own languages without any challenges from those with
alternative visions of tomorrow who have deliberately cocooned them-

selves in English, French, and Portuguese. It is ironic that the most reac-
tionary African politician, the one who believes in selling Africa to
Europe, is often a master of African languages; that the most zealous of
European missionaries who believed in rescuing Africa from itself, even
from the paganism of its languages, were nevertheless masters of African
languages, which they often reduced to writing. The European mission-
ary believed too much in his mission of conquest not to communicate it
in the languages most readily available to the people: the African writer
believes too much in &dquo;African literature&dquo; to write it in those ethnic, divi-
sive and underdeveloped languages of the peasantry!
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The added irony is that what they have produced, despite any claims
to the contrary, is not African literature. The editors of the Pelican
Guides to English literature in their latest volume were right to include a
discussion of this literature as part of twentieth-century English litera-
ture, just as the French Academy was right to honour Senghor for his
genuine and talented contribution to French literature and language.
What we have created is another hybrid tradition, a tradition in tran-
sition, a minority tradition that can only be termed as Afro-European
literature; that is, the literature written by Africans in European lan-
guages. It has produced many writers and works of genuine talent:
Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Ayi Kwei Armah, Sembene Ousmane,
Agostino Neto, S6dar Senghor and many others. Who can deny their tal-
ent ? The light in the products of their fertile imaginations has certainly
illuminated important aspects of the African being in its continuous
struggle against the political and economic consequences of Berlin and
after. However we cannot have our cake and eat it! Their work belongs to
an Afro-European literary tradition which is likely to last for as long as
Africa is under this rule of European capital in a neo-colonial set-up. So

Afro-European literature can be defined as literature written by Africans
in European languages in the era of imperialism.
But some are coming round to the inescapable conclusion articulated
by Obi Wali with such polemical vigour twenty years ago: African litera-
ture can only be written in African languages, that is, the languages of
the African peasantry and working class, the major alliance of classes in
each of our nationalities and the agency for the coming inevitable revolu-
tionary break with neo-colonialism.
I started writing in Gikfiyfi language in 1977 after seventeen years of
involvement in Afro-European literature, in my case Afro-English litera-
ture. It was then that I collaborated with Ngügi wa Mirii in the drafting
of the playscript, Ngaahika Ndeenda (the English translation was I
Will Marry When I Want). I have since published a novel in Gikfiyfi,
Caitaani Mütharabaini (English translation: Devil on the Cross) and
completed a musical drama, Maitu Njugira (English translation:
Mother Sing for Me); three books for children, Njamba Nene na
Mbaathi i Mathagu, Bathitoora ya Njamba Nene, Njamba Nene na
C1bl King’ang’i, as well as another novel manuscript: Matigari Ma
Njirüüngi. Wherever I have gone, particularly in Europe, I have been
confronted with the question: why are you now writing in Giküyü?
102
Why do you now write in an African language? In some academic
quarters I have been confronted with the rebuke, &dquo;Why have you aban-
doned us?&dquo; It was almost as if, in choosing to write in Glkùyù, I was
doing something abnormal. But Glkùyù is my mother tongue! The very
fact that what common sense dictates in the literary practice of other cul-
tures is being questioned in an African writer is a measure of how far
imperialism has distorted the view of African realities. It has turned real-
ity upside down: the abnormal is viewed as normal and the normal is
viewed as abnormal. Africa actually enriches Europe: but Africa is made
to believe that it needs Europe to rescue it from poverty. Africa’s natural
and human resources continue to develop Europe and America: but
Africa is made to feel grateful for aid from the same quarters that still sit
on the back of the continent. Africa even produces intellectuals who now
rationalise this upside-down way of looking at Africa.

I believe that my writing in Gikuyu language, a Kenyan language, an
African language, is part and parcel of the anti-imperialist struggles of
Kenyan and African peoples. In schools and universities our Kenyan lan-
guages - that is the languages of the many nationalities which make up
Kenya - were associated with negative qualities of backwardness, under-
development, humiliation and punishment. We who went through that
school system were meant to graduate with a hatred of the people and the
culture and the values of the language of our daily humiliation and pun-
ishment. I do not want to see Kenyan children growing up in that impe-
rialist-imposed tradition of contempt for the tools of communication
developed by their communities and their history. I want them to tran-
scend colonial alienation.
Colonial alienation takes two interlinked forms: an active (or passive)
distancing of oneself from the reality around; and an active (or passive)
identification with that which is most external to one’s environment. It
starts with a deliberate disassociation of the language of conceptualisa-
tion, of thinking, of formal education, of mental development, from the
language of daily interaction in the home and in the community. It is like
separating the mind from the body so that they are occupying two unre-
lated linguistic spheres in the same person. On a larger social scale it is
like producing a society of bodiless heads and headless bodies.
So I would like to contribute towards the restoration of the harmony
between all the aspects and divisions of language so as to restore the
Kenyan child to his environment, understand it fully so as to be in a
103
position to change it for his collective good. I would like to see Kenya
peoples’ mother-tongues (our national languages!) carry a literature
reflecting not only the rhythms of a child’s spoken expression, but also
his struggle with nature and his social nature. With that harmony
between himself, his language and his environment as his starting point,
he can learn other languages and even enjoy the positive humanistic,
democratic and revolutionary elements in other people’s literatures and
cultures without any complexes about his own language, his own self,
his environment. The all-Kenya national language (i.e. Kiswahili); the
other national languages (i.e. the languages of the nationalities like Luo,
Gïkuyü, Maasai, Luhya, Kallenjin, Kamba, Mijikenda, Somali, Galla,
Turkaha, Arabic-speaking people, etc.); other African languages like
Hausa, Wolof, Yoruba, Ibo, Zulu, Nyanja, Lingala, Kimbundu; and for-
eign languages - that is foreign to Africa - like English, French, Ger-
man, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish will fall into their
proper perspective in the lives of Kenyan children ...
... But it is precisely when writers open out African languages to the
real links in the struggles of peasants and workers that they will meet
their biggest challenge. For to the comprador-ruling regimes, their real
enemy is an awakened peasantry and working class. A writer who tries
to communicate the message of revolutionary unity and hope in the lan-
guages of the people becomes a subversive character ... A democratic par-
ticipation of the people in the shaping of their own lives or in discussing
their own lives in languages that allow for mutual comprehension is seen
as being dangerous to the good government of a country and its institu-
tions. African languages addressing themselves to the lives of the people
become the enemy of a neo-colonial state.
*From Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (London,
Nairobi, Portsmouth, 1986), pp. 26-30.
104

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Decolonising the Mind*

The question is this: we as African writers have always complained aboutt

alternative visions of tomorrow who have deliberately cocooned them-

Africa is under this rule of European capital in a neo-colonial set-up. So

rationalise this upside-down way of looking at Africa.

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