African Studies in Geography from Below

4. Remapping Kiswahili: A Political Geography of Language, Identity and Africanity

4 Remapping Kiswahili: A Political Geography of Language, Identity and Africanity Francis N. Njubi The great majority of those who speak the Swahili language are not themselves Waswahili. [But] since Kiswahili is still expanding in East Africa [...] there will come a time when future generations of those who are today non-native speakers will themselves be new native speakers (Mazrui and Mazrui 1999:32). We chose Swahili as the most appropriate cultural language in 1965 for African Americans for three basic reasons. First it is ‘non-ethnic’ or ‘non-tribal’ [...]. Secondly [...] it is Pan African in character and so are we, African Americans, who claim all the people and the whole continent of Africa rather than one people or place on the continent.Finally, we chose Swahili as a matter of self-determination (Karenga 1997:123). This chapter examines the erosion of a set of religious, racial, ethnic, national and class boundaries in East Africa as reflected in the diffusion of Kiswahili, a grassroots lingua franca that continues to spread despite the resistance of westernized elites and cultural nationalists. As Ali and Alamin Mazrui note in the quote above, a growing number of East Africans in the new multiethnic spaces created by the rapid urbanization of the late twentieth century are becoming ‘native’ Waswahili based on their use of Kiswahili as a first language. This process is most evident in Tanzania, where millions of postcolonial Africans now speak Kiswahili as a first language. As we shall see below, some Tanzanian scholars even believe that the distinctions between Waswahili and non-Waswahili have 106 African Studies in Geography from Below been erased completely in Tanzania — even though the core group of Tanzanian ‘Waswahili’ themselves do not seem to accept this total erasure of boundaries.1 The chapter argues that Kiswahili has facilitated both horizontal and vertical integration by fostering trade and popular-culture links across ethnic boundaries at the grassroots level. The language has facilitated vertical integration, not by eliminating class differences, but by making the socio-economic curve or hierarchy more gradual, rather than abrupt. The diffusion of Kiswahili goes against the grain of the dominant paradigms of globalization, panafricanism and regional integration schemes that seek to impose change from above rather than articulating policy to the reorganization of spatial and temporal relations spreading from below. This reformulation of cultural geographies is creating new linguistic and multiethnic spaces that may foreshadow a dramatic reordering of ethnic, class and state boundaries in East Africa and beyond. How did Kiswahili become the most widely spoken African language in Africa and the African Diaspora? What is the source of the enthusiasm for Kiswahili in the African world? Why did this language travel from the Indian Ocean coast to the Atlantic coast and across the Atlantic into the African Diaspora in the United States? To answer these questions, we will examine the emergence of Kiswahili in East Africa and trace its evolution from the language of Islam and trade into the language of decolonization and Pan-Africanity. But first, we will examine a controversial question, one which illustrates the relationship between geography from below and the deconstruction of ethnic clichés: who is a Mswahili? Who is a Mswahili? The Kiswahili speaking peoples occupy a peculiar position in postcolonial Africa. Numerous groups on the Indian Ocean coast from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique have traditionally referred to themselves as ‘Swahili’. In Kenya, Tanzania and the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo, a growing number of urban dwellers use Kiswahili as a first language and they too refer to themselves as Waswahili. The self-identification of the latter as Waswahili stands in stark contrast to the appeal to geography, ancestry or religion that characterized Swahili identity in the past. The result of such a ‘detribalization’ and secularization process is that Kiswahili would be the unifying bond of a broad linguistic community without clear cut ethnic boundaries, not to speak of an ethnic background. ‘In’ and ‘Out’ Groups Linguistically we can define anyone who speaks Kiswahili as a first language/ mother tongue as a Mswahili. This continues to be a minority in eastern Africa. A minority within this minority, the traditional ‘Swahili people’, who have been speaking Kiswahili for generations, constitute the core group of Kiswahili speakers. 107 Njubi: Remapping Kiswahili The setting of their communities extends approximately from Lamu to Kilwa for a minimalist appreciation, and from Mogadishu to the city...