Renowned Kenyan author, academic and literary icon Prof Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, who died on Wednesday, was more than a writer-he was a revolutionary thinker who used language, storytelling, and theatre as tools of liberation.
In his groundbreaking book Decolonising the Mind, Ngũgĩ championed the us of mother tongue, arguing that language was inseparable from culture, identity, and resistance. "To speak one's language is to celebrate one's identity," he famously wrote, "but to impose a language is a way to divide people-it is to practice tribalism of another kind." Ngũgĩ believed that true empowerment lay in reclaiming one's mother tongue. "If you know all the languages of the world but not your mother tongue, that is self-enslavement," he wrote. "Knowing your mother tongue and all other languages too is empowerment." To him, language was not just a communication tool, but the "collective memory bank of a people's experience in history." When asked whether Kenyan English or Nigerian English were now local languages in 2013, the former freedom fighter said, "It's like the enslaved being happy that theirs is a local version of enslavement.
English is not an African language.
French is not.
