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Vol/53 No/5 2014 OCTOBER/NOVEMBER The Linguist 23 FEATURES In exercising control over most of East Africa, including Tanzania, Zanzibar, Uganda and Kenya, all of which had Swahili as a lingua franca, the British did not have to scramble for a local administrative language. Swahili became a natural choice. British politicians, administrators and missionaries alike began discussions with local stakeholders on the standardisation of Swahili. Thus, in 1925, an education conference was convened in Dar es Salaam on the topic of Swahili orthography. This was probably the first step towards standardisation of Swahili. In 1903, the British had established that their administrators settling in East Africa would be required to be proficient in Swahili. This facilitated the emergence of a cadre of East Africans, trained in English by missionaries, who would double up as Swahili teachers and interpreters for the British administrators. Several members of the royal family pride themselves on speaking in Swahili. In 2003, when Prince William declared that he would make every effort to become proficient, he was following a long family tradition. Gaining independence In Uganda, competition on the eve of independence in 1962 came from Luganda. Speakers of Luganda, a language spoken by a sizable group in Uganda, did not readily embrace Swahili, deeming it a language non-indigenous to Uganda. In the 1960s, resistance to adopting Swahili as a language of broadcasting and education came from none other than the Ministry of Information, Broadcasting and Tourism and the Ministry of Education. The rationale was that it was not spoken by a critical mass of Ugandans. This changed when President Milton Obote became Chancellor of Makere University in Kampala and created a school for African languages there. In doing so, he gave African languages their due place in African academia. At the same time, he declared Swahili a language of instruction in Ugandan schools. As a result, an increasing number of individuals began to hone their skills in Swahili. Under President Idi Amin, intentions to further embrace Swahili as the lingua franca materialised, at the onset, in the most democratic and participatory way. Swahilization was submitted to a vote. Its proponents won. However, when Idi Amin ordered the assassination of a group of Tanzanians, many of whom were instructors of Swahili and of Swahili interpretation, the Swahilization of Uganda suffered a tremendous blow. Following the independence of Kenya in 1963, the proponents of Swahili had to face a struggle of a different kind. In 1969, a bill was established to make Swahili the official language. Opposition came with religious undertones, with critics pointing to links between Swahili and Arabic and to Islam. According to them, Swahili was an Arabic language, used by Muslims. As such, making it official would be almost tantamount to rendering Kenya officially Muslim. By 4 July 1974, as the Governing Council of the Kenya African National Union adopted Swahili as the national language, such concerns had vanished. In 1978, President Daniel Arap Moi emphasised bilingualism (Swahili-English) in the Kenyan legislature. As in Uganda, Swahili became the language through which it was possible to reach out to large segments of the population. Fluency in Swahili became a must. This set of decisions paved the way for the bilingual society Kenya is today, and for the emergence of yet another cadre of Swahili interpreters. No one furthered the cause of Swahili as a lingua franca of Africa more than President Julius Nyerere. Under Nyerere, Tanzania underwent a vast Swahilization programme. It became the language of the masses, protected, elevated and celebrated by an egalitarian president. Nyerere put all the necessary resources of the state behind his vast and ambitious Swahilization programme. He transformed Swahili into a language of liberation. By extension, it became the language of cultural and racial identification with the African continent. It became a pan- African language. Trade and migration further contributed to the spread of Swahili, allowing it to gain more momentum, and speakers as far away as Burundi, the DRC, the Central African Republic and Mozambique, further enriching its vocabulary with words from other Bantu languages. As Africa increasingly asserts itself on the world stage, its languages are following suit. Today, more than 100 universities offer Swahili programmes. At Howard University in Washington, we have established the first Swahili simultaneous interpretation courses in the Americas. LEARNING CURVE Children at school in Tanzania, learning to read and write in Swahili and English PHOTOS: © ISTOCKPHOTO