Hii ni kutoka gazeti la Tanzania Daima, Jumanne 31, Julai 2007. Ama kwa hakika ni kisa cha kusisimua. Naamini wengi wa wanasiasa walibaki wakijiuliza ikiwa wao ni wale jogoo waliojisaidia katika sehemu zao. Hebu soma na ubaki ukicheka:
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na Mwandishi Wetu, Dodoma MBUNGE wa Biharamulo Magharibi, Phares Kabuye (TLP), jana aliwashtua wabunge na kuamsha hisia zao pale alipoinuka na kudai kuwa wabunge wote walipata ushindi baada ya kutumia rushwa. Akichangia katika mjadala wa bajeti ya Wizara ya Katiba na Sheria, Kabuye alisema kuwa hakuna mbunge safi ndani ya Bunge hilo isipokuwa yeye na Waziri Mkuu, Edward Lowassa. Aliongeza orodha yake ya watu safi ambao walishinda uchaguzi mkuu uliopita kwa njia safi kwa kumtaja Rais Jakaya Kikwete. Hata hivyo, Kabuye, ambaye mara nyingi michango yake bungeni husisimua, alijikuta katika wakati mgumu baada ya kauli hiyo. Kabla ya kurusha bomu hilo, Kabuye alianza kuchangia kuhusu kutokuwapo kwa jengo la Mahakama ya Wilaya ya Biharamulo, ambako hakimu hulazimika kuendesha kesi katika wodi ya wazazi, katika jengo la hospitali iliyoachwa na wakoloni. Lakini baada ya kauli hiyo, Kabuye alianza kuzungumzia rushwa na kusema: “Rushwa katika siasa. Zamani kuku walikuwa hawajisaidii sehemu wanayolala, lakini akatokea jogoo akajisaidia mahali wanapolala, na kuku wengine wakiwamo vifaranga wakaona kumbe tulikuwa tunahangaika… tunaweza kujisaidia hapa hapa. Wakaanza kujisaidia.” “Sasa wewe jogoo mwanasiasa unapotoa rushwa unakuwa umejisaidia sehemu tunayolala… humu ndani kama tunachunguza na kuwaondoa wabunge… sidhani kama angebaki mbunge… wabunge walioingia humu wameingia kwa rushwa… hatabaki mtu kasoro mimi… pengine na waziri mkuu na rais,” alisema, hali iliyodhihirika kuwaudhi wabunge wenzake. “Mnasema mnamuenzi (Mwalimu Julius) Nyerere, halafu mnatumia rushwa… nasema akifufuka humu ndani mtamkimbia wote,” alisisitiza. Mara baada ya kauli hiyo, Mbunge wa Karagwe, Gosbert Blandes (CCM) alisimama na kutaka mwongozo wa Spika, kuhusu alichotamka Kabuye. Baada ya hapo, Kabuye alisema: “Hilo nililitegemea. Ninao ushahidi wa watu wa Biharamulo, ninaweza kuwaleta wakathibitisha kuwa sijatoa hata pipi.” Hata hivyo, wakati mbunge huyo akizungumza, wabunge wenzake walisikika wakitamka bila kutumia vipaza sauti wakimtaka afute usemi na aombe radhi. Waziri wa Nchi, Ofisi ya Waziri Mkuu (Bunge na Uratibu), Dk. Batilda Burian naye alilazimika kusimama, kumdhibiti mbunge huyo kwa kutumia kanuni. Dk. Burian alisema alikuwa amemvumilia kwa muda mrefu Kabuye wakati akizungumza kwa sababu amekuwa akitumia lugha ya kuudhi. Baada ya hapo, Kabuye alisimama na kusema: “Kwa kulazimishwa, naomba kufuta usemi.” Hali hiyo haikuishia hapo, Job Ndugai, Mwenyekiti wa kikao cha jana, alisimama na kumtaka mbunge huyo kuzungumza lugha inayowiana na mazingira ya Bunge, akisisitiza kwa kusema huenda Kabuye aliamka vibaya. “Mheshimiwa mwenyekiti, si kwamba leo nimeamka vibaya, bali nina uchungu… hata mtu anapofiwa hajui machozi yanatoka wapi… kuna wakati tutafukuzana humu bungeni kwa kusema kwa uchungu,” alisema. |
Ndugu Wasomaji,
Katika mambo ambayo binadamu tunayapa uzito ni pamoja na masuala yanayohusiana na misiba. Sehemu nyingi za Afrika, kwa mfano, hususan Tanzania, panapokuwa na msiba watu hufika ili kuwafariji wafiwa. Hulala msibani, hula msibani na hushiriki shughuli zote zinazoendana na mazishi yanayofanyika pale.
Ninachotaka kusema ni kuwa watu, hasa nazungumzia Waafrika, tunatoa heshima za pekee kwa tukio la msiba. Mila ya utani, wa kikabila, husaidia tu kupunguza huzuni inayokuwa inatawala katika eneo la msiba. Vinginevyo, na hasa kama mtu hana asili ya utani na wafiwa, heshima huwa kitu kikubwa na kinachopewa uzito mkubwa.
Ninakerwa na tangazo moja linalorushwa na vituo mbalimbali vya Televisheni hapa Tanzania. Ni tangazo (la biashara) linalohusu Wekeza Maisha Tanzania chini ya UTT. Nia ya tangazo huenda ni nzuri, kwani wanawahamasisha Watanzania kuwekeza maisha kwa kiwango cha chini cha Sh. 8,340. Ni jambo jema kuwahamasisha watu kujenga tabia ya kuwekeza kwa ajili ya siku za usoni. Sina ugomvi na jambo hilo.
Hata hivyo, namna tangazo hilo lilivyobuniwa na hatimaye kuanza kurushwa hewani, mshiriki mmoja ameketi juu ya jeneza akilalamika senti chache zilizokusanywa kwa ajili ya msiba, jinsi babu mmoja anavyokuja kuuliza kuwa maendeleo yako vipi na lugha ya kejeli anayotumia pale, akimalizia kwa kusema ‘kudadadeki’, huku wengine wakidai kuwa walikuwa wanajua habari za wekeza maisha, hapa kuna tatizo. Kuna tatizo la kuupotosha umma kuwa usipowekeza fedha huko UTT basi ukipatwa na mauti hatatokea mtu wa kukusaidia. Jambo ambalo si kweli katika sehemu nyingi za Afrika. Tatizo jingine ni lugha ya kejeli inayotumika pale, na vitendo vinavyoendelea vya babu huyu kugongagonga jeneza kwa fimbo yake, akijizungusha na kisha kuondoka zake, hii ni kinyume na tamaduni, maadili na miiko inayowazunguka Waafrika. Picha inayojengwa pale si sahihi. Si sahihi pia kuwa mtu wa umri wa yule babu (mwigizaji) anaweza kuwa na tabia za namna ile mahali pa msiba, si kweli asilani.
Kwa hiyo, nawaomba watengenezaji wa tangazo hili, warudi kwenye chumba chao cha kubuni matangazo ili waje na tangazo bora, linaloheshimu maadili na mienendo ya Watanzania. Kwa maoni yangu, tangazo hili halifai hata kidogo. Linapotosha. Linakejeli. Watu watajiunga na UTT kwa kuelewa umuhimu wa kufanya hivyo si kwa kutazama watu wanavyokejeli suala zima la ‘mauti’.
Ikumbukwe kuwa haya ni mawazo yangu kama mtazamaji wa TV na mmoja wa wahamasishwaji, huenda wengine wana maoni tofauti.
In the past one or so decade, Tanzania has engaged herself in a hot debate on whether to use Kiswahili as the medium of instruction in secondary and higher education or continue with English as has been the case. Below is an article that is worth reading seriously. I took it from Pambazuka News. For further information you may click the links given at the end of the article.
It is time to once again discuss this crucial matter. Here is the article
STOPPING INTELLECTUAL GENOCIDE IN AFRICAN UNIVERSITIES
Prince Kum’a Ndumbe III
‘You have not mastered the white people’s foreign tongue? Then you do
not have the right to education in your own country, not even at
primary school. You have no right to any worthwhile education,
however brilliant you are.’ Prince Kum’a Ndumbe III calls on Africans
to re-appropriate their own languages or face intellectual genocide.
Lo si kodise bato matoi na bwambo bwa bakala mo na mo ! O si bi te
nja we no, sele o ko mbuke ! O ma be o mboa ngo nya wamene, o si bie
ndand’a ngo nya mbia, o si bie neni o ma kema no ná o bele ba mbambe
bongo e? O pimbedi te, baise, mota ndedi a ma leye oa ngea mboa!
Translation: Do not deafen yourself with the white people’s language
all the time! If you do not know who you are, then first be silent!
You are truly at home, yet you do not even know how to recite your
genealogy. You do not know the words in which to invoke your
ancestors! If you are lost, then you may ask. Forgiveness will show
you the way home.
So why do I speak Douala in this era of globalisation? But of course
I do. It is what keeps me going, walking with my head held high
whilst I converse with the West in its languages.
Universities in African countries are still not African universities.
Mostly, they are universities in thrall to the foreign, the West,
Europe and North America. Their conception, philosophy, orientation
and research, even their academic rituals and ceremonies, are more
often than not a bad, if not grotesque, copy of the ancient and
modern metropoles.
It is imperative that universities in Africa become African
universities; that universities in Cameroon become Cameroonian
universities. Intellectual genocide has already massacred enough in
Africa. It is time to stop.
My argument is neither anti-white nor xenophobic. The issue at stake
is how to uncover the mechanisms behind this lethal mindlessness,
which is depriving the whole of humanity of precious scientific
knowledge acquired by the black peoples over millennia. My discourse
also challenges white people to ask themselves: what has it meant to
be white for the last five centuries? What are the repercussions for
white people themselves, and for others?
1. The white people’s language is the only language
I address you in French, the white people’s language, here in
Yaoundé, capital of Cameroon, in a university environment designed
for a small minority, which has no choice but to bend to the
omnipresent and manifold power of the Western colonial or
postcolonial metropoles. The great majority of Cameroonians will have
no access to this debate, articulated in a language that is not their
own, and which excludes them from decisions about their own future.
In Africa, the foreigner’s language has become the key to accessing
the institutions that govern us, and the decisions that determine our
daily lives. Competition to learn this language has become an
obsession. For it is essential to be well armed in order to escape
the exclusion in which the vast majority of the population finds
itself.
The university represents a higher level of this competition to
escape. And the language used by the university is one of the first
conditions of access. You have not mastered the white people’s
foreign tongue? Then you do not have the right to education in your
own country, not even at primary school. You have no right to any
worthwhile education, however brilliant you are. And that is your bad
luck.
You do not want to speak the white people’s language? Then you will
remain in your state of barbarism, speaking in your incomprehensible
patois, in your dialect that is incapable of embodying thought, in
your vernacular language which is barely appropriate for creativity
or progress.
The point is that only the white people’s language exists. Their
language embodies all thought and outlook on the world. It
articulates creation and progress in a universal way – for them, as
well as for you, you little niggers thirsty for a place in the sun
governed by white people.
There is an urgent need to dismantle the logic that domination is
achieved through the command of a foreign language that entails us
completely losing the memory of ourselves and becoming incapable of
articulating our own thoughts in our own languages.
Cheikh Anta Diop took the trouble to translate Einstein’s theory of
relativity into Wolof in order to demonstrate that it is not only in
the language of ancient Egypt that blacks are able to master the
natural and medical sciences; contemporary African languages are also
capable of articulating thought across the academic disciplines.
This does not mean that all school and university textbooks will be
available tomorrow in African languages. However, it does signify and
reveal the scandal of colonial and postcolonial domination through
the imposition of the white people’s language. The way out of this
domination and the underdevelopment it engenders is clear.
The direction must be this: Africans must re-appropriate their own
languages and use them as basic vehicles for their thinking,
production, education, dreams and outlook on the world. It is not
only language that is at stake here, but also the survival of the
nation, the collective control of the destiny of a people. It is a
question of development thought out and directed by a nation, so that
it may flourish.
2. Language, scientific heritage and the articulation of thought
No nation has ever developed by eradicating its own language or
languages and by swallowing the language of another people without
sinking under their enduring domination.
No nation has developed by cutting its umbilical cord with its own
intellectual and spiritual heritage; by decreeing that their own
heritage, most of all their scientific heritage, is not palpable; and
by deciding that abruptly everything must come from outside, from the
dominating people, articulated in the language and embedded in the
thought of a foreign people. How is it that Africa and the Africans
of the 21st century have been made to swallow such a lethal poisonous
snake?
Today, universities in Africa have become citadels of foreign
domination in which elites are moulded. They are wholly outwardly
focused on the dominant countries, today called donors. Africans are
educated in these universities, as is the case here in Cameroon, in
the white people’s language, thought, philosophy, theology, foreign
languages, economics, law, medicine, pharmacy, chemistry, maths,
physics and so on.
The European political classes understand the situation so well that
they are keen that the best of these African elites are simply
integrated into the European metropoles and cast into destructive
European globalisation. Given the conditions of underdevelopment and
pitiful university salaries, graduates from African universities are
applying in great numbers for this new style immigration.
Effectively, those who are left behind will have to bear the
financial responsibility of educating an elite that Europe and North
America will subsequently use to boost their economies. India, with
its 700,000 engineers, has, by the way, learned how to apply the
breaks to this European bait.
In the universities in most African countries, the African peoples’
thousands of years of scientific heritage is hidden. Access to it may
even be forbidden by regulations. It therefore remains almost non-
existent for the learner, who will deduce by implication that only
white people can be educated, and that the only way of excelling is
by becoming their star pupil.
African laureates of these universities, without wanting it or
knowing it, therefore become the privileged instruments which
perpetrate foreign dominance in their own countries. Without wanting
or knowing it, they become the fifth estate, which monopolises
political, administrative, financial and military power in their own
countries in order to place themselves resolutely at the service of
the West. Promotion is only possible for those who accept the logic
of this perspective.
African universities can therefore only reproduce a model destined to
alienate African peoples for ever, even if from time to time, little
steps are made to force a thin layer of Africanness into certain
disciplines. But in which academic disciplines will the African
scientific heritage, accumulated over so many years, become at least
a substantial subject in, if not central to, the teaching and
education in our Cameroonian universities?
This is where we are today, and we must recognise that position with
humility. That said, contemporary and future academic research has an
obligation to collect, assemble and rehabilitate African scientific
heritage in every discipline. Politics has the responsibility to
encourage, formulate and finance this rehabilitation and to open the
doors of schools and universities to our heritage.
This will not only be good for Africans and for the development of
Africa. Students and researchers of the donor countries will also
benefit because they will finally have recourse to genuinely modern
African academic sources. We will at last stop producing bad copies
of the academic discourse of others and become creators of science in
the world of globalised technology and thought.
3. Foreign languages and education of the ‘illiterate and self-
ignorant scholar’
I would like to stress an aspect of foreign languages little
discussed in our universities. Foreign languages such as French and
English are not just languages of instruction in Africa. They also
benefit from whole literature, arts and humanities departments.
Students thus specialise in the language, literature, linguistics and
civilisation of the languages’ country of origin. In Western
universities, European languages such as German, Spanish, Italian,
Greek and Latin also have the advantage of research and teaching
departments, and a Cameroonian copy of these has been stuck on to our
university structures.
I would contend that we are now in an urgent situation, where this
African or Cameroonian copy is overwhelming our students. In the
European universities, a French student who has for example
matriculated to study German has spoken and written his French mother
tongue since nursery school, and has command of his language. He
thinks in his language and constructs his reasoning in the logic of
the French language. He dreams in French and has a distinctly French
outlook on the world. The German that he has been learning since
secondary school is an opening, an enrichment, which enhances his
knowledge acquired in the French learning environment. He will be
able to use it in his profession. He will be able to navigate between
French and German worlds as an intermediary or a bridge. In the same
way, the Japanese student who studies German does not only have
perfect command of his Japanese language. He understands the history,
literature of Japan, Japanese thought and logic. He is profoundly
integrated in his own culture, religious environment and Japanese
vision of the world.
The Cameroonian student on the other hand who does a degree in
French, English, German, Spanish or Italian is, in the overwhelming
majority of cases, an educated person, but illiterate and ignorant of
their own Cameroonian language. If they are asked the question, ’What
languages do you speak?’ they will regally reply, ‘French’,
‘English’, ‘German’, ‘Spanish’ or ‘Italian’, whatever languages they
are taking. To the response, ‘Is that all?’ they will say it is. If
they are then asked, ‘Don’t you have a mother tongue?’ they will
exclaim, ‘Ah, my patois! I speak a little.’ In most cases however,
they will find it difficult to hold a serious conversation or
discussion in their language. They will not know how to write or
recite a syllable or poem in their own language.
This learned person, illiterate and ignorant of their own linguistic
heritage, is, however, called on to graduate in the language,
literature, thought and world of the European or North American. They
are educated neither in the language, nor the thought, nor the
literature, nor the world that correspond to their own sensitivities.
This illiterate and self-ignorant educated person will essentially
internalise European values and perspectives, thought and logic. They
will apply to their future secondary school pupils or students the
same Western methods. They will transmit the same logic of academic
hierarchy and dominance, perhaps without even knowing it, without
even wanting to do so.
We are thus producing in our universities language students
graduating in European thought and languages but dangerously ignorant
of their own people’s languages and thought. This is a system which
is reproducing foreign domination. It is unjustifiable that
Cameroonian taxes are financing these cycles of study and it is
unacceptable and contrary to all developmental accountability.
In our French and English departments, African authors are certainly
studied, but only those who write in the white people’s language,
which means books published since the First World War, written by
Africans in European languages. The enormous linguistic and literary
heritage of Africa in our languages is not considered in those
departments, even less so in the German or Spanish or Italian
departments. These students will therefore receive their
undergraduate degrees, masters degrees and doctorates whilst
remaining deeply ignorant of their own languages and literature; in
other words, of their own scientific heritage.
How can we expect that an educated class structured in this way can
be called on to resolve the problems challenging its own country,
Cameroon? How can we expect that an illiterate and self-ignorant
educated person will one day claim to successfully drive the future
of a nation, as, for example, president, minister, director general,
civil servant, managing director, or manager?
4. Language and a change in political course for African and
Cameroonian universities
Universities in Africa face the challenge of becoming African
universities on African soil. Language is at the basis of everything:
all thought, articulation and creation. African languages must make
their solemn entry into African universities as languages of
instruction, research, and comparative study with foreign languages.
European languages must cease to be languages of self-alienation for
Africans, languages of domination and structural alienation. European
languages must become partner languages in Africa, languages of
opening and frank dialogue. These changes must be made progressively,
in stages, but it is imperative that they are made.
African language departments in our universities were not created to
Africanise our African universities. They are, in the same way as the
other departments, products of the logic of a colonial metropolitan
university system whereby African languages were studied to win the
African soul over to Christianity and the ideology of submission to
colonial domination; for purposes of anthropological and ethnological
knowledge; and as bridges of communication with the colonised.
African language departments existed in most of the universities of
the colonial powers, in Paris, Berlin, Brussels and London. They
always had an exotic status and few students. Not much has changed;
they are still marginal, precisely as if they were of no national
interest!
African language departments in our universities should not be
allowed to evolve in a vacuum. The debate on African languages must
widen. These departments are called on to develop an academic
framework for the study of African languages on a continental scale,
in close collaboration with other universities. Equally they must
offer services to all our other university departments.
I would propose five step-changes that can be made progressively:
1. Students in French, English, German, Spanish, Italian and other
European language departments should include in their courses
compulsory and accredited units on African languages and literature.
The goal is to help these students read, write and perfect at least
one African language, to discover literature in African languages,
even if this is not necessarily the student’s local language.
2. Students of all other faculties including science and medicine
must include a compulsory African languages module among their courses.
3. The training of teachers in African languages should be accelerated.
4. The number of specialised teaching manuals adapted to teaching
African languages in different departments and specific faculties
should be increased.
5. There should be systematic use of the internet for academic
research, teaching, popularisation and communication of African
languages.
These measures will create new jobs for translators and African
language primary, secondary and university level teachers, and
specialised study of these languages in medicine, pharmacy, physics,
chemistry, law, economics and information technology. New publishing
houses, specialising in African languages, will publish newspapers,
journals and books . Radio, television and the press will generate an
increasing need for African language readers and presenters.
For this to happen, all those who understand the link between
language and underdevelopment, and language and development must make
a sustained effort. We must educate public opinion, those in
positions of political, administrative and university authority, and
lecturers and students, so that the structure of mental domination in
our universities is exposed and the logic of the universities that
leads to underdevelopment revealed.
Decision makers will need political courage to orient African
universities in this new direction. But for the good of the people
this is not a matter of choice. The decision may be deferred for
personal political reasons, but it can only be deferred. One day the
political and economic shambles and the advanced disintegration of
values and perspectives will force the decision makers to act to save
the nation.
African languages are a key element in the re-composition of
Africans’ personality; for the reestablishment of their psychic and
mental equilibrium; and to allow reconciliation with themselves. The
introduction of these languages into the school and university
systems will permit a redeployment of energies that will lead to a
new kind of economic development of our countries, and towards a new
balance between the individual and society. It seems to me that this
is a direction worth taking.
* Prince Kum’a Ndumbe III is professor at the University of Yaoundé,
Cameroon. He is the founding president of the AfricAvenir foundation,
a cultural development organisation in Cameroon and Berlin
(www.africavenir.org).
This article was first published in French by Africavenir and in the
French edition of Pambazuka News http://www.pambazuka.org/fr/category/
comment/41906
Translated from French by Stephanie Kitchen.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at
http://www.pambazuka.org
