Resurrecting the Achebe-Ngugi Debate on Language and African Writing

Is language just a medium of expression or a core of identity? Were Africans identical, or were they forced to acknowledge their similarities despite asymmetrical tribal civilisations? Those who battled themselves in small clans for much of their bleak history before they could unify. However, the arrival of colonialists made most of Africa understand more closely the stark difference in appearance, culture, mind, and in familiarity—the difference became inevitably conspicuous, not tribal but existential. In the mid-1900s, as Africans grew more conscious of their literary prowess and heralded a zeitgeist, they still wrestled with the underlying tensions of an imperial culture over what African literature is and in what language it could be best conceived or conveyed.

In most parts of the world, except for anthropological intricacies, language is a bond of commonality, a medium of messages and meanings in societies. The fishbone in this question’s neck pokes. Is it the message or the symbolic inscriptions that represent one’s identity? For the most part, African records were frail in form. Stories were passed down by oral traditions which though potent was far less reliable than the ones that applied in other continents or few parts of Africa like Egypt. African writers argued in different contexts and were divided into two basic proponents — the relativist and the universalist, one who conforms to tradition or one who chooses to elevate it.

This debate extended to a literary contention on the language of African literature in the 1960s. This debate can be understood from two sides, one from Chinua Achebe, a Nigerian author and a distinguished one whose literary birth was a response to colonial literature, and Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, who made an indelible mark in East Africa and particularly Kenyan literature. His works focused more on the Kenyan people's revolutionary spirit and desire for self-government.

 This debate led to A Conference of African Writers of English Expression in 1962 at Makerere. This culminated in the removal of the English department, University of Nairobi, and the widespread teaching of African literature in Kenyan Schools. This change was championed by Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, who had a relative side that the language is the core, and the use of the colonial language, in his view, was an erasure of the African identity and the indirect patronage of the colonialists’ voices. In his essay Decolonising The Mind, he posited that “The choice of language and the use to which language is put is central to a people’s definition of themselves concerning their natural and social environment, indeed about the entire universe. “

On the other hand, Chinua Achebe, a great African author, responds in a universalist tone, although it was seen by Ngugi as a fatalist undertone and a practical acknowledgement of reality. In his biography by Ezenwa-Ohaeto,  Achebe described his concerns about his education in the colonial language as putting away a native language as an agenda by the colonisers to “put away their different mother tongues and communicate in the language of their colonisers.”Interestingly, in his 1964 speech, The African Writer and the English Language, he said: “Is it right that a man should abandon his mother tongue for someone else’s? It looks like a dreadful betrayal and produces a guilty feeling. But for me, there is no other choice. I have been given the language and I intend to use it. “

Like Achebe, who held this view, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and Ayi Kwei Armah would go on to be recognised as literary greats and accept the practical reality of the state of the art. Chinua Achebe opined that the use of local dialects or languages alienates other African tribes because, for the most part, he acknowledged that in the African Writers Conference, they failed to define African literature wholly. However, one thing they could not deny was the vast complexity of the cultures that one must not risk being wholly tethered to as a restricted writer if the goal was to convey the African experience lucidly. In his essay, he gave examples of the use of proverbs and the Africanization of the expressions, and how they brought African stories to life. 

In contrast, Ngugi Wa Thiongo would argue that only writers like Okot p’Bitek, A. C. Jordan, P. Mboya, D. O. Fagunwa, and  Mazisi Kunene would be seen as truly indigenous African literature, and other writers who wrote in colonial languages like French, Portuguese, or English are only enriching the colonial language and are removed from the common peasants who have little or anything to do with the colonial languages. To demonstrate his commitment, he switched primarily to writing in Gĩkũyũ after 17 years with works like I will marry when I want and subsequent literary projects. For Ngugi, it was beyond just choice and practicality, it was about autonomy and identity because, for him, the English language was seen as the continuation of the imperialist legacy and a wistful abandonment of the African heritage that was true to his core.  

In final contemplation, the conversation has largely moved beyond language, and modern African writers have become more expressive of familial longings, communal bonding, trans-national racial issues, and polarised ideologies like feminism or subtle pan-africanism, religious tensions, tribal wars, and civil complexities, etc. However, the question remains. Maybe the question no longer matters as it used to, because, for this modern era, it is about who will write the history of Africans with the understanding and ethos that is about the sacred art in its true language and form.