IV. Education
33. Church Mission Society,?? The Fruits of Education (1896)
From: Church Missionary Society ?? (publ.) The C.M.S. and Education Abroad (London:
CMS, 1922), 10-19. – The Church Missionary Society was founded in London in 1799
and became active in Sierra Leone in 1804 (where it founded the famous Fourah Bay
College in 1827), in Ethiopia in 1830, in South Africa in 1837, in East Africa in 1844
and in Nigeria in 1857. It was considered the ‘missionary wing’ of the Church of England and played a major role in Britain’s African colonies, particularly with regard to
the educational sector. While the interests of colonial administrations and missionary
bodies were by no means always identical, the following ‘balance sheet’ of the achievements of the C.M.S. in Africa is saturated with colonial discourse figures such as ‘childlike natives’ in need of ‘adult guidance’ and echoes the views of ‘official’ British colonialism, as expressed, for example, in Lord Lugard’s The Dual Mandate in Tropical Africa
(see text 1 above).
At this point it is well to pause and inquire what is the net result of the work carried on in the types of schools we have examined. What is education doing for the
African? Are we turning out improved Africans or a poor imitation of the European?
To answer the first question, it is essential to realize the changes which education inevitably has brought to the life of the African. Imagine a nation without
books, possessing only a slight idea of music, with few pictures and a scanty
knowledge of drawing, often unable to perceive a subject in a photograph, a
nation stunted in mental, physical, and spiritual development. Those among them
who have come in contact with missionary education have in their reading had a
new world opened to them; the music of the hymns and canticles has given their
innermost feelings an instrument for expression; pictures, especially copies of the
great masters, have supplied food for thought and put in a simple and intelligible
way before them world facts which are quietly acting as leaven in their child
minds. Their whole range of mental outlook has been widened by education.
Their thoughts are new thoughts. And their life and its content have correspondingly been enlarged. Improved methods of industry and cultivation have led to the
growth of trading, the establishment of small shop systems, better housing, the
introduction of coinage, and the extension of communication with the outer
world.
But more than this, a great spiritual transformation is taking place, the old fears
and fetishes are giving way to the freedom and simplicity of the Gospel.
Among Christians immoral dances have been dropped, horrible ceremonies
have quietly disappeared and are still disappearing, unable to continue in the light
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of the Gospel. The blackness of heathenism is retreating before the morning light
of the Lord. It will be found that a new and great African nation is being quietly
created, a nation of men and women to whom the Sabbath is indeed a “delight,”
often far more than to their European masters, and who value the Word of God
more than life. The Christian community is coming to fullness of stature, through
the great C.M.S. ideal of self-support, self-government, and self-propagation; no
longer an irresponsible child, it is becoming a responsible, reasoning being whose
opinion in things that matter will become increasingly valuable.
The further question is often asked: “Is missionary education producing good
Africans, or a poor imitation of Europeans?” In reply it must first be admitted
that often the old ways of life have been exchanged too soon for the new; in the
process something that was indispensable may have been lost. The recent PhelpsStokes Commission has shown that in some cases the aim of “life in the village”
has not been kept sufficiently in the forefront.1 Adaptations to village life must be
the central purpose of the up-country school. English and its teaching must not
wholly displace the unwritten literature or folk-lore of the African tribe. The
garden and the farm must be as worthy a goal to the African boy as the clerk’s
desk or the engineer’s lathe. But the missionary education which has produced
African leaders like Bishops Crowther, Oluwole, Howells,2 is the best answer to
the criticism just mentioned.
A nation does not reach maturity in a day. Africa has been happy in those who
have helped to rear in their childhood the growing races of that great continent.
Now that she lies open to the stream of immigrants who pour in for commerce,
she needs, more than ever, a great-company of elder brothers and sisters who will
guide her through the years of adolescence. [17-18]
34. Education in East Africa: A Study of East, Central and South Africa by
the Secondary African Education Commission (1925)
From: Phelps-Stokes Fund, Education in East Africa: A Study of East, Central and South Africa
by the Secondary African Education Commission under the Auspice of the Phelps-Stokes Fund, in
Corporation with the International Education Board, Report Prepared by T.J. Jones (New York:
Phelps-Stokes Fund, 1925). – The philanthropical Phelps-Stokes fund set up in New
York in 1911 played a major role in promoting education for Black and Native
Americans, but also for Africans in Liberia and in the African colonies of the British
Empire. In 1920, the Phelps-Stokes Foundation set up an Education Commission to
study educational conditions and needs in several African territories. The report of this
1
2
See text No. 34 below. [FSE]
Samuel Ajayi Crowther (1809-1891), first African Anglican bishop in Nigeria; Isaac
Oluwole (1852-1932), became Assistant Bishop of Western Equatorial Africa in 1893;
Adolphus Williamson Howells (1866-1938), first African vicar of the Pro-Cathedral
Christ Church in Lagos, consecrated bishop at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London in 1920.
[FSE]
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Section IV
commission entailed recommendations for the improvement of education (such as the
extensive use of African languages in lower and middle school levels) that strongly
influenced the work of the “Advisory Committee on Native Education in British
Tropical African Dependencies” set up in 1923 by the British Government to generate
educational policies for its African colonies. The combination of pragmatic recommendations to reform the education system in Britain’s African colonies and a paternalistic attitude towards the ‘special educational needs’ of Africans characteristic of the
Report was strongly criticised by leaders of anticolonial movements in later decades of
the 20th century. The following excerpts from the Phelps-Stokes Report address the
question of reading material and languages of instruction for African pupils.
Reading and Elements of Community Life
Reading and writing probably surpass arithmetic in the possibility of adaptation
for the presentation of community needs. Reading lessons may be filled with helpful suggestions as to health needs, such as nutritious food; cleanliness of body and
clothing, of home and school. The upper standards may study the achievements in
the realm of sanitation and hygiene by such men as Pasteur and other great scientists who have freed humanity from disease and suffering. The Old Testament,
and especially the Mosaic laws, and verses from the New Testament may be effectively used to strengthen the interest of the pupil in health.
Agriculture and rural life are receiving increasing recognition in literature.
Pupils of primary and advanced grade may profitably be given reading and writing
tasks relating to garden and farm, and the life of domestic animals. Where pupils
can read a European language the teacher may draw largely on magazines and
books describing the remarkable activities of rural Denmark and other parts of the
world where agriculture has received proper recognition. The Bulletins of the
United States Department of Agriculture and also the Hampton Leaflets3 describe
the influence of farm demonstration and various rural clubs that have increased
the food supply and brought prosperity to the people. It is impossible to overstate
the pressing urgency of the need for a richer school literature capable of being
related to community needs. Few of the existing primers, readers and text-books
in the English language lend themselves to this use. In African vernaculars, with a
few notable exceptions, such books scarcely exist. There are, however, hopeful
indications that this situation is now being realized, at least in part, and that
Governments and missions are taking initial steps to meet it. Meantime much
might be done by the wise allocation of small additional funds to enable teachers
to purchase books and pamphlets on the lines here indicated as a basis for oral
instruction. It is worth making inquiry of the Agricultural Department in each
colony, as good material for the teacher may be available.
The home and family life have so full a place in literature as to make proper
selection difficult. There are descriptions – again only for readers of European
languages – of typical European and American homes; biographies of women
who have realized the ideals of motherhood and the home in the full meaning of
3
Brochure series published by the Hampton Institute, a school for former black slaves
founded in Virginia in 1868. [FSE]
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that wonderful place; discussions of fatherhood, with all its responsibilities; and
stories of childhood and youth that are filled with inspiration. Both the Old and
New Testament have many important references to home life and all that makes it
sacred. In the more practical realm there is much material relating to the care of
children and of the home, the relation of the sexes, the preparation of food and
clothing, and the accommodation for sleep.
Sound ideas of recreation are amply presented in many pamphlets and books.
The teacher can obtain – again in European languages – reading material from
Europe or from America that describes the healthful games and amusements of
civilized peoples. It would be helpful for the teacher to encourage the pupils to
describe their own games as compared with those of other lands. Classroom
discussion would doubtless result in sifting the desirable from the undesirable
elements in the amusements. In the course of time it would be possible for
schools in different parts of Africa to exchange compositions describing the
games and various forms of recreation of different tribes. Effort should be made
to include discussions of recreations that are designed to build up the physique, to
quicken the mind and to develop sound ideals of character. [17-18]
Languages of Instruction
The languages of instruction rank with the ordinary school subjects as means of
acquiring and transferring knowledge. These languages in Africa are usually the
Native speech of dialect and the language of the European nation in control. Both
these languages have, however, a contribution of far greater significance than that
of the mere transfer of knowledge. The European language is not only the agency
for acquiring information of the usual character; it is the means of uniting Africa
with the great civilizations of the world. With full appreciation of the European
language, the value of the Native tongue is immensely more vital, in that it is one
of the chief means of preserving whatever is good in Native customs, ideas and
ideals, and thereby preserving what is more important than all else, namely, Native
self-respect. All peoples have an inherent right to their own language. It is the
means of giving expression to their own personality, however primitive they may
be. The processes of education must begin with the characteristics of the people
as they are and help them to evolve to the higher levels. No greater injustice can
be committed against a people than to deprive them of their own language. It is
interesting and significant to note that one of the first and most emphatic demands of the nations that are now endeavoring to realize self-determination is to
re-establish their own language. Even though it may be a futile attempt because
another language is practically in control, the longing for their own language is
natural and justifiable. […]
The Native people are as a rule eager to learn an European language. Their
desire is based on an intuitive feeling that the language will open new opportunities, and also on experiences where a common language would have avoided many
difficulties through the free and natural approach to the government officers. The
Native leaders will become increasingly conscious of their dependence on European civilization for much of their progress. They will desire to help Africa to
break through the agelong isolation which has kept in a bondage to superstition
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Section IV
and suffering. Already they see the great resources, material and human, that may
be developed through European agencies. It will not be long before they want to
know such great physical sciences as chemistry and biology and to catch the inspiration of the great literatures. They will want through study of history and the
social sciences to profit by the failures and the successes of other peoples. It is
little wonder, therefore, that some Native leaders in Africa have almost been willing to forget their own language in their enthusiasm for the languages of civilization. It was natural for these leaders to mistake for generosity the narrow nationalism of European colonists in fostering an European language to the neglect of the
Native tongue.
This emphatic belief in the value of the Native languages is not to be interpreted to justify the indiscriminate adoption of all African dialects as claiming encouragement and continuous use. While many African languages are rich in words
with delicate shades of meaning, others, on the contrary, are merely dialects with
only unimportant differentiations from the parent tongue. In many colonies there
is a multiplicity of dialects spoken by small groups who are thus estranged from
one another to the point of hostility. The process of selecting the Native languages of greatest value to the Native people is often exceedingly difficult. The comparative merits of several dialects in a colony may require years of scientific study.
The testimony of Europeans or Natives who speak a particular dialect is likely to
be prejudiced favorably by that knowledge. The ability to weigh the value of testimony as to languages must be based on real knowledge of the dialects under consideration. There are also geographical elements that influence the value of a dialect, such as the number of people who speak it, the status and potentiality of the
people as compared with others of a different dialect, and territorial proximity.
Missionaries of several nationalities deserve much credit for their study of
Native languages. Through their devoted efforts a large number of the dialects
have been reduced to writing, and the Bible, either in part or in its entirety, has
been translated into them. In this great achievement the British and Foreign Bible
Society, whose work in East African languages will presently be noted, has rendered a service of incalculable value. A number of small text-books and pamphlets
have also been translated into many vernaculars. Governments have not sufficiently encouraged this important service to the Native people of Africa. With full
recognition of what has been done, the task, as has been urged in a preceding section, is only begun. There is now need for the active cooperation of Governments,
missions and commercial organizations with scientific students of languages to
make a thorough survey of African tongues and dialects, so that the present confusion and uncertainty may be corrected and that vernacular literature may be issued on well-directed and effective lines.
Looked at in the light of community needs, the belief of the teacher in all that
has been said concerning the languages of instruction will be strengthened. With
such a consciousness the teacher will be eager to know the Native dialects, so that
intimate contacts may be established with every phase of community life. Through
the Native language the older people will become known as well as the youth in
school – their health, their agricultural needs and achievements, their village crafts,
their homes, or lack of homes, their play, both good and bad, their music and folk
melodies, whether degrading or inspiring, all will gradually unfold through the
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magic of the Native tongue. What changes will then follow in the teaching and the
preaching; in the exchange of shop and field, of home and playground! The more
real the insight into Native life through the Native language, the more real and the
more intelligent will be the demand for the European language to serve as the
medium for the transfer of whatever civilization has to give to primitive Africa in
all phases of life. […]
The observations and experience of the long tour in East Africa support the
conclusions and recommendations formulated in the report of the Commission to
West and Equatorial Africa and they are presented herewith from Education in
Africa, pp. 25, 26.
The elements to be considered in determining the languages of instruction are
(1) that every people have an inherent right to their Native tongue; (2) that the
multiplicity of tongues shall not be such as to develop misunderstandings and distrust among people who should be friendly and cooperative; (3) that every group
shall be able to communicate directly with those to whom the government is entrusted; and (4) that an increasing number of Native people shall know at least one
of the languages of the civilized nations. In determining the weight of each of
these elements, it is of course necessary to ascertain the local conditions. It is clear
that there is comparatively little, if any advantage in the continuation of a crude
dialect with practically no powers of expression. It is also evident that the need for
a lingua franca is not essential to a large group of people speaking the same language and living under conditions that do not require much intercommunication.
It may even be true that some one of the Native languages may be so highly developed as to make possible the translation of the great works of civilization into that
language. With due consideration for all of these elements and the modifying circumstances, the following recommendations are offered as suggestions to guide
Governments and educators in determining the usual procedure in most African
colonies:
1. The tribal language should be used in the lower elementary standards or
grades.
2. A lingua franca of African origin should be introduced in the middle classes of
the school if the area is occupied by large Native groups speaking diverse languages.
3. The language of the European nation in control should be taught in the
upper standards. [19-22]
35. Colin Bundy, Early Peasants: The Cape before 1870 (1979)
From: Colin Bundy, The Rise & Fall of the South African Peasantry (London: Heinemann,
1979), 35-43. – Colin Bundy (b. 1944) is a South African historian who has had a most
distinguished academic career, having been a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, Vice Chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand, Director of the School of Oriental and
African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London, and, from 2008-2010, Principal
of Green Templeton College, Oxford. The extract below, taken from an influential
book based on his Oxford doctoral thesis, is concerned with the impact of
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Section IV
missionaries in nineteenth-century South Africa. Bundy rejects the view of their
overriding influence put forward in The Oxford History of South Africa, and instead offers
a critical perspective on the connections between their missionary purpose and the
political economy of the time. He shows how the missionaries served British trade and
commerce, consciously furthered class formation in African society, and purveyed
ideas of European civilization. He also identifies the reasons for the comparatively low
number of converts they were able to make.
The role of the missionary as standard-bearer for the commercial economy and
western manners was one which missionaries themselves were not slow to point
out, and they left no doubts as to the over-riding influence of missionary endeavour, precept and enterprise: “These stations were centres of trade and improved
agriculture. The first plough that turned up soil north of the Kei was guided by
the hands of a Wesleyan missionary. The first store opened in Kaffirland4 for the
sale of clothing and agricultural implements was at Wesleyville.” And in the same
vein, “the first cotton grown in South Africa […] the first waggon […] the first
European type of house […] the first tilled lands and gardens” in Kaffraria5 were
Methodist. More recently, an essentially similar assessment has appeared in the
Oxford History of South Africa; missionaries take the credit for the establishment of
an African peasantry: “Peasant communities […], began in 1783 with the foundation of the first mission station in South Africa [...]. Peasant communities began
around mission stations.” (The Oxford History of South Africa II, 49).6
In this [chapter] it will be seen that there was a correlation between missionary
activity and the spread of African peasant agriculture; that ‘stations’ or ‘schools’
served as foci of social change. It will also be argued, however, that other important factors operated independently of the ‘missionary factor’ in prompting and
dispersing peasant activity, and that missionary enterprise was not the sine qua non
of a peasantry that Professor Wilson suggests. One obvious alternative source for
the technological knowledge that missionaries offered was work on the land of
secular employers. There were also important transmissions of ideas, methods,
motives and opportunities from one African community to another. […] Peasant
skills and values were spread through a variety of non-missionary agents and channels: these included chiefs and other individuals, a variety of tenurial systems and
other changes in economic and social relations.
The transmission of skills from missionaries to Africans was not the one-sided
process that mission (and other) sources suggest: there was present, in varying degrees at different times and places, an active decision by Africans (individually or
collectively) to partake of new skills, implements or life styles. What were hailed in
Kaffirland was a term used at the time to describe the region on the Indian Ocean
coast east of the Great Fish River. [GVD]
5
Kaffraria was the name used for the area of south-eastern South Africa annexed by
Britain in 1865. [GVD]
6 The Oxford History of South Africa, ed. Monica Wilson and Leonard Thompson Vol. I.
South Africa to 1870, Vol. II. South Africa 1870-1966 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969 &
1971). [GVD]
4
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the vigorous ecclesiastical press of the day as ‘missionary successes’ might justifiably be described in retrospect as ‘African successes’, in that the initial decision
to invite the missionary and the subsequent cultural adaptations were conscious
and deliberate choices by chiefs, clans or individuals. Anglican missionaries regarded it as quaint proof of the backwardness of the ‘native mind’ when chiefs
welcomed mission schools, with the stipulation that reading, writing and manual
skills be offered, but that religion be strictly excluded from the syllabus; yet viewed
in terms of the threat that Christianity posed to the religious and political authority
of the chiefs, and of the visible benefits accruing from a lay education, this was a
discerning attempt by traditional African leadership to channel western education
along selected lines.
Two linked features of the missionary presence in African societies are worth
emphasizing: first, the role of the missionaries as torch-bearers of capitalist social
norms and the market economy, as advocates of increased trade and commercial
activity, and secondly, their contribution to class formation in African society.
Missionary enterprise, ultimately, was concerned to transform social institutions
and practices that were alien or incompatible with capitalist society into ones that
were compatible, and hence to encourage a total change in the world-view of the
people in whose midst they lived. As far as the extension of commerce is concerned, Professor Wilson has written that in South Africa trade “was welcomed by
missions but did not arise from them” (The Oxford History of South Africa II, 50).
This seems a less than satisfactory proposition; it understates the very close connection between missionary advocacy of ‘civilization’ and ‘modernization’ and
trade. It overlooks the expression of an explicit and consistent missionary ideology
in the nineteenth century, in terms of which the mission societies and their most
influential spokesmen sought consciously to restructure African societies along
lines that would attach them securely to the British capitalist economy.
Missionaries should ‘make a combined effort to effect a social revolution’, exhorted the editor of the Kaffir Express: the same missionary publication had spelled
out the links between the civilizing mission and trade a little earlier. Why encourage Africans to live in square houses? the paper asked; and it answered its query
thus:
with a proper house, then comes a table, then chairs, a clean table-cloth, paper or
whitewash for the walls, wife and daughters dressed in clean calico prints, and so forth
[…] The church-going Kaffirs purchase three times as much clothing, groceries, and
other articles in the shops as the red Kaffirs;7 but with a change in their habitations the
existing native trade would soon be doubled. (The Kaffir Express, V, 55 (April 1875) and
V, 53 (February 1875)
The missionary’s insistence on European dress, his propensity for measuring civilization in terms of the consumption of manufactured goods, his zeal for square
7
Nineteenth century commentators defined […] Africans as ‘school’ or ‘red’: ‘school’
people attended mission schools and wore ‘European’ clothes; ‘red’ people had rejected Christianity and continued to anoint themselves with red clay.
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houses and so on, all indicate a more potent link between the missionary and the
trader than Monica Wilson allows.
As far as missionaries and class formation are concerned, it is clear that missionaries set out consciously and actively to promote economic differentiation and
the formation of social classes, and that the mission stations provided auspiciously
positioned vantage points, or pioneer columns, in this process. The strategy for
ensuring conversions in ‘savage’ lands involved an explicit need to ‘tame’, to alter
such societies to a degree whereby their members would be receptive to the Gospel as well as to the benefits of western civilization. Only by restructuring African
societies in the rough likeness of their own European society could the necessary
links be forged that would attach the African community securely to the Home
Country, and permit all the benefits of religious, economic and social intercourse
to flow between the two. From the conjunction of these processes – the establishing of the cash nexus and the restructuring of ‘savage’ society – missionaries believed that a whole constellation of beneficial results would flow. These were: a
stimulated demand for the consumption of British goods, the increase of commerce, of civilization and of learning, the spread of Christianity and the defeat of
heathenism, polygamy, and barbarism – in short, the extension of British control,
protection, culture, economy, religion and language. It is not that missionaries
were hypocritical or Machiavellian in their easy identification of the virtues of
Christianity with the virtues of the British Empire: empire and the sway of the
church were seen as two sides of the same coin. Duty and self-interest coincided.
[…]
From the earliest mission establishments, evangelical labours were seen within
the context of a civilizing mission, that is, the introduction of western values and
relationships into pre-capitalist societies. Social reform, [it has been suggested], is
implicit in the teaching of any new religion, but was present especially in the nineteenth century when missionaries saw Christianity and civilization as interdependent and inseparable goals. The doyen of South African missionaries, the Rev. John
Philip, wrote to the Lieutenant Governor of the Cape in 1820, outlining very
clearly the secular and economic tactics and strategy of missionary endeavour:
Tribes in a savage state are generally without houses, gardens, and fixed property. By
locating them on a particular place, getting them to build houses, enclose gardens, cultivate corn land, accumulate property, and by increasing their artificial wants, you increase their dependency on the colony, and multiply the bonds of union and the number of securities for the preservation of peace.
The championship of fixed settlements, of the sale of farm produce and of the
purchase of ‘artificial wants’ are the keynotes to all subsequent nineteenth-century
mission practices; Philip’s argument that the resultant integration of ‘tribes in a
savage state’ into the colonial economy would bring stability and peace remained
the major single secular justification in missionary writings for the rest of the century.
Philip also gave expression to another central tenet in missionary ideology: that
by ‘scattering the seeds of Civilization’ missionaries would extend British trade, influence and Empire:
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Wherever the missionary places his standard among a savage tribe, their prejudices
against the colonial government give way; their dependence upon the colony is increased […] confidence is restored; intercourse with the colony is established; industry,
trade, and agriculture spring up; and every genuine convert […] becomes the friend
and ally of the colonial government.
He also specified that ‘a more liberal system of policy’ towards the Khoi and the
Africans would make them more productive farmers, better customers of manufactured goods, reliable tax payers and willing labourers.8
But how were these devoutly wished for consummations to be achieved, and
what particular weight did the missionaries attach to farming? In South Africa, as
in Nigeria, ‘it was not so much agriculture that the missionaries considered the
civilizing influence, as the commerce which resulted from it’. Agriculture was recommended to the tribesman as a means of producing articles of trade that would
link him with Christian Europe. But in South Africa, far more than in Nigeria,
there was also pressure upon the governing authorities to impel tribesmen to enter
the capitalist economy as labourers.
Missionary ideologues addressed themselves to this problem in South Africa.
Philip argued that the abolition of slavery and of the commando system9 would
improve, not worsen, the labour market. He put the case for a workforce freed
from coercion other than market forces (they would “prefer labour, in a state of
freedom”): “allow them to bring their labour to a fair market” and farmers would
“no longer have occasion to complain of the want of servants”. Methodist teaching, especially, favoured the creation of wage-earners and stressed the dignity of
labour and desirability of manual skills. W.R. Thompson, first missionary to the
Ngqikas, noted in 1819 that it was “the particular wish of the colonial government
to introduce among the natives a knowledge of the useful arts of civilized life, and
to train them to habits of industry” and to this end he took with him plough, harrow and spades.
It was not enough merely to accustom black hands to the necessary skills to
equip them as labourers; they had also to be induced to supply their labour power
to white employers. […]
The missionary societies desired conversions – and thereto a class of small
proprietors, wedded to the cash nexus – and the colonists wanted labourers: missionaries looked to both Providence and the beneficent laws of Political Economy
in their attempts to merge these aims. The settled nucleus of ‘respectable proprietors’ would generate the necessary labour supply, they argued. […]
Despite their own confidence and optimism, despite the enthusiasm and funds
generated by the evangelical revival, and despite government assistance, the initial
success rate of the mission societies was low. By 1850, a total of 16,000 Africans
8
9
The quotations from Philip are taken from: John Philip, Researches in South Africa
Illustrating the Civil, Moral and Religious Condition of the Tribes, 2 vols. (London, 1828).
The commando system refers to the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century practice of
carrying out reprisal raids against indigenous people to recover stolen cattle and to
carry off children that would then be forced to work on white farms. [GVD]
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in the Eastern Cape (out of perhaps 400,000) lived on 32 mission stations, and as
we shall see, missionaries had good cause to doubt the sincerity and ardour of the
convictions of many of these. Particularly between 1836 and 1857, the mission
records are a chronicle of abandoned stations, dispersed congregations, despondency and a fair measure of disillusionment. This failure to effect a mass conversion was in part due to the missionaries’ own mistakes and to their susceptibility
to diseases and death, but more particularly due to the fact that most missionary
effort was expended in the area where frontier wars were endemic for half a century, and most of all due to the political resistance of the Cape’s Xhosa-speakers
and their leaders. […]
It was the creation of the mission stations or villages themselves that seems to
have been a major factor in transmuting the cautious acceptance by the chiefs into
(by and large) overtly hostile resistance. The station settlements dramatized the
political, religious and economic threat to the old order, they made conspicuous
the political disloyalty of converts, they served as a base for the missionary’s assault on rites and social practices, and they meant the physical absence of clan
members, the withdrawal of their economic output as well as of their obligations.
A chief summed up the challenge posed by the missions succinctly enough […]
“When my people become Christians, they cease to be my people.” Equally to the
point was the chief who told a Select Committee in 1851 “I like very much to live
with [the missionaries] if they would not take my people and give them to the
government.” Missionaries were also resented for their role as ‘the eyes and ears
of Government’; they participated, and were seen to do so, in the process of annexation and conquest.
Nor did it escape the notice of Africans that the material benefits of mission
life might be offset by new obligations and impositions. Traditionalist (or ‘red’)
opposition to ‘school’ practices is typified by the reluctance of the traditionalists
to become enmeshed in the novel dues of rent, taxes and other fees which were
higher on mission stations than in surrounding areas. As peasants told an African
preacher later in the century, “We are taught two things – the word of the Lord
and the payment of rent.” […]
Against this defensive reaction, it might appear surprising that the missions
won any converts, let alone that they prospered to the extent that they did. There
were however powerful secular forces at work that aided evangelization. First, and
corollary to the political resistance of some African leaders, there were others who
perceived in the missionaries political allies, go-betweens, diplomatic agents and
the like. Co-operation with a missionary might assist in coming to terms with external powers such as the British government, Boer republics, or rival kingdoms.
Entire communities or clans that were clients, refugees, or in other ways subordinated in the existing political structure, would attach themselves to missionaries
(the Mfengu, Thembu, and Barolong all did this).
Apart from such political considerations, at the level of chief or headman,
there were other attractions for individual converts […]: the draw of technological
innovations and material goods; the provision by mission stations of access to
land […]; the role of missions as a sanctuary or refuge to those fleeing tribal justice. The political attractions summed up in the third of these categories are com-
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plex and manifold. Most simply, sanctuary might be sought by people fleeing from
local quarrels or customary law. […]
Perhaps the most telling comment of all came from the missionary who wrote
“As far as I know, the only people inclined to be Christians are those who despair
of their own nation ever becoming anything by itself.”
Nor were the secular lures of mission life only material. Education (and the assistance it gave in coping with the demands of a cash economy and colonial rule)
was a powerful magnet: the most common grounds for the unsolicited invitation
to a missionary were the need for a school. There was a minor crisis in the Wesleyan Missionary Society in the early 1870s because numbers of Methodist Mfengu
were defecting to the Anglican church, whose schools were held to be better as
well as cheaper. The missionary’s knowledge of medicine and superior building
techniques were also powerful attractions. Cultural gains might also be imagined
rather than actual: if the missionary could convince Africans that his prayers were
more effective in producing rain or ridding the area of locusts than the competing
charms of the traditional priest or diviner, he could win new adherents.
36. Benjamin Nnamdi Azikiwe, How Shall We Educate
the African? (1934)
From: Journal of the Royal African Society, 33, 131 (1934), 143-150. – Benjamin Nnamdi Azikiwe (1904-1996), one of Africa’s most famous nationalist leaders, was born in Northern Nigeria as the son of Igbo parents, studied in Nigeria and the USA and became a
well-known journalist and newspaper publisher before embarking on a political career
in 1944. A vocal critic of British colonial rule in Nigeria, he became Premier of
Nigeria’s Eastern Region in 1954, Governor-General of (colonial) Nigeria in 1960 and
the first President of the Republic of Nigeria in 1963. Having lost power in a military
coup in 1966, he became a supporter of Biafra during the Biafra War (1967-1970) in
Nigeria’s civil war??? and later Chancellor of the University of Lagos. Among
Azikiwe’s numerous publications are books on African politics and culture such as
Renascent Africa (1937) and autobiographical writings such as Zik (1961). In the
following essay Azikiwe attacks the paternalism inherent in colonial educational
policies and calls for an educational system based on equal opportunities and rights for
Africans rather than on colonial concepts of ‘special educational needs’ of Africa’s socalled ‘native races.’
Education of Africans has been purposely converted into a “problem.” In all fairness to the noble work accomplished by Missions and Governments in Africa,
frankness demands the conclusion that African education is not a “problem”; the
African is a human being, and he could respond to any stimulus in any environment as would any other human being – all hereditary factors being equal. The
attempt to transform the education of the African into a “problem” is not only a
misdirected effort but an erroneous procedure. It is based on false conceptions of
the mentality of the African. Thus African education has become impressionistic,
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Section IV
and the European and American educators continue to perpetuate the myth of
traditional anthropology on the mental inequality of races.
Modern anthropological scholarship does not subscribe to the notion that one
race is mentally at variance with others. Moreover, the accomplishments of Africans in European and American universities during the past five decades, vindicate their mental capacity and also establish the fact that the brain of the average
African can function in any environment just as that of the other races. In other
words, the African is human, and is intellectually alert just as the average European, Asiatic, or American. What he needs is an opportunity to demonstrate his
capabilities. Education knows no race or colour or creed. An Efik can win the M.A. from
Columbia or Oxford or any university in the world, if given a chance. The same is
applicable to a Zulu, Fanti, Ga, Mende, Wangala, Timni, Hausa, Nupe, Jekri,
Popo, Ijaw, Ibo, Yoruba, Kru, Vai, Joloff, Mandingo, Bubi, or any other African
tribe under God’s sun.
Translated into common terms what then do the achievements of Africans intellectually and educationally prove? Just these plain and incontrovertible facts: The
African is not, and never has been, a problem; there is no such thing as an African educational
problem; those who believe in such an oddity, are problems in themselves!
Broadly speaking, the average Liberian or Abyssinian is more educated than
the average resident of African colonial possessions. Education implies more than
book-learning and a collection of meaningless “degrees” after one’s name. It comprises the essentials of life, including a sense of pride in the fundamental rights of
man. For this reason, the average resident of these two sovereign states has been
better educated, for he lives in an environment of freedom and respectability, relatively speaking. He aspires to the highest offices of the land. There is no stereotyped “place” for him. His environment is devoid of inferiority complexes. He
could achieve his dreams if he would only have the ambition.
Contrasted with the residents of colonial possessions, one discovers that despite their economic progress, the colonial Africans have been so mis-educated (to
borrow Dr. Carter G. Woodson’s term) that their criterion of values is alien to
their soil. The universities of Europe and America become the standardisers of
their national ideals. A degree from Oxford or London or from the United States,
becomes their supreme objectives. If a European should assert that a degree from
a British university is the quintessence of culture, the African literati invariably retort with an “Amen.” If an American should claim that a degree from the United
States is the only passport to intellectual achievements, the African, in his intellectual docility, accepts the same as final. Consequently, these mis-educated Africans
imitate the characteristic jealousies and superciliousnesses of alien ideologies. They
are so influenced thereby that they return to Africa laden with these sardonic
manifestations of bigoted aristocracy and national idiosyncrasies.
True it is, the Liberian and Abyssinian educational systems have not been progressive. But the little they have done has been of practical value to their citizenry.
While it has not prevented a section of their societies from preying upon the
weaker ones, that is nothing singular. It is one of the anomalies of Western education and civilisation. Nevertheless, there is need for educational reform in all Africa. In addition to the subjects taught in elementary, secondary, and collegiate insti-
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135
tutions, more emphasis should be placed on African anthropology, ethnology, and
ethnography. African educators, be they black or white, should sift the excrescences of African culture and have a scientific attitude in order to delineate the durable and qualitative essentials of African sociology, philosophy, religion, ethics, art,
music, law, and government.
Certain friends of the African have advocated industrial and agricultural education to the exclusion of academic and literary ones, as a panacea for the African
educational “problem.” Whether the industrialisation of Africa will be conducive
to the happiness of the aboriginal in view of the unhappy state of affairs in the industrialised West is not for consideration at the moment. No doubt these philanthropists, missionaries, and Government officials are sincere in advocating industrial and agricultural education. But this notion is maliciously false and a retrograde tendency. Just as Hampton and Tuskegee institutes10 have been
unsuccessful in producing any outstanding graduates in the technical or
agricultural field, for over five decades of educational endeavours, (see also the
editorials in The Afro-American of January 3rd and 10th, 1931) so remarkably does
this doctrine fail to pragmatise. It is curious that advocates of this measure should
seek to apply to the African conditions which are not only unfavourable with the
Afro-American, but are alien to the African mode of living.
Of course, one is not opposed to agricultural or industrial education. There is
no need to beg the question for, sooner or later, the West will unconsciously drag
Africa into its vicious net of industrialism and capitalism and “rugged” individualism, with their attendant ethics and values. But the basis of the theory for the industrial and agricultural education of the African is fallacious. It conceives the
African as better adapted to industrial and agricultural pursuits, which is hardly
true. In other words, so long as the African would be content at menial tasks, and
would not seek complete social, political, and economic equality with the Western
world, he is deemed to be a “good” fellow. But let him question the right to keep
him in political and economic servitude, and let him strive to educate himself to
the fundamentals of these modern problems, he is immediately branded as an
“agitator.” He becomes a “bad” fellow for failing to stay in his “place,” which, of
course, is the background.
On the strength of this, one humbly postulates that any educational theory
which supports the regimentation of human minds and objectives is suspicious
and ought to be cautiously examined. And then, the fact that the African is merely
a “producer” of raw materials, and has no voice in the “fixing of prices” for his
produce (and this is generally done for him at the exchanges in London, New
York, Paris, Hamburg, or Brussels) renders his attempts at wholesale farming a
sentence of economic servitude. If he were encouraged to study economics and
banking, instead of farming alone, he might be able to “fix” prices, too; but out10
The Hampton Institute (today: Hampton University) was founded as a school for
former black slaves in Virginia in 1868. One of its best-known graduates, Booker T.
Washington, became the first Principal of the Tuskegee Institute (today: Tuskegee
University) founded in Alabama in 1881. [FSE]
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Section IV
side Liberia and Abyssinia, he is not in position so to do. He is a subject or protégé
(not a citizen or national) of European countries which maintain what has been
mistakenly termed an “open door” policy, a policy which actually is a subtle means
to lower the price of African produce in the various “spheres of influence,” for
the consumption of European factories, and also to make the African dependent
on what price Europe chooses to pay for African produce. No elaborate knowledge is required to understand this subtlety of colonial economics, yet advocates
of agricultural education have failed to warn Africans of the Charybdis awaiting
them after the escape from Scylla!
Industrial education may seem plausible, but it has its limitations as well. After
industrial training, then what? How can the technically-trained African earn a decent
livelihood when all avenues of higher appointments are closed to him and he is
forced to worship the powers that be ere he could be considered for permanent
and respectable appointment? It is nice to have technical ambitions, but as President Arthur Howe, of Hampton Institute, has observed: “There is little use in
educating people unless they are to have opportunities to use their abilities.” [143147]
How then shall the African be educated? Lest the author be misjudged, there is
no ground to conclude that agricultural or industrial education should not be offered the African. Rather, it is the author’s conviction that these should be
stressed only to the extent that not all Africans should become artisans and farmers. Farming is a wholesome vocation, so also are the industries. But the modern
state – if the various colonies in Africa ever dream of their capability to develop
into sovereign states – is a mosaic of all the professions and vocations. Education
in Africa should consist of both literary and technical, and moral subjects in the
curriculum of schools. Illiteracy should be diminished by the gradual introduction
of compulsory elementary education throughout Africa. Mass education of the
adults should be encouraged both by Governments and the African population. In
other words, educate the African as a human being and not as a museum specimen or a fossil or preserved animal for scientific experimentation.
Several organisations and individuals who are interested in the “problem” of
African education may be shocked at the tone of this modest and frank comment
on their pet subject. Some might even consider the author ultra-radical in his pronouncements. But one submits with all deference to their feelings that at the basis
of their philosophy of education, concocted as the best suited for the so-called
“Native Races,” is the conception of mental inequality of the races so vividly and
erroneously disseminated by such racialists as Count Gobineau, Benjamin Kidd,
Lothrop Stoddard, and other pseudo-scientists who have appropriated the vocabulary of science and have prostituted its methodology and technique in order to
prove what they want to prove, namely, the moral right to arrogate to one race a
stigma of superiority to the detriment of another. This, of course, is what Professor Miller, of Bryn Mawr College, has termed “the rationalisation of a myth.”
Unfortunately these “friends” of African education, despite their paternalism
and philanthropism, are humans. They like to be adored and flattered. The fact
that they are performing a mission of mercy to “down-trodden and backward
children of nature” bolsters their fixations of arrogance and pride, and they un-
Education
137
consciously become evangelists of the myth of racial inferiority. When an educated African challenges such an unnatural relation between his “civilizers” and
himself, he is looked upon as a “problem.” Should he question the right of his
rulers to prevent his active participation in the administration of the country, he is
dubbed an “agitator.” He is thus caricatured as a “Europeanised African” for
daring so to live and enjoy his life more abundantly. He is presented to the innocent world as an alienated individual from his indigenous folks. On the other
hand, the aboriginals have been prevented by subtle means from imbibing the
richness of Western education. Their education has been formalised. They are
reduced to the four “R’s,” namely, Reading, ‘Riting, “Rithmetic, and Religion. Thus it
is impossible to effectuate any social progress in the sense that the Western world
knows it, within the next century. Yet the irony of this way of thinking is that
African “backwardness” is judged on his failure to measure up to the standards of
Western education which has been purposely denied him. [149-150]
37. H.F. Verwoerd, Bantu Education. Policy for the
Immediate Future (1954)
From: H.F.Verwoerd, Bantu Education. Policy for the Immediate Future (Pretoria: Department
of Native Affairs, 1954), 1-24. – Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd (1901-1966) was South
African Minister of Native Affairs from 1950 to 1958, when he was elected leader of
the National Party and Prime Minister. After obtaining his doctorate at Stellenbosch
University, Verwoerd went on in 1925 to the universities of Leipzig, Hamburg and
Berlin. Regarded as the ‘architect of apartheid’ he was responsible for much of the
legislation which imposed racial segregation on the country. After the Sharpeville
shootings in 1960, Verwoerd took South Africa out of the Commonwealth and the
country became a republic. Although he was personally convinced of the justice of the
policies he and the National Party pursued, they generated bitter opposition both
within the country and overseas. In 1960 an unsuccessful attempt was made on his life,
and on 6th September he was assassinated in the South African House of Assembly in
Cape Town. The following text is taken from a statement on the government’s
education policy made by Verwoerd, who was then Minister of Native Affairs, in the
Senate of the Union Parliament at Cape Town on the 7th June, 1954. In what is a
remarkable account of his convictions he outlines the ideology behind the educational
policy formulated in the so-called Bantu Education Act of 1953. The passages in bold
type are as in the original.
Defects of the existing System
The defects of the present system of Native11 education are obvious when
considered in the light of its historical evolution.
11
The term “Native” was used officially and colloquially to designate Black South Africans until the early 1950s. It is found in the titles of many government documents,
Acts of Parliament, etc. It is now regarded as offensive. [GVD]
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Section IV
(1) The schools were started as mission or church schools. This was also the
case in older countries but in those countries it was a national church or at
least a Christian church which served a Christian community. In South
Africa the Natives, who remain to a great extent a heathen community, are
served by a large variety of churches while the Christian section of the Native community has been split up into numerous denominations and sects,
and the following consequences were unavoidable:
(a) There was no co-ordination of the interests of the school with those of
the community; and
(b) there was no co-ordination between the education given in the schools
and the broad national policy. From the nature of things the natural development
from mission school to community school could not take place.
(2) The subsidization of schools and the accompanying control of the curriculum was the responsibility of the four colonial governments and was later, as a
temporary measure, entrusted to the four provincial administrations. The South
Africa Act provided that Parliament could make other arrangements.12
(3) In 1925 two important principles were followed:
(a) The acceptance of the South African population as being divided into two
sections (segregation) rather than as one multiracial society implied that the vast
Bantu majority must find, to a considerable extent, the means for its own development; and
(b) it is sound educational policy to create among the Bantu a sense of responsibility by allowing them to bear sufficient financial responsibility to make them
accept that their development is their own concern and in this way to guarantee its
continuity.
The defects of Native education under the old system may be summarised as
follows:
(a) Under the system of mission schools the schools –
(i) could not serve the communities nor could they harness their energies
and
(ii) they were unsympathetic to the country’s policy;
(b) the curriculum (to a certain extent) and educational practice, by ignoring
the segregation or “apartheid” policy, was unable to prepare for service within the
Bantu13 community. By blindly producing pupils trained on a European
model, the vain hope was created among Natives that they could occupy
12
13
The South Africa Act was passed by the British parliament in 1909. It provided the
legislative basis for the formation of the Union of South Africa. [GVD]
“Bantu” was a term used in official racial classification to refer to Black South Africans
from the early 1950s until the 1970s. It is found in the titles of Acts of Parliament,
such as – in this instance – the Bantu Education Act of 1953. Like many terms
associated with the apartheid system it is now regarded as offensive. [GVD]
Education
139
posts within the European14 community despite the country’s policy of
“apartheid”. This is what is meant by the creation of unhealthy “White
collar ideals” and the causation of widespread frustration among the socalled educated Natives. [...] [5-7]
Requirements with which Bantu Education must comply
The present Native schools may be characterised generally as schools within Bantu society but not
of that society. As I have said before, it is the Government’s intention to transform them into real
Bantu community schools.
To be able to carry this out Bantu education must comply with the following requirements:
(1) (a) Every Bantu taxpayer must have equal access for his children to the
fundamental educational facilities which can be provided with the available
funds. I have in mind education in Sub-standards A and B15 and Standard II,
including reading, writing through mother-tongue instruction, as well of English
and Afrikaans, and the cardinal principles of the Christian religion.
(b)The money which is contributed by the European and Bantu taxpayer must
be used to the best possible advantage for the greatest possible number.
(2) (a) A Bantu pupil must obtain knowledge, skills and attitudes in the school
which will be useful and advantageous to him and the same time beneficial to his
community.
(b) The subject matter must be presented to him in such a way that he can
understand and master it easily, making it his own, to the benefit and service of his
community.
(c) The school must equip him to meet the demands which the economic life of South Africa will impose upon him.
(3) The Bantu teacher must be integrated as an active agent in the process of
the development of the Bantu community. He must learn not to feel above his
community, with a consequent desire to become integrated into the life of the
European community. He becomes frustrated and rebellious when this does not
take place, and he tries to make his community dissatisfied because of such misdirected ambitions which are alien to his people. […] [14-15]
Subject matter and curriculum of the Bantu primary school
The curriculum in the “fundamental” or lower primary stage cannot go much
further than the teaching of the “three R’s” through the medium of the mothertongue, the beginning of the study of Afrikaans and English, religious education
and singing. In the past there was a great deal of difference between theory and
practice in these matters. In fact the instructions in the curricula which laid
down that the mother-tongue should be the medium of instruction until at
least Standard II and that the social milieu of the pupils should be the basis
14
15
The term “European” was an official term for describing a white person during
apartheid; its counterpart was “Non-European”. [GVD]
Sub A and Sub B were names for the first two years of schooling. [GVD]
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Section IV
of the learning process were never accepted by Native teachers. As excuses
for this attitude on the part of teachers may be offered, firstly, the fact that in
many cases inspectors of schools did not possess the necessary knowledge of Bantu language and consequently did not insist on a strict compliance with instructions; and secondly, over-anxious preparation for the Standard VI examination,
coupled with the knowledge that questions would have to be answered in English
which, for historical reasons had become the leading and predominant official
language.
In addition, the desire to show off their knowledge of English culture
and, possibly also, their inability to distinguish concepts from terminology,
contributed to an irresistible desire to convey knowledge to their pupils in
the same words in which they had received them.
Whatever the case may be, the final result was that the Bantu pupil, unlike the
European child, did not achieve a thorough grasp of what he was taught in the
natural way through his mother tongue. I have already mentioned some of the disappointing results. As could be expected, the progress of pupils was seriously
hampered, and those who won through to their goal did so mostly on the basis of
meagre and superficial knowledge supplemented by an enviable ability to remember terms and definitions. Richness of vocabulary was equated with a lack of
knowledge and education in the true sense.
It is clear that an education provided in this form must stand isolated
from the life of Bantu society. It prepares them not for life within a Bantu
community, progressively uplifted by education, but for a life outside the
community and for posts which do not in fact exist. In other words, the community has not been developed to such an extent that it can absorb in suitable
posts those of its sons and daughters who have won fine examination certificates.
A considerable number of those who were trained in this way have been absorbed
again in the educational machine which has created a vicious cycle of its own in
isolation from the Bantu community. In this way education has served to create a class of educated and semi-educated persons without the corresponding socio-economic development which should accompany it. This is the
class which has learnt to believe that it is above its own people and feels
that its spiritual, economic and political home is among the civilized community of South Africa, i.e. the Europeans, and feels frustrated because its
wishes have not been realised.
What we have to do is clear. Suitable educational matter and effective curricula
of the schools which take count of these psychological factors are required. Experts of the Department have already been instructed to draw them up and they
will soon be available. From the nature of things the syllabus for the lowest classes, dealing with the subjects I have already mentioned, will not differ fundamentally from the provincial syllabuses theoretically in use today. The crux of the
whole problem is that there will have to be the strictest supervision to ensure that
our Union regulations are fully complied with and that departures from them do
not take place as in the past.
The curriculum, therefore, envisages a system of education which is based on
the circumstances of the community and aims to satisfy the needs of that com-
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141
munity. The vehicle of instruction will be the mother tongue of the pupil. Besides
the usual subjects already mentioned, religious instruction, handicrafts, singing and
rhythm must come into their own, that is self-evident.
The economic structure of our country, of course, results in large numbers of
Natives having to earn their living in the service of Europeans. For that reason it
is essential that Bantu pupils should receive instruction in both official languages
from the earliest stages, so that even in the lower primary school they should
develop an ability to speak and understand them. […] [16-18]
Institutions for Higher Education
An increase in the number of institutions for higher education located in urban
areas is not desired. Steps will be taken deliberately to keep institutions for higher
education, to an increasing extent, away from urban areas, and to establish them as
far as possible in the Native reserves.
My department’s policy is that education should stand with both feet in the reserves and have
its roots in the spirit and being of Bantu society. There Bantu education must be able to give itself
complete expression and there it will be called upon to perform its real service. The Bantu must be
guided to serve his own community in all respects. There is no place for him in the European
community above the level of certain forms of labour. Within his own community, however, all
doors are open. For that reason it is of no avail for him to receive a training which has as its aim
absorption in the European community, where he cannot be absorbed. Until now he has been
subjected to a school system which drew him away from his own community and misled him by
showing him the green pastures of European society in which he was not allowed to graze. This
attitude is not only uneconomic because money is spent for an education which has no specific aim
but it is also dishonest to continue it. The effect on the Bantu community we find in the much discussed frustration of educated Natives who can find no employment which is acceptable to them.
It is abundantly clear that unplanned education creates many problems, disrupting the community
life of the Bantu and endangering the community life of the European.
For that reason planned Bantu education must be substituted for the unplanned. In the Native territories where the service of educated Bantu are very
much needed, Bantu education can complete its full cycle; the child being taken
from the community into the school, developed to his fullest extent in accordance
with his aptitudes and ability, and thereafter being returned to the community to
serve and enrich it. [23-24]
38. Chinua Achebe, The Education of a BritishProtected Child (2009)
From: Chinua Achebe, The Education of a British-Protected Child: Essays (New York: Knopf,
2009), 3-24. – For more detailed biographical information on Achebe see text 8 above.
In this essay based on a speech delivered as the Ashby Lecture at Cambridge University in 1993, Achebe reports on his own experiences with the colonial education system
and its ideological fallacies, but also on the sometimes amazing far-sightedness of individual educators who helped African students to develop their full potential – despite
an overall colonial system based on the “denial of dignity”.
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Section IV
May 24, as every schoolchild knew, was the birthday of Queen Victoria. It was a
major school event and schoolchildren from all over the district would march in
contingents past the British resident, who stood on a dais wearing a white ceremonial uniform with white gloves, plumed helmet, and sword.
The day’s events ended with a sports competition among the schools. My first
Empire Day was indeed memorable. My school, which had some very big boys
and was supposed to do well in the tug-of-war, managed quite unaccountably to
collapse in seconds to their opponents. Rumor had it that this was no ordinary
rout but an Anglican plot whereby our headmaster had instructed our boys to give
in to a fellow Anglican side to prevent a Roman Catholic victory. Empire Day
celebrations took place at the provincial headquarters at Onitsha, seven miles
from my village. I think it was in 1940, when I was in Standard Three and ten
years old, that I was judged old enough to walk to Onitsha and back. I did it all
right but could hardly get up for one week afterwards. And yet it was a journey I
had looked forward to so eagerly and which I cherished for years. Onitsha was a
magical place and did live up to its reputation. First of all, to look down from a
high point on the road at dawn and see, four miles away, the River Niger glimmering in the sky took a child’s breath away. So the river was really there! After a
journey of two thousand six hundred miles from the Futa Jalon Mountains, as
every schoolboy would tell you. Well, perhaps not every schoolboy. I was particularly fortunate in having parents who believed passionately in education, in
having old schoolbooks that three older brothers and an older sister had read. I
was good enough in my schoolwork to be nicknamed Dictionary by admirers.
Although not so good in games; but no one in our culture would seriously hold
that against anybody. [14-15]
Elementary education began with two years in infant school and six years in
primary school. For some children there was a preschool year in what was called
religious school, where they spent a year chanting and dancing the catechism.
Who is Caesar?
Siza bu eze Rom
Onye n’achi enu-uwa dum.
(Caesar is the King of Rome
Who rules the entire world.)
Who is Josiah?
Josaya nwata exe
Onye obi ya di nlo
Onatukwa egwu Chineke.
(Josiah the infant king
Whose heart was soft;
He also feared the Lord.)
But I was spared that. I suppose I imbibed adequate amounts of religion at home
from the daily portions of the Bible we read at prayer time every morning and
every night. [17]
I don’t know what prompted the British colonial administration in Nigeria in
the decade following the end of the First World War to set up two first-class
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143
boarding schools for boys in Nigeria, one at Ibadan and the other at Umuahia.
The arguments, whatever they were, must be fascinating, but I have not been
privileged to read them. Howbeit, an extraordinary English cleric, Robert Fisher,
was appointed the founding principal of Government College Umuahia, and the
school opened its doors in 1929. By the time Fisher retired eight years later,
Umuahia was a byword in Nigeria for excellence.
Then came the Second World War, and other arguments prevailed in colonial
high places, and Government College Umuahia was closed down and its buildings
turned over to a prisoner-of-war camp for German and Italian nationals. There
was yet a third change of colonial mind even before the war ended, and the campus was returned to education and ready to accept my generation of students in
1944. Colonial policy moved in mysterious ways!
Our new principal, William Simpson, a Cambridge man in the colonial education service, set about rebuilding the school. And what a job he did! His experience of colonial education must have persuaded him that “excessive devotion to
bookwork is a real danger,” as he constantly intoned for our benefit, and that the
cramming which often passed for education in the colonies was in fact education’s
greatest enemy. Though Simpson was a mathematics teacher, he made a rule
which promoted the reading of novels and prohibited the reading of any textbooks after classes on three days of the week. He called it the Textbook Act.
Under this draconian law, we could read fiction or biographies or magazines like
Illustrated London News or write letters or play Ping-Pong or just sit about, but not
open a textbook, on pain of detention. And we had a wonderful library from
Robert Fisher’s days to support Mr. Simpson’s Textbook Act.
Perhaps it was a mere coincidence, but Government College Umuahia alumni
played a conspicuous role in the development of modern African literature. That
so many of my colleagues – Christopher Okigbo, Gabriel Okara, Elechi Amadi,
Chukwuemeka Ike, I.N.C. Aniebo, Ken Saro-Wiwa, and others – should all have
gone to one school would strike anyone who is at all familiar with this literature.
What we read in the school library at Umuahia were the books English boys
would have read in England – Treasure Island, Tom Brown’s School Days, The Prisoner
of Zenda, David Copperfield, et cetera. They were not about us or people like us, but
they were exciting stories. Even stories like John Buchan’s, in which heroic white
men battled and worsted repulsive natives, did not trouble us unduly at first. But it
all added up to a wonderful preparation for the day we would be old enough to
read between the lines and ask questions…
In my first or second year at Umuahia the postwar Labour government in Britain decided that a university in West Africa might not be a bad idea. So a highpowered commission under Walter Elliot was sent to survey the situation on the
ground. Such was the reputation of Umuahia that the commission paid us a visit
and spent a whole weekend at our school. Most of them came to chapel service
on Sunday morning, but Julian Huxley, the biologist, roamed our extensive
grounds watching birds with binoculars.
The Elliot Commission Report led to the foundation of Nigeria’s first university institution: a university college at Ibadan in special relationship with London.
By the time it was built I was ready for university education and so walked in. By
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that time also I was no longer a British-Protected Child but a British Protected
Person.
One of the more remarkable teachers I encountered at Ibadan was James
Welch, professor of religious studies. I was intrigued by all the things he was said
to have done before coming to Ibadan – head of religious broadcasting at the
BBC in London; chaplain to the king; principal of a theological college. He had
even gone to Nigeria before all that as a missionary in the 1930s, and then had
returned to Africa at the end of the war as director of education with the British
government’s ill-fated East African Groundnut Scheme.
In my final year at Ibadan, I once had a chance to discuss with Professor
Welch one of a growing number of disagreements the students were beginning to
have with the college. He was then vice principal. In some exasperation he said to
me, “We may not be able to teach you what you want or even what you need. We
can only teach you what we know.”
Even in exasperation, James Welch stayed calm and wise. What else can an
honest and conscientious teacher teach but what he knows? The real teachers I
have had in my life have been people who did not necessarily know what my
needs would ultimately be but went ahead anyhow in good faith and with passion
to tell me what they knew, leaving it to me to sort out whatever I could use in the
search for the things that belonged to my peace. Because colonialism was essentially a denial of human worth and dignity, its education program would not be a
model of perfection. And yet the great thing about being human is out ability to
face adversity down by refusing to be defined by it, refusing to be no more than
its agent or its victim. [19-23]
In 1976, U.S. relations with Nigeria reached an all-time low in the face of particularly clumsy American handling of the Angolan–Cuban–South African issue.
Henry Kissinger, whose indifference to Africa bordered on cynicism, decided at
last to meet Joseph Garba, the Nigerian foreign minister, at the United Nations.
In a gambit of condescending pleasantness, Kissinger asked Garba what he
thought America was doing wrong in Africa. To which Garba replied stonily:
“Everything!” Kissinger’s next comment was both precious and, I regret to admit,
true. He said: “Statistically that is impossible. Even if it is unintentional, we must
be doing something right.”16
That exchange could easily have been about colonialism. [24]
39. James Ngugi, Henry Owouor-Anyumba, Taban lo Liyong,
On the Abolition of the English Department (1972)
From: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Homecoming: Essays on African and Caribbean Literature (London:
Heinemann, 1972), 145-150. – In many African countries, political decolonization did
16
Robert B. Shepard, Nigeria, Africa and the United States (Bloomington and Indianapolis:
Indiana University Press, 1991), 88/89.
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145
not automatically go hand in hand with a decolonization of the educational sector.
Thus the University of East Africa founded in 1963 (encompassing the university
colleges of Makerere in Uganda, Nairobi in Kenya and Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania) at
first continued to educate students who took their final degrees from the University of
London, and even when Higher Education institutions in East Africa began to administer their own degrees, curricula developed during the colonial era often remained in
place. In 1968, three academics working at the English Department of the University
of Nairobi (two of whom, Taban lo Liyong and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, were well-known
writers themselves) wrote a joint policy paper challenging British legacies in university
education: their proposal to abolish the English Department traditionally focussed on
British literature in favour of a Literature Department foregrounding African literatures sparked off heated discussions, but was soon accepted and set an important signal for the restructuring of literature teaching at other universities in Africa.
1. This is a comment on the paper presented by the Acting Head of the English Department at the University of Nairobi to the 42nd meeting of the Arts
Faculty Board on the 20th September, 1968.
2. (a) That paper was mainly concerned with possible developments within the
Arts Faculty and their relationship with the English Department, particularly:
(i) The place of modern languages, especially French;
(ii) The place and role of the Department of English;
(iii) The emergence of a Department of Linguistics and Languages;
(iv) The place of African languages, especially Swahili.
(b) In connection with the above, the paper specifically suggested that a
department of Linguistics and Languages, to be closely related to English, be
established.
(c) A remote possibility of a Department of African literature, or alternatively,
that of African literature and culture, was envisaged.
3. The paper raised important problems. It should have been the subject of a
more involved debate and discussion, preceding the appointment of a committee
with specific tasks, because it raises questions of value, direction and orientation.
4. For instance, the suggestions, as the paper itself admits, question the role
and status of an English Department in an African situation and environment. To
quote from his paper:
The English Department has had a long history at this College and has built up a
strong syllabus which by its study of the historic continuity of a single culture throughout the
period of emergence of the modern west, makes it an important companion to History and to
Philosophy and Religious Studies. However, it is bound to become less ‘British’, more open to
other writing in English (American, Caribbean, African, Commonwealth) and also to continental
writing, for comparative purposes.
5. Underlying the suggestions is a basic assumption that the English tradition
and the emergence of the modern west is the central root of our consciousness
and cultural heritage. Africa becomes an extension of the west, an attitude which,
until a radical reassessment, used to dictate the teaching and organization of His-
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Section IV
tory in our University.17 Hence, in fact, the assumed centrality of the English Department, into which other cultures can be admitted from time to time, as fit
subjects for study, or from which other satellite departments can spring as time
and money allow. A small example is the current, rather apologetic attempt to
smuggle African writing into an English syllabus in our three colleges.
6. Here then, is our main question: If there is need for a “study of the historic
continuity of a single culture”, why can’t this be African? Why can’t African literature be at the centre so that we can view other cultures in relationship to it?
This is not mere rhetoric: already African writing, with the sister connections
in the Caribbean and the Afro-American literatures, has played an important role
in the African renaissance, and will become even more and more important with
time and pressure of events. Just because for reasons of political expediency we
have kept English as our official language, there is no need to substitute a study of
English culture for our own. We reject the primacy of English literature and culture.
7. The aim, in short, should be to orientate ourselves towards placing Kenya,
East Africa, and then Africa in the centre. All other things are to be considered in
their relevance to our situation, and their contribution towards understanding ourselves.
8. We therefore suggest:
A. That the English Department be abolished;
B. That a Department of African Literature and Languages be set up in its
place.
The primary duty of any literature department is to illuminate the spirit animating a people, to show how it meets new challenges, and to investigate possible
areas of development and involvement.
In suggesting this name, we are not rejecting other cultural streams, especially
the western stream. We are only clearly mapping out the directions and perspectives the study of culture and literature will inevitably take in an African university.
9. We know that European literatures constitute one source of influence on
modern African literatures in English, French, and Portuguese; Swahili, Arabic,
and Asian literatures constitute another, an important source, especially here in
East Africa; and the African tradition, a tradition as active and alive as ever, constitutes the third and the most significant. This is the stuff on which we grew up,
and it is the base from which we make our cultural take-off into the world.
10. Languages and linguistics should be studied in the department because in
literature we see the principles of languages and linguistics in action. Conversely,
through knowledge of languages and linguistics we can get more from literature.
For linguistics not to become eccentric, it should be studied in the Department of
African Literature and Languages.
17
Then University of East Africa with three constituent Colleges at Makerere, Dar es
Salaam, and Nairobi. Since then the three have become autonomous universities.
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147
In addition to Swahili, French, and English, whenever feasible other languages
such as Arabic, Hindustani, Kikuyu, Luo, Akamba, etc., should be introduced into
the syllabus as optional subjects.
11. On the literature side, the Department ought to offer roughly:
(a) The oral tradition, which is our primary root;
(b) Swahili literature (with Arabic and Asian literatures): this is another root,
especially in East Africa;
(c) A selected course in European literature: yet another root;
(d) Modern African literature.
For the purposes of the Department, a knowledge of Swahili, English, and
French should be compulsory. The largest body of writing by Africans is now
written in the French language. Africans writing in the French language have also
produced most of the best poems and novels. In fact it makes no sense to talk of
modern African literature without French.
12. The Oral Tradition
The Oral tradition is rich and many-sided. In fact ‘Africa is littered with Oral
Literature’. But the art did not end yesterday; it is a living tradition. Even now
there are songs being sung in political rallies, in churches, in night clubs by guitarists, by accordion players, by dancers, etc. Another point to be observed is the
interlinked nature of art forms in traditional practice. Verbal forms are not always
distinct from dance, music, etc. For example, in music there is close correspondence between verbal and melodic tones; in ‘metrical lyrics’ it has been observed
that poetic text is inseparable from tune; and the ‘folk tale’ often bears an ‘operatic’ form, with sung refrain as an integral part. The distinction between prose and
poetry is absent or very fluid.
Though tale, dance, song, myth, etc. can be performed for individual aesthetic
enjoyment, they have other social purposes as well. Dance, for example, has been
studied ‘as symbolic expression of social reality reflecting and influencing the
social, cultural and personality systems of which it is a part’. The oral tradition also
comments on society because of its intimate relationship and involvement.
The study of the oral tradition at the University should therefore lead to a
multi-disciplinary outlook: literature, music, linguistics, Sociology, Anthropology,
History, Psychology, Religion, Philosophy. Secondly, its study can lead to fresh
approaches by making it possible for the student to be familiar with art forms different in kind and historical development from Western literary forms. Spontaneity and liberty of communication inherent in oral transmission – openness to
sounds, sights, rhythms, tones, in life and in the environment – are examples of
traditional elements from which the student can draw. More specifically, his
familiarity with oral literature could suggest new structures and techniques; and
could foster attitudes of mind characterized by the willingness to experiment with
new forms, so transcending ‘fixed literary patterns’ and what that implies – the
preconceived ranking of art forms.
The study of the Oral Tradition would therefore supplement (not replace)
courses in Modern African Literature. By discovering and proclaiming loyalty to
indigenous values, the new literature would on the one hand be set in the stream
of history to which it belongs and so be better appreciated; and on the other be
better able to embrace and assimilate other thoughts without losing its roots.
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13. Swahili Literature
There is a large amount of oral and written classical Swahili Literature of high
calibre. There is also a growing body of modern Swahili literature: both written
and oral.
14. European Literature
Europe has influenced Africa, especially through English and French cultures.
In our part of Africa there has been an over-concentration on the English side of
European life. Even the French side, which is dominant in other countries of
Africa, has not received the importance it deserves. We therefore urge for freedom of choice so that a more representative course can be drawn up. We see no
reason why English literature should have priority over and above other European
literatures where we are concerned. The Russian novel of the nineteenth century
should and must be taught. Selections from American, German, and other European literatures should also be introduced. In other words English writings will be
taught in their European context and only for their relevance to the East African
perspective.
15. Modern African Literature
The case for the study of Modern African Literature is self-evident. Its possible
scope would embrace:
(a) The African novel written in French and English;
(b) African poetry written in French and English, with relevant translations of
works written by Africans in Portuguese and Spanish;
(c) The Caribbean novel and poetry: the Caribbean involvement with Africa
can never be over-emphasized. A lot of writers from the West Indies have often
had Africa in mind. Their works have had a big impact on the African renaissance
– in politics and literature. The poetry of Negritude indeed cannot be understood
without studying its Caribbean roots. We must also study Afro-American literature.
16. Drama
Since drama is an integral part of literature, as well as being its extension,
various dramatic works should be studied as parts of the literature of the people
under study. Courses in play-writing, play-acting, directing, lighting, costuming,
etc. should be instituted.
17. Relationship with other Departments
From things already said in this paper, it is obvious that African Oral and
Modern literatures cannot be fully understood without some understanding of
social and political ideas in African history. For this, we propose that either with
the help of other departments, or within the department, or both, courses on
mutually relevant aspects of African thought be offered. For instance, an introductory course on African art – sculpture, painting – could be offered in co-operation with the Department of Design and Architecture.
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18. The 3.1.1.18 should be abolished. We think an undergraduate should be exposed to as many general ideas as possible. Any specialization should come in a
graduate school where more specialized courses can be offered.
19. In other words we envisage an active Graduate School will develop, which
should be organized with such departments as the Institute for Development
studies.
20. Conclusion
One of the things which has been hindering a radical outlook in our study of
literature in Africa is the question of literary excellence; that only works of undisputed literary excellence should be offered. (In this case it meant virtually the
study of disputable ‘peaks’ of English literature.) The question of literary excellence implies a value judgement as to what is literary and what is excellence, and
from whose point of view. For any group it is better to study representative works
which mirror their society rather than to study a few isolated ‘classics’, either of
their own or of a foreign culture.
To sum up, we have been trying all along to place values where they belong.
We have argued the case for the abolition of the present Department of English
in the College, and the establishment of a Department of African Literature and
Languages. This is not a change of names only. We want to establish the centrality
of Africa in the department. This, we have argued, is justifiable on various
grounds, the most important one being that education is a means of knowledge
about ourselves. Therefore, after we have examined ourselves, we radiate outwards and discover peoples and worlds around us. With Africa at the centre of
things, not existing as an appendix or a satellite of other countries and literatures,
things must be seen from the African perspective. The dominant object in that
perspective is African literature, the major branch of African culture. Its roots go
back to past African literatures, European literatures, and Asian literatures. These
can only be studied meaningfully in a Department of African Literature and Languages in an African University.
We ask that this paper be accepted in principle; we suggest that a representative committee be appointed to work out the details and harmonize the various
suggestions into an administratively workable whole.
James Ngugi
Henry Owuor-Anyumba
Taban Lo Liyong
24th October 1968
40. Blasius A. Chiatoh, Language, Politics and Educational Innovation in
Cameroon (2008)
18
This is a course for those who want to specialize in literature: 1st year – three subjects;
2nd and 3rd years – literature only.
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Section IV
From: Kenneth Harrow & Kizitus Mpoche (eds.), Language, Literature and Education in
Multicultural Societies: Collaborative Research on Africa (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars,
2008), 80-95. – Blasius A. Chiatoh is Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at Buea University, the only English-speaking university in Cameroon. In the following essay on
education in Cameroon, the author highlights the role of global languages such as
English or French in multilingual environments such as Cameroon and emphasizes
the importance of African languages in the education process.
Language, education and politics are certainly very closely interrelated issues. And
although politics dominates language and education by virtue of its overwhelming
power of decision-making, successful politics cannot take place in the absence of
systematic use of language in education, thus the need for adequate language in
education policies in a nation. The Cameroonian educational system is in dire
need of reforms. A close look at the educational system reveals that reforms are
influenced more by politics than by language. For while politics favours power
maintenance, genuine educational reforms based on rational language choices constitute a major threat to power confiscation.
In a highly multilingual and linguistically sensitive country like Cameroon, politicising language and or education has a great potential for reinforcing social inequalities and so becomes a major development handicap. The formulation of
educational policies based mainly on political rather than language and learning
needs is a manifestation of government’s non-recognition of the vital role that
language plays in ensuring learning effectiveness and its inability to respond adequately to the challenges of educational innovation. If we must render our educational system purposeful and resourceful, then we should admit that the question
of educational reform is fundamentally a linguistic one particularly with respect to
the first languages of learners.
It must become clear now rather than later that the adoption of a language
policy that guarantees maximal communication and learning opportunities in the
first languages of the learners is a major development imperative. Any educational
reforms must, therefore, take into account language and communication as preconditions for teaching-learning efficiency and effectiveness. [80-81]
Education Reforms and the Challenge of the 21st Century
In the 21st century, the cardinal considerations for planned change are written
communication in all domains. This means above all the need to reform educational systems given that education is the basis of planned and sustainable change.
Such change derives from the conviction of leaderships in shaping the attitudes of
target populations. In Africa, educational innovation based on language policy is
often complicated because most languages do not enjoy written promotion. This
means that language policy development on the continent is equally national language promotion in controlling domains particularly in education.
Within both government and non-government circles in Cameroon, there is
generalised lack of understanding of the importance of local languages in educational innovation. These languages are not equated with the Education For All
(EFA) guiding concepts like quality and equitable access that have become since
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151
the World Conference on Education in Dakar, Senegal (2000), the basis for assessing educational success. The EFA campaign goals adopted in Dakar articulate
around the following issues: expanding and improving early childhood care and
education, access to and completion of free and compulsory primary education of
good quality, equitable access to appropriate learning and life skills, eliminating
gender disparities and improving quality education especially in literacy, numeracy
skills and life skills.19 The achievement of these goals centres primarily on language-in-education oriented reforms for maximally productive educational systems. Within this framework, educational innovation is not just a matter of infrastructural and material concerns but above all, one of curriculum development
and pedagogical approaches and principles with the language of instruction being
central in the achievement of these.
Practices in Cameroon reveal that learners, at both the formal and non-formal
levels, instead of benefiting from language-in-education policy reforms instead become victims. Because the first language is not considered in educational innovation, the system complicates rather than facilitates learning. Learners are subjected
to the odious task of acquiring reading and writing skills in strange languages that
they neither understand nor speak, a situation that results in the stunting of the
cognitive and psychological frames of learners, thus reinforcing their subjugation
to linguistic, social, economic and political exploitation, dependence and domination. Wolff thinks that such practices reinforce social marginalisation, cultural alienation and economic stress and that they have both cognitive and psychological
negative effects on the development of the children when he observes:
Any educational policy which in consequence deprives children of their mother tongue
during education – in school and possibly even at home, for instance, by well-meaning
parents making fetish of English – and particularly in environments characterised by
social marginalisation, cultural alienation and economic stress as is true for many communities in Africa will, most likely, produce an unnecessarily high rate of emotional
and socio-cultural cripples who are retarded in their cognitive development and deficient in terms of psychological stability. 20
It is clear from the foregoing that decision-makers in Cameroon do not pay attention to the need for adequacy, purposefulness and cultural authenticity in the
formulation of educational reforms. By so doing, they have opted for underdevelopment and impoverishment by undermining the role of language(s) of instruction in the achievement of quality and accessible education. This view is shared by
Pai Obanya as captured by the words below:
An important educational and pedagogical point that is beginning to emerge from this
discussion is that language is a powerful element of quality in education. A logical extension of this point is that the quality potentials of language-in-education cannot be
fully harnessed if learning is not carried on with, in and from a language. Above every19
20
UNESCO, Education for All Global Monitoring Report (Paris: UNESCO, 2005), 29.
E. Wolff, “Multilingualism, Modernisation, and Mother Tongue: Promoting Democracy through Indigenous African Languages”, Social Dynamics: Language and Development
in Africa, 25.1 (1999), 23.
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Section IV
thing else, this is more effectively and efficiently done (in educational terms) in the
learner’s first language. In the Nigerian and the African situation, that first language is,
in almost all cases, an indigenous language. 21
Two important facts emerge here: First, that the issue of quality in education, and
that is the essence of any reforms or innovations, lies more in language and that
this is preferably the first language of the learner. Second, that in Africa, this first
language is in almost all cases, an indigenous language. But regrettably, the first
languages are the most excluded in the educational system in Cameroon. In other
words, if the first language of learners is fundamental in guaranteeing quality and
equitable access to education in the world, in Africa in general and in Cameroon
in particular, this remains the main area of educational deficiency and requires
urgent attention. [89-90]
Which Hope for the Future?
In this age of globalisation (the framework for modern development), the greatest
challenge facing African countries is linguistic and cultural development and promotion through planned integration of national languages into mainstream education and communication. This is in line with the African Academy of Languages
(ACALAN) process at the continental level, which aims among other things, to
facilitate the presence of African languages in new information and communication technologies (ICTs) and education. This continental vision is ideal for language policy development for Africa in general and for Cameroon in particular.
But this is unachievable if individual country policies continue to systematically
discriminate against and to exclude their national languages from controlling domains.
Undertaking these reforms entails recognising the devastating effect of globalisation on local languages as community attitudes are increasingly in favour of
foreign (world) languages. It also involves acknowledging that globalisation is
more of a culture and communication issue than a purely economic and or political matter. And given that cultural knowledge is the basis for modern development, Cameroon, with its rich multilingual and multicultural background, should
occupy the most privileged position in this era of globalisation as captured by
Skutnabb-Kangas in the following words:
we are no longer living in industrial societies. We are very quickly moving to
knowledge societies, to information societies and in information societies, the main
products are ideas and knowledge. In this kind of society, who is doing well? It is those
who have access to diverse knowledge and diverse information and diverse ideas,
meaning creativity, who do well.22
21
22
Pai Obanya, “Popular Fallacies on the Use of African Languages in Education”, Social
Dynamics: Language and Development in Africa, 25.1 (1999), 8-9.
Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, “Linguistic Diversity and Biodiversity: The Threat from Killer
Languages”, in: The Politics of English as a World Language, ed. Christian Mair (Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2003), 47.
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153
She argues emphatically that a lot of the elites in the world do not realise this and
so think that globalised markets require uniformity and homogenisation. But
above all, she stresses that knowledge societies require creativity, innovation and
investment, and in the case of education this means the introduction of people’s
mother tongues as languages of instruction. She further intimates:
knowledge societies require diversity and creativity. Creativity comes before innovation. (…) investment follows creativity and high levels of multilingualism enhance
creativity. Additive teaching leads to high levels of multilingualism and, therefore, a
type of education that does not lead to high levels of multilingualism prevents
creativity. (48)
Of even more importance here is the fact that for an education to enhance creativity, it must value not only multilingualism but also it should give priority to
people’s mother tongues as the media of instruction. This is the crux of the matter
and this is where our educational system has failed to respond to modern reforms.
This is where we need to focus in our search for an efficient alternative education
in the present era. Whether we succeed in the lofty goal of educational innovation
or not and thereby achieving social, economic and political development will be
determined by our ability to achieve mental independence through the adoption
of policies that effectively take into account our specific indigenous development
realities and needs.
Only by making our national languages the basis and the finality of learning,
can we provide that alternative education that is capable of producing the required
knowledge resources. This is the imperative for Africa in general and this is the
imperative for Cameroon in particular. [91-92]
41. Doris Lessing, On Not Winning the Nobel Prize (2007)
From: Doris Lessing, “Nobel Lecture,” December 7, 2007. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_
prizes/literature/laureates/2007/lessing-lecture_en.html. Copyright © Nobel Web AB
2010 – Doris Lessing (b. 1919) was brought up on a farm in what was then Rhodesia.
She moved to London in 1949. Some of her early fiction – such as the novel The Grass
is Singing (1950), the collection of African Stories (1964) and the novel Martha Quest
(1952) – owes much to her own African experience. Lessing maintained her interest in
the country of her youth and often visited and wrote about it (see African Laughter –
Four Visits to Zimbabwe, 1992). She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007.
She used her Nobel Prize lecture, as this shocking extract from it shows, to draw
attention to the parlous state of the educational system and the absence of books for
schools in Zimbabwe, a situation which, in spite of some recent progress, still continues.
I am standing in a doorway looking through clouds of blowing dust to where I am
told there is still uncut forest. Yesterday I drove through miles of stumps, and
charred remains of fires where, in ’56, there was the most wonderful forest I have
ever seen, all now destroyed. People have to eat. They have to get fuel for fires.
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Section IV
This is north-west Zimbabwe in the early eighties, and I am visiting a friend
who was a teacher in a school in London. He is here “to help Africa,” as we put it.
He is a gently idealistic soul and what he found in this school shocked him into a
depression, from which it was hard to recover. This school is like every other built
after Independence. It consists of four large brick rooms side by side, put straight
into the dust, one two three four, with a half room at one end, which is the library.
In these classrooms are blackboards, but my friend keeps the chalks in his pocket,
as otherwise they would be stolen. There is no atlas or globe in the school, no
textbooks, no exercise books, or biros. In the library there are no books of the
kind the pupils would like to read, but only tomes from American universities,
hard even to lift, rejects from white libraries, or novels with titles like Weekend in
Paris and Felicity Finds Love.
There is a goat trying to find sustenance in some aged grass. The headmaster
has embezzled the school funds and is suspended, arousing the question familiar
to all of us but usually in more august contexts: How is it these people behave like
this when they must know everyone is watching them?
My friend doesn’t have any money because everyone, pupils and teachers, borrow from him when he is paid and will probably never pay him back. The pupils
range from six to twenty-six, because some who did not get schooling as children
are here to make it up. Some pupils walk many miles every morning, rain or shine
and across rivers. They cannot do homework because there is no electricity in the
villages, and you can’t study easily by the light of a burning log. The girls have to
fetch water and cook before they set off for school and when they get back.
As I sit with my friend in his room, people drop in shyly, and everyone begs
for books. “Please send us books when you get back to London,” one man says.
“They taught us to read but we have no books.” Everybody I met, everyone,
begged for books.
I was there some days. The dust blew. The pumps had broken and the women
were having to fetch water from the river. Another idealistic teacher from England was rather ill after seeing what this “school” was like.
On the last day they slaughtered the goat. They cut it into bits and cooked it in
a great tin. This was the much anticipated end-of-term feast: boiled goat and porridge. I drove away while it was still going on, back through the charred remains
and stumps of the forest.
I do not think many of the pupils of this school will get prizes.
The next day I am to give a talk at a school in North London, a very good
school, whose name we all know. It is a school for boys, with beautiful buildings
and gardens.
These children here have a visit from some well known person every week,
and it is in the nature of things that these may be fathers, relatives, even mothers
of the pupils. A visit from a celebrity is not unusual for them.
As I talk to them, the school in the blowing dust of north-west Zimbabwe is in
my mind, and I look at the mildly expectant English faces in front of me and try
to tell them about what I have seen in the last week. Classrooms without books,
without textbooks, or an atlas, or even a map pinned to a wall. A school where the
teachers beg to be sent books to tell them how to teach, they being only eighteen
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155
or nineteen themselves. I tell these English boys how everybody begs for books:
“Please send us books.” I am sure that anyone who has ever given a speech will
know that moment when the faces you are looking at are blank. Your listeners
cannot hear what you are saying, there are no images in their minds to match what
you are telling them – in this case the story of a school standing in dust clouds,
where water is short, and where the end of term treat is a just-killed goat cooked
in a great pot.
Is it really so impossible for these privileged students to imagine such bare
poverty?
I do my best. They are polite.
I’m sure that some of them will one day win prizes.
Then, the talk is over. Afterwards I ask the teachers how the library is, and if
the pupils read. In this privileged school, I hear what I always hear when I go to
such schools and even universities.
“You know how it is,” one of the teachers says. “A lot of the boys have never
read at all, and the library is only half used.”
Yes, indeed we do know how it is. All of us.
We are in a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades
ago are questioned and where it is common for young men and women, who have
had years of education, to know nothing of the world, to have read nothing,
knowing only some speciality or other, for instance, computers. […]
I belong to an organisation which started out with the intention of getting
books into the villages. There was a group of people who in another connection
had travelled Zimbabwe at its grass roots. They told me that the villages, unlike
what is reported, are full of intelligent people, teachers retired, teachers on leave,
children on holidays, old people. I myself paid for a little survey to discover what
people in Zimbabwe want to read, and found the results were the same as those
of a Swedish survey I had not known about. People want to read the same kinds
of books that we in Europe want to read – novels of all kinds, science fiction,
poetry, detective stories, plays, and do-it-yourself books, like how to open a bank
account. All of Shakespeare too. A problem with finding books for villagers is that
they don’t know what is available, so a set book, like the Mayor of Casterbridge,23
becomes popular simply because it just happens to be there. Animal Farm,24 for
obvious reasons, is the most popular of all novels.
Our organisation was helped from the very start by Norway, and then by Sweden. Without this kind of support our supplies of books would have dried up. We
got books from wherever we could. Remember, a good paperback from England
costs a month’s wages in Zimbabwe: that was before Mugabe’s reign of terror. Now
with inflation, it would cost several years’ wages. But having taken a box of books
out to a village – and remember there is a terrible shortage of petrol – I can tell
you that the box was greeted with tears. The library may be a plank on bricks
under a tree. And within a week there will be literacy classes – people who can
23
24
A novel (1886) by Thomas Hardy (1840-1928). [GVD]
The famous novel (1945) by George Orwell (1903-50). [GVD]
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Section IV
read teaching those who can’t, citizenship classes – and in one remote village,
since there were no novels written in the language Tonga, a couple of lads sat
down to write novels in Tonga. There are six or so main languages in Zimbabwe
and there are novels in all of them: violent, incestuous, full of crime and murder.
It is said that a people gets the government it deserves, but I do not think it is
true of Zimbabwe. And we must remember that this respect and hunger for
books comes, not from Mugabe’s regime, but from the one before it, the whites.
It is an astonishing phenomenon, this hunger for books, and it can be seen everywhere from Kenya down to the Cape of Good Hope. […]
In order to write, in order to make literature, there must be a close connection
with libraries, books, with the Tradition.
I have a friend from Zimbabwe, a Black writer. He taught himself to read from
the labels on jam jars, the labels on preserved fruit cans. He was brought up in an
area I have driven through, an area for rural blacks. The earth is grit and gravel,
there are low sparse bushes. The huts are poor, nothing like the well cared-for
huts of the better off. A school – but like one I have described. He found a discarded children’s encyclopaedia on a rubbish heap and taught himself from that.
On Independence in 1980 there was a group of good writers in Zimbabwe,
truly a nest of singing birds. They were bred in old Southern Rhodesia, under the
whites – the mission schools, the better schools. Writers are not made in Zimbabwe. Not easily, not under Mugabe.
All the writers travelled a difficult road to literacy, let alone to becoming writers. I would say learning to read from the printed labels on jam jars and discarded
encyclopaedias was not uncommon. And we are talking about people hungering
for standards of education beyond them, living in huts with many children – an
overworked mother, a fight for food and clothing.
Yet despite these difficulties, writers came into being. And we should also remember that this was Zimbabwe, conquered less than a hundred years before.
The grandparents of these people might have been storytellers working in the oral
tradition. In one or two generations there was the transition from stories remembered and passed on, to print, to books. What an achievement. […]
My mind is full of splendid memories of Africa which I can revive and look at
whenever I want. How about those sunsets, gold and purple and orange, spreading across the sky at evening. […] There are other memories too. A young African
man, eighteen perhaps, in tears, standing in what he hopes will be his “library.” A
visiting American seeing that his library had no books, had sent a crate of them.
The young man had taken each one out, reverently, and wrapped them in plastic.
“But,” we say, “these books were sent to be read, surely?” “No,” he replies, “they
will get dirty, and where will I get any more?”
This young man wants us to send him books from England to use as teaching
guides.
“I only did four years in senior school,” he says, “but they never taught me to
teach.”
I have seen a teacher in a school where there were no textbooks, not even a
chalk for the blackboard. He taught his class of six to eighteen year olds by moving stones in the dust, chanting “Two times two is ...” and so on. I have seen a
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girl, perhaps not more than twenty, also lacking textbooks, exercise books, biros,
seen her teach the A B C by scratching the letters in the dirt with a stick, while the
sun beat down and the dust swirled.
We are witnessing here that great hunger for education in Africa, anywhere in
the Third World, or whatever we call parts of the world where parents long to get
an education for their children which will take them out of poverty.