If we’re serious about Africa project, Kiswahili should rule us
Swahili enthusiasts during the flag off of a march in Nairobi, Kenya, aimed at creating awareness of Kiswahili being the first officially recognised African language by Unesco on July 7, 2022. PHOTO | DIANA NGILA | NMG
I started this series of connected musings by noting how Anglophone Africa isn’t as well equipped to understand Francophonie as it should be, followed that with the idea of four or more linguistic Africas and then took a detour to South Africa to acknowledge African-on-African violence and xenophobia in memory of the now-departed Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi.
Where does an Africanist land with all this? Luckily, Tanzania provides a possible answer. Bear with me. Like your own country, Tanzania is a completely made-up entity. It has a geography, borders within which there are matters of population: Who is a citizen and who isn’t, and how we distinguish between these two categories.
