The Challenge for Africa

by Wangari Maathai

  Even if another national language has been adopted, such as Kiswahili in the case of Kenya, the great mass of rural populations neither speak nor understand it fluently. It is my belief that denying someone the ability to communicate with their government, at least at the local level, is one of the strongest forms of discrimination and, indeed, means of oppression and exclusion.

  Most African elites speak and manage in a foreign language that's spoken and read only by a tiny minority and not understood at all by a large majority of their peoples. The elites communicate with each other in official languages, which are European, such as English and French, or national languages, like Kiswahili. Their grammar, pronunciation, and sentence structure are not at the level of a native speaker. However, since those they speak with are also speaking imperfectly, they don't know they are making mistakes. By and large, neither the elites nor the masses know each other's mother tongues, and rarely do we make an effort to learn them. As a result, we have a very limited reach in being able to spread our ideas, or listen to others’.

  For most people, especially in the rural areas, the local government representative is still the expression of the nation-state's government in their lives. If people are not allowed to communicate with, at a minimum, their local government in their own languages, it is almost as if they are living in a foreign country or being governed by a foreign power. Since they do not understand well, if at all, the official or national language, they are, in effect, completely alienated from the governance structures of their nation. This language divide is a crucial way of further distancing the government from its people. Throughout Africa, a country's managers speak to themselves, while those in whose name they govern don't understand them. The people may clap after they are spoken to by the person in authority, but for the most part, they haven't caught enough of what he or she has said to understand its meaning or relevance. If the nation is being run by a group of people that the mass of citizens can't understand, and when its leaders address only themselves, how can it move forward?

  Micro-nations should have the opportunity to communicate effectively among themselves, by learning in schools to read and write fluently in their mother tongues; likewise, the government at the local level should communicate with micro-nationalities in their own languages. If the micro-nations were allowed to speak their languages and be addressed in them as well, it would encourage patriotism and a connection to the government and indeed the larger nation-state.

  The Green Belt Movement has always insisted that the people participating in its programs be able to speak in their local languages. GBM's rationale is that because many Kenyans, especially those in rural areas with limited formal education, don't fully comprehend Kiswahili—and even less so English—they often sit silently when meetings are conducted in these languages. GBM staff wants to hear what the communities have to say and be sure that they can understand what GBM is saying, too. If no GBM staff member speaks the local language, someone from the community who knows the mother tongue as well as Kiswahili or English is asked to translate. Such a practice is still not common, even among those organizations doing development work, including NGOs, and indeed is some times criticized as “promoting tribalism.”

  Within Africa, one notable exception to the states' reliance on foreign languages is the Republic of South Africa, which has acknowledged its diversity by enshrining in its constitution no fewer than eleven official languages—including Setswana, Afrikaans, English, isiXhosa, and isiZulu. In doing this, South Africa has established a bedrock upon which it can build a multiracial society that both respects its diversity and encourages identification with the country as a whole. South Africa is at an advantage because it is a relatively wealthy country, and therefore can afford to have multiple languages taught and represented in official documents. Whether or not the cost of having such a polyglot state of robust micro-nations outweighs the intangible benefits of a country that understands itself may be difficult to say at this time, but I believe it is worth the wager.

  To encourage better communication among Africa's micro-nations, African states could decide that every child would study his or her own language in school until the fourth or even the eighth grade. This would enable them to read literature, or the Bible, in their mother tongue, helping ensure not only literacy, but also a sense of their identity through their language. In the higher grade levels, the government could mandate that each child learn one or even two international languages, as well as a language of one of the other micro-nations. In this way, each citizen would know their own culture more deeply, and also be able to communicate effectively with fellow citizens elsewhere in their country.

  In Nigeria, for instance, while four hundred languages are spoken, about half of the population speaks one of three: Hausa, Igbo, or Yoruba. So a Yoruba child in Nigeria could learn Yoruba well enough to read, write, and speak it fluently, plus Igbo or Hausa, the languages of the other major Nigerian micro-nations, or another, less commonly spoken language. He would also learn English. In Senegal, a child who grew up speaking Pulaar, the language of the Peul and Toucouleur micro-nations, could choose to study Wolof, the language of Senegal's largest micro-nation and the “lingua franca” of the capital, Dakar. She would also learn French and, if she wanted, English, too.

  In Kenya, I could envision a Kikuyu child choosing strategically to learn Luo, since Luos are the third-largest micro-nation (after Kikuyus and Luhyas). Since Kikuyus can understand the Kambas, learning Luo would broaden the mind and the cultural references of the Kikuyu child, so that she would be as comfortable in Nyanza Province on the shores of Lake Victoria as she is in Nyeri in the Central Highlands. Likewise, if as an adolescent or adult she walked into a market in Kisumu and found the majority of people speaking Luo, she would not feel out of place, even though she was raised as a Kikuyu. She could visit a local restaurant and order local food, and nobody would feel embarrassed that the food is not the sort served in Hilton hotels or in New York, but is native to the region—and as worthy a cuisine as any other. Her life would be enriched by the experience; the local community would understand that a Kikuyu had made an effort to understand their cultural and linguistic reality; and possibilities for mutual cooperation will have been enhanced. The same would be true of someone raised in the Senegalese countryside speaking Pulaar and spending time in Dakar; or a Yoruba from southwest Nigeria traveling to, or even settling in, the Hausa-speaking north.

  Smaller communities might be at a disadvantage, because children and their parents might decide that it would be more valuable to learn a language belonging to a larger micro-nation. This, however, might be an opportunity for greater political and linguistic coordination within or between micro-nations that could enable communities to join together to express their identity more effectively.

  If instituted, such policies in Africa have the potential to bind nations not merely through the promotion of national or official languages that people don't know well, but because self-confident micro-nations would develop, with their own cultures and languages. It is, of course, possible that wider knowledge of languages might encourage people to travel and settle elsewhere, which could, as it has in the past, lead to conflict with local communities; but it's also possible that a greater sense of self would make individuals more creative and confident within their own communities, and less likely to be hostile to outsiders. Indeed, this mobility could create greater cohesion, since members of micro-nations would not only be found in their traditional homelands. This could help reduce the ethnic identification, implicit or explicit, of many African political parties. Such “melting pots” of micro-nations are already the norm in African metropolises.

  A relatively inexpensive and direct way of communicating in Africa is through the radio. In the 1990s, many African states refused licenses to independent media outlets, including radio stations. They kept dissident voices out of the media or employed the state-run television and radio stations in propaganda efforts. Sinc
e then, as part of the (albeit often slow) opening of democratic space, the media have become notably freer and more diverse in Africa. State monopolies have loosened, and the Internet and satellite communication have created new channels for information and opinion.

  In my view, local radio is a crucial means for micro-nations to reclaim their languages and cultures, as well as to bring greater cohesion to the nation-state. Not only can people listen to national news and opinion, but increasingly they can find radio programming in their mother tongue. Some critics rightly point out that local radio can be used to promote hate and incite violence. This was the case in Rwanda in 1994, when Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines actively called upon Hutus to murder Tutsis and moderate Hutus. In Kenya in 2008, charges that they magnified ethnic tensions were leveled at local-language radio hosts.

  Distressing as these examples are, the answer is not to shut down this avenue of communication by closing all local-language radio stations. It is the attitudes of those speaking into the microphones in the studios that need to be addressed. National media codes of conduct and legislation banning hate speech and incitement to violence could be considered to ensure that these outlets are used to inform and explain, not for broadcasting the rants of demogogues and bigots. The danger, of course, is that such structures of governance could be used by the leadership to squelch dissenting voices, but the media could be proactive in this area: for instance, by engaging the government in a dialogue about the media's behavior, so as to avoid freedom of speech being compromised by too much government control.

  One individual who would have benefited from the expansion of local-language radio was my mother, who died at the age of ninety-four a mere three months before the first Kikuyu-language FM radio station opened. She would have loved to listen to that station—speaking to her in a language she would have understood. As it could for millions of other Africans, especially the elderly and those who do not have access to newspapers or television, it would have opened and enriched her world. That is what I would like to see happen for the millions like her across Africa.

  LAND OWNERSHIP: WHOSE LAND

  IS IT, ANYWAY?

  THE RATE OF urbanization in Africa is the highest in the world, with city populations doubling every twenty years.1 Sprawling cities and slums have gobbled up vast tracts of forest and agricultural land. Nevertheless, most Africans are still rural and directly dependent on the land for their income. In addition, many African countries have significant populations of pastoralists, most of whom can no longer migrate across long distances with their herds of cows, goats, sheep, or camels the way they did before national borders were established and land throughout Africa was bought, sold, and fenced. With the onset of climate change, arable or grazeable land is likely to become even more precious. According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), degradation of land is a serious concern in thirty-two African countries, and 65 percent of the continent's farmland has sustained damage.2

  Across much of Africa, landownership and distribution remain volatile issues. In many nations, colonial governments forcibly displaced large numbers of native Africans to make way for European settlers. When the colonial authorities arrived, they also brought with them a concept of landownership that was alien to much of the African continent. They insisted that land be controlled by a title deed, and when such deeds were bestowed, the authorities would provide them only to “the head of the household,” which was the man. Traditionally, land was owned not by an individual but by the family or the community. The new rules disenfranchised women, who no longer had a right to land but who, instead, accessed land at the pleasure of the father or the husband, whose name was written on the title deed. (Advocates for women's equality are challenging this state of affairs in many African countries, and as a result laws are changing.)

  At independence, land changed hands, but in many cases the details of those transactions—who owned what, who bought what, and how much of it—remain unresolved to this day. Land (the promise and the loss of it) has been a battleground—used, much like ethnic identification, by unscrupulous leaders as a way to gain political advantage. Over the past several decades, community-held and individually owned lands in Africa have been lost to a variety of forces, both man-made and ecological. Deserts have spread, topsoil has been washed away as forests and other vegetation have been cleared, and the land's fertility has been reduced through too many cycles of planting, grazing, and the application of chemicals. Much farmland has been subdivided into ever-smaller parcels as populations have grown and land has passed from one generation to the next.

  Governments, too, have assumed control over land, often displacing communities in the process, for infrastructure projects (some beneficial to the nation at large, some costly “white elephants”), to accommodate sprawling urban settlements, or for national parks and reserves. Many Africans today have too little land, and some have too much, often as a result of the colonial past. In 2005 in South Africa, for instance, 96 percent of arable land was still owned by white farmers.3 In Namibia, white farmers own around 50 percent of arable land,4 and in Zimbabwe, where attempts to reapportion land have riven the country for years, as of 2000, 4,500 white farmers still owned 70 percent of the prime land.5

  But it's not only the descendents of white settlers who control vast tracts of land—nor do redistributed lands always revert to small-scale farmers or the landless. Too often, prime lands in Africa end up in the hands of ruling elites or their inner circle.6 The issue of land distribution will continue to roil African nations until politicians stop using land as a political tool, and just settlements to controversies over land are agreed upon.

  POACHERS, CONSERVATIONISTS, AND TOURISTS

  The conundrum of land in Africa and its relationship to the economy, agriculture, and prospects for poverty reduction was brought into sharp relief in Kenya in 2005 when Thomas Cholmondeley, the great-grandson of Lord Delamere of Britain (1870-1931), shot to death Simon Ole Sasina, a Kenya Wildlife Service game warden investigating suspected poachers. A year later, he shot and killed a second man, Robert Njoya, who was alleged to have been poaching on his property.

  Lord Delamere was a major figure in the first three decades of British rule in Kenya. He controlled land, purchased from the Maasai for a pittance, that extended over hundreds of thousands of acres in the Central Highlands and the Rift Valley. Today, the family remains among Kenya's largest land holders; the Delamere estate—Soysambu—encompasses 100,000 acres, including a 48,000-acre wildlife conservancy. Since independence, the descendents of Lord Delamere have remained close to some members of Kenya's political elite. Although he was not charged with Sasina's killing, Cholmondeley was with Njoya's murder, and the case has fascinated Kenyans and Europeans alike, as it encapsulates the racial, class, and land divides that still grip parts of Africa, more than forty years after Kenyan independence—when Nairobi's main thoroughfare was changed from Delamere to Kenyatta Avenue.

  To the Delameres, the land and the animals on it are rightfully theirs, and trespassers on their property, whether those chasing poachers or poaching themselves, risk being shot. While the Delameres own beef and dairy operations, the income the estate generates from wildlife watching is considerable—an ironic reversal, given that many of the reserves established in Africa in the colonial area were set aside for white trophy hunters.

  Until Europeans settled and converted a great deal of land into commercial farms, wildlife across Africa was abundant. But as the human population has increased and commercial farming has expanded, wildlife has been pushed into national parks. The only people who can have wildlife on private land are those like the Delameres, who own huge tracts. They don't need to hunt these animals for food, and many have joined the conservation and tourism sectors.

  For traditional herders, separating land where their cattle, sheep, and goats can graze from wildlife reserves where they can't is an artificial construct: traditionally, in their micro-nations,
no one can “own” land that has been held as a common resource by all the community's members. For Njoya and those like him who are not pastoralists and who are living in areas where wildlife is no longer present, wild animals on a neighboring large-scale estate are potential food—either for his or his family's consumption, or to sell in the market. Bushmeat markets, legal and not, are thriving in Kenya, as they are in other parts of Africa, encouraged by demand from tourists who want to eat exotic game, and from the elites who emulate them. Njoya can neither afford nor directly benefit from conservation and wildlife watching.

  Njoya's experience is not unusual. Most Africans do not see wildlife in the same light as tourists do—if they see the animals at all. Indeed, many ordinary Africans who don't live near national parks or reserves see wild animals only in a zoo or safari park. Many fewer animals still exist where most Africans live than when I was growing up. Then, it was not unusual to disturb a rabbit or an antelope while walking along a path and see them run away into the bush.

  The tourism economy, while an important sector in a number of African countries, is often conducted at a remove from the African peoples themselves: the tourists arrive on planes owned by foreign companies, and often stay in hotels or lodges owned by foreign corporations; they exchange money at foreign banks and may be transported to wildlife reserves on buses or in taxis also owned by foreign companies. Few revenues from this sector reach ordinary Africans. The only local people who may make money directly from tourism are guides, or staff in the lodges, hotels, and restaurants that serve the tourists. After the private companies, the second-largest beneficiary of tourism are governments. If the revenues are managed well, of course, they will reach Njoya and his family in the form of services. Unfortunately, this is all too rarely the case. For Njoya, therefore, wildlife conservation is a foreign luxury.