Among the books on my dad’s bookshelf—a collection that nurtured me through childhood and adolescence, with its many perspectives of authors of colour—a couple stand out. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe changed my life when I was 17. And I still remember the day I picked up Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o's seminal classic Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature, after previously being dazzled by his 2006 novel, Wizard the Crow, which had entranced with its symbolism and portrayal of traditional African religion, the mythic intertwined in the narrative.Over a hefty corpus that includes memoir, novels, children’s books, plays, short stories and essays, Thiong’o has expanded the frontiers of post-colonial theory, critiquing capitalism and expounding on the power that comes from a deep connection with one’s mother tongue.Thiong'o first visited Aotearoa in 1984 when Decolonising the Mind was first published. When he visited again for the recent Auckland Writers Festival, more than 30 years on, I wanted to discuss with the writer who has personally always reminded me how to stay connected to my roots, how we resist colonisation while existing in a colonised country.VICE: Hi Ngugi. Can you tell me what you mean by “securing the base”?
Ngugi wa Thiong’o: Secure the Base: [Making Africa Visible in the GlobeI] is one of the titles of my latest books and is connected to decolonising the mind and institutions. What happens during the colonial process, whether in the case of Māori, Africans or Native Americans is that it is always a process of alienating the colonised from his base—his economic base meaning his natural resources, his political base which is no power in his own land and his cultural base meaning the disconnection to language.
By "secure the base" I am saying we must connect to our base in terms of those resources and return to our languages as a base. Languages carry the memory of a community and are a memory bank of our experiences in history. Once we connect with our languages, we can learn other languages as well.
For Māori I would say Māori language first, master it completely and then add English. That’s powerful! If you know all languages of the world but you don’t know your mother tongue that is enslavement. If you know your mother tongue or the language of your culture and you add all the languages of the world, that’s empowerment. So I am not talking about cultural isolation; no, I am talking about connecting from a strong base or strong foundation.Apart from returning to that linguistic base, what else can we do? In securing the base are we also going back to indigenous ways of being and taking it back to the roots?
The colonial process was a totality of taking away people’s land, taking away people’s resources and taking away people’s labour. The taking away of language was a means of cementing that power. When you are securing the base you are talking about totality economic powers and values where you relate to other cultures, other languages, other economies on the basis of equal give and equal take.
Now, there is no equal take or equal give between the coloniser and the colonised. The colonised give all the time, like Africa, the biggest continent on the world. Africa has been giving to Europe since the 16th century. Giving, although forced, still giving. Giving their body through slave trade, labour and the plantation. Africa is the biggest continent in the world, every resource you can think of can be found on the continent—gold, diamonds, copper, oil, uranium—but who controls those resources? What flows out of Africa is always more than what comes into Africa and this has been our story for centuries. Collectively we have to say no to that.
Talking about control does not mean that there is no exchange. It is exchange on the equal grounds of give and take. We make our own art, then we should be in a position to control the exchange of that art with other countries and cultures.In terms of representation, why do you think it matters?
Images are a part of the entire struggle. For example if you look at the narratives of Africa, in film, in books and so on, the way the African character is represented from a European colonial perspective is always associated with animals, under development and the use of the word tribe. I am on a warpath against the word tribe, instead of people. The word “people” is used to describe those who are modern people, you talk about English people or the French people or the Chinese people but when it comes to Africa it’s tribes. Now Yoruba people are 40 million: how come the Yoruba people are an ethnic group or tribe and a non-African country with four million are a nation? We are a people just like other people. Now we have internalised it, we internalise negativity, we editorialise ourselves through the editorial perimeters passed onto us. We must reject those perimeters.How we internalise these things ourselves really impacts us and that messaging pigeon-holes us. What is the best way to heal ourselves and to stop seeing ourselves as those negative things?
I keep coming back to the issue of language because every path returns me to the issue of language. I get asked this question by African-Americans and the Caribbeans, they say we lost our language, what do we do? African people in the diaspora their linguistic connection with Africa was directly and consciously broken. Speaking African languages on the slave plantain was banned and some people in the Caribbean were even hanged for speaking African languages even the talking drum was banned but European settlers maintained their linguistic connection.
You think specifically the case of black speech or Ebonics for instance, what have they given us? They have given us the spirituals that were sung talking about freedom and those melodies are still used and they are so powerful. They were created by that linguistic tradition to Africa and through it new languages were formed. They also did something else which is not often recognised, they articulated freedom and independence. Through the same linguistic tradition they gave us jazz, they gave us hip-hop and hip-hop is now all over the world. If you take that linguistic tradition and ask yourself what other language in the same period of time has managed to police a cultural tradition that has an impact all over the world.
At the same time black people are then told that the language spoken by their people is not good English, it’s bad English. Yet, it’s the same language that produced jazz, spirituals and yet you think ‘Huh, how is that bad English?’ Again the same process of linguistic disconnect. Everything comes back to the question of language and I am not saying language solves everything because they are also battles within languages but that return to our base is crucial.When you are raised in the diaspora there is this loss of identity and place and while there are people like myself who are fluent in their mother tongues, languages and culture they are also people out there in the same situation as myself, raised in diaspora, who can’t speak their languages. With such a disconnect how do we preserve our base and how do we preserve our identities?
I am actually glad you raised that question because it’s about not confusing the language of power with the reality of language. By that I mean in all countries there is language of power and if I am an immigrant to New Zealand I would like to master English as it is the language of power but if I could connect that to my language then I am able to connect to English as the language of power and actually I should be more powerful. It’s like we deny ourselves when our real power is taking our languages and adding to them and learning from other languages and that is real power. If I am an African American I don’t think of Ebonics as a lower language, it is a different signifying system. I’ve got to master the language of power so I can have both and I can be very powerful. And not to put them in a hierarchy.
Let me summarise it this way, monologism is the carbon monoxide of cultures and multilingualism is the oxygen of cultures so we don’t give up our languages for anything but we can add. That’s why I say to African people when they go to different places, they should understand the indigenous people of the country, their history and their language. If I was in New Zealand I would like to learn Māori so that way I can look at society through the perspective and eyes of the indigenous and that is very enriching.Follow Makanaka on Instagram.
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Ngugi wa Thiong’o: Secure the Base: [Making Africa Visible in the GlobeI] is one of the titles of my latest books and is connected to decolonising the mind and institutions. What happens during the colonial process, whether in the case of Māori, Africans or Native Americans is that it is always a process of alienating the colonised from his base—his economic base meaning his natural resources, his political base which is no power in his own land and his cultural base meaning the disconnection to language.
By "secure the base" I am saying we must connect to our base in terms of those resources and return to our languages as a base. Languages carry the memory of a community and are a memory bank of our experiences in history. Once we connect with our languages, we can learn other languages as well.
For Māori I would say Māori language first, master it completely and then add English. That’s powerful! If you know all languages of the world but you don’t know your mother tongue that is enslavement. If you know your mother tongue or the language of your culture and you add all the languages of the world, that’s empowerment. So I am not talking about cultural isolation; no, I am talking about connecting from a strong base or strong foundation.
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The colonial process was a totality of taking away people’s land, taking away people’s resources and taking away people’s labour. The taking away of language was a means of cementing that power. When you are securing the base you are talking about totality economic powers and values where you relate to other cultures, other languages, other economies on the basis of equal give and equal take.
Now, there is no equal take or equal give between the coloniser and the colonised. The colonised give all the time, like Africa, the biggest continent on the world. Africa has been giving to Europe since the 16th century. Giving, although forced, still giving. Giving their body through slave trade, labour and the plantation. Africa is the biggest continent in the world, every resource you can think of can be found on the continent—gold, diamonds, copper, oil, uranium—but who controls those resources? What flows out of Africa is always more than what comes into Africa and this has been our story for centuries. Collectively we have to say no to that.
Talking about control does not mean that there is no exchange. It is exchange on the equal grounds of give and take. We make our own art, then we should be in a position to control the exchange of that art with other countries and cultures.In terms of representation, why do you think it matters?
Images are a part of the entire struggle. For example if you look at the narratives of Africa, in film, in books and so on, the way the African character is represented from a European colonial perspective is always associated with animals, under development and the use of the word tribe. I am on a warpath against the word tribe, instead of people. The word “people” is used to describe those who are modern people, you talk about English people or the French people or the Chinese people but when it comes to Africa it’s tribes. Now Yoruba people are 40 million: how come the Yoruba people are an ethnic group or tribe and a non-African country with four million are a nation? We are a people just like other people. Now we have internalised it, we internalise negativity, we editorialise ourselves through the editorial perimeters passed onto us. We must reject those perimeters.How we internalise these things ourselves really impacts us and that messaging pigeon-holes us. What is the best way to heal ourselves and to stop seeing ourselves as those negative things?
I keep coming back to the issue of language because every path returns me to the issue of language. I get asked this question by African-Americans and the Caribbeans, they say we lost our language, what do we do? African people in the diaspora their linguistic connection with Africa was directly and consciously broken. Speaking African languages on the slave plantain was banned and some people in the Caribbean were even hanged for speaking African languages even the talking drum was banned but European settlers maintained their linguistic connection.
You think specifically the case of black speech or Ebonics for instance, what have they given us? They have given us the spirituals that were sung talking about freedom and those melodies are still used and they are so powerful. They were created by that linguistic tradition to Africa and through it new languages were formed. They also did something else which is not often recognised, they articulated freedom and independence. Through the same linguistic tradition they gave us jazz, they gave us hip-hop and hip-hop is now all over the world. If you take that linguistic tradition and ask yourself what other language in the same period of time has managed to police a cultural tradition that has an impact all over the world.
At the same time black people are then told that the language spoken by their people is not good English, it’s bad English. Yet, it’s the same language that produced jazz, spirituals and yet you think ‘Huh, how is that bad English?’ Again the same process of linguistic disconnect. Everything comes back to the question of language and I am not saying language solves everything because they are also battles within languages but that return to our base is crucial.When you are raised in the diaspora there is this loss of identity and place and while there are people like myself who are fluent in their mother tongues, languages and culture they are also people out there in the same situation as myself, raised in diaspora, who can’t speak their languages. With such a disconnect how do we preserve our base and how do we preserve our identities?
I am actually glad you raised that question because it’s about not confusing the language of power with the reality of language. By that I mean in all countries there is language of power and if I am an immigrant to New Zealand I would like to master English as it is the language of power but if I could connect that to my language then I am able to connect to English as the language of power and actually I should be more powerful. It’s like we deny ourselves when our real power is taking our languages and adding to them and learning from other languages and that is real power. If I am an African American I don’t think of Ebonics as a lower language, it is a different signifying system. I’ve got to master the language of power so I can have both and I can be very powerful. And not to put them in a hierarchy.
Let me summarise it this way, monologism is the carbon monoxide of cultures and multilingualism is the oxygen of cultures so we don’t give up our languages for anything but we can add. That’s why I say to African people when they go to different places, they should understand the indigenous people of the country, their history and their language. If I was in New Zealand I would like to learn Māori so that way I can look at society through the perspective and eyes of the indigenous and that is very enriching.Follow Makanaka on Instagram.