English is an African language – Ka Dupe! [for and against Ngũgĩ]

Decolonising the Human

“…Wa Thiong'o's confronting of the linguistic dis-memberment of being is a decades-long fight against linguistic Darwinism and feudalism in colonial Africa, one that can be traced from his early student years to the 1962 Makerere Conference of African Writers of English Expression, in Kampala, Uganda (Wali 1963), where he participated in the deliberations on African literature. This fight was followed by several books and essays in which wa Thiong'o chose to be faithful to his language (see wa Thiong'o 2006), despite facing opposing views from other African scholars like Chinua Achebe (1975Achebe ( , 1978Achebe ( , 1989, Léopold Sédar Senghor (1962), Wole Soyinka (1988), Gabriel Okara (1970) and Biodun Jeyifo (2018). Wa Thiong'o's call to decolonise language led him, in 1968, to become actively involved in the intellectual struggles to transform the English Department at the University of Nairobi in Kenya, a department that remained colonial in content and structure.…”

“…The advocacy to have African literature written in an African language comes from the observation that 'creative imagination is one of the greatest of re-membering practices' of a dis-membered being and of marginalised bodies (wa Thiong'o 2009, 16). Language is more than a communication system; it is a carrier of memory, a point that eluded Biodun Jeyifo (2018) in his critique of wa Thiong'o. The critique is based on issues of linguistic and communicative competence, and on 'what … a would-be African writer [should] do who wishes to write in the indigenous mother tongue but whose language neither has a writing script nor print capitalism of even an embryonic form' (Jeyifo 2018, 143).…”

Beyond the Dead End: Gikuyus and Englishes in Colonial and Postcolonial Debates on Language and Decolonizing (Kenya)

“…These debates continue to engage African authors, like Wole Soyinka, Mazisi Kunene, Cheikh Aliou Ndao, Penina Muhando Mlama, Sahle Selassie -to mention a few -with a recent exchange in the Journal of African Cultural Studies: Ngũgĩ holding onto his position (Ngũgĩ 2018) and Nigerian Biodun Jeyifo maintaining that "English is an African language", adding "Ka Dupe! ", a Yoruba expression of gratitude (Jeyifo 2018).…”