Did colonialists use language to achieve their ultimate goal?

Editor, RE: “Rwanda prospers because we are not good at foreign languages” (The New Times, February 1). Interesting hypothesis, but wait, Rwanda has always had that problem. Assuming it is a positive correlative of your development from when do you trace the kick-starting of the process? Imboko Ndiranga ****************************** I see nothing wrong with Mr (Lonzen) Rugiras hypothesis of the critical role of language in promoting a peoples shared culture which is itself a necessary base for development. This may in fact explain the reason most Asian countries, with populations of very poor speakers of foreign languages (think Japan, Korea, China, Vietnam, Thailand, etc., where the overwhelming majority speak only their own languages, are very insular and extremely devoted to their own languages and other aspects of their cultures), have done so much better than any African country (all of which our colonial masters did all in their tyrannical power to turn into their own carbon copies linguistically, often going to extreme lengths to punish any schoolchildren who dared speak their mother tongue in school) in all fields of human development. The result in many African countries was to turn our people into half-baked English, French or Portuguese; half-baked because while their attachment to their own indigenous culture and knowledge was severed, they never quite acquired sufficiently deep knowledge and understanding of their colonizers culture and value systems to be able to operate fully as them – thus were our societies turned into collectivities of the culturally handicapped and very poor agents of our own societies transformation. One might legitimately wonder whether this wasnt in fact the exact purpose. As I have already noted in this paper, Rwandans recognize this colonial project in the saying Kiliziya yakuyeo kirazira; a recognition of the fact that, in order to facilitate the evangelization of the country and to pacify it in order to make it more amenable to colonial rule, the Church, helped by the colonial power, worked hard to destroy the taboo system that was the foundation of Rwandas centuries old culture. They both succeeded and failed in this goal. The fact Rwanda already had a common language meant that, unlike in many other multi-language African countries, the implantation of the colonizers’ own language – the words and grammar shorn of the associated culture – did not succeed much beyond a very minute elite (les évolués). The colonizers were also in the country for not more than one generation – too short a time to ensure permanent linguistic and cultural damage as has happened in other African countries. But language, culture, the political economy and every other walk of life are intimately entwined everywhere. Just re-read, if you will, George Orwells seminal essay, Politics and the English Language, examining the debasement of language, the overuse of euphemisms (frequent reference in contemporary times to such weasel terms as collateral damage instead of the more correct ‘wanton killing of innocent people’ in widespread and illegal bombing of civilian centres in countries with whom the bombing country is not even at war, or enhanced interrogation techniques rather than the more correct word torture in order to somehow escape the legal jeopardy of engaging in internationally proscribed behaviour). Orwell condemned such ugly and inaccurate use of the English language, aimed at ... softening or disguising reality; helping to pass off ugly policies, and designed to make lies truthful and murder respectable, as well as giving an appearance of solidity to pure wind... Yes, Mr Rugiras opinion on language, culture and development has a ring of truth to it. Mwene Kalinda

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Did colonialists use language to achieve their ultimate goal?