Alamin Mazrui

The Power of Babel: Language and Governance in the African Experience

Part 1 Global Africa: language an drace in the black experience - an African perspective African languages in the African-American experience linguistic Eurocentrism and African counterpenetration - Ali Mazuri and the global frontiers of language language and the quest for liberation - the legacy of Fritz Fanon. Part 2 Continental Africa: language in a multicultural context - the African experience language planning and gender planning language policy and the foundations of democracy - an African perspective language policy and the rule of law in Anglophone Africa. Part 3 Regional case studies: dominant languages in a plural society - English and Kiswahili in post-colonial East Africa a tale of two Englishes - the imperial language in post-colonial Kenya and Uganda roots of Kiswahili - colonialism, nationalism, and the oral heritage the secularization of an Afro-Islamic language. Concluson: the linguistic balance sheet - post-Cold War, post-apartheid and beyond structural adjustment.

Dominant Languages in a Plural Society: English and Kiswahili in Post-Colonial East Africa

Within the regional constellation of languages in East Africa English and Kiswahili have been the most influential trans-ethnic languages. The sociopolitical dynamics of these languages, however, have varied from one country to another along three interrelated parameters: (1) the confluence of indigenous, Islamic and Western traditions; (2) the divide, in power relations, between imperial, hegemonic and preponderant languages; and (3) the difference in the sociolinguistic values of sentiment and instrumentality. In this interaction of social forces the languages have played complementary and competitive roles and have acquired both convergent and divergent functions. As the East African multilingual context continues to favor a state of polylingualism, English and Kiswahili have been struggling for greater legitimacy, the former by getting increas ingly localized and the latter by seeking universalist credentials.

The state vs. the academic unions in post‐colonial Kenya

In November 1993, the faculty of Kenyas four public universities went on a strike that was not officially called off until September 1994, in protest against the governments decision not to register their proposed union, the University Academic Staff Union (UASU). Despite many precedents from a number of other African countries, the Moi government has treated the idea of an academic union as an anathema to Kenyas body politic. Even after a long paralysing strike he has refused to submit to internal and external calls coming from the strikers, the opposition and several academic and nonacademic unions from other parts of the world, urging him to register UASU. If this unprecedented strike in the history of Kenyas academia showed the extent to which academics had underestimated the governments capacity to withstand the pressure of their collective action (academics had no contingency plans in case the government decided to stop their salaries or evict them from government houses), it also demonstrated the governments resolve to prevent academics from organising themselves into a trade union.

Language in a multicultural context: The african experience

Abstract The cultural interplay in Africa between indigenous, Islamic and Western legacies has given rise to four language types which we have described as Afro‐ethnic, Afro‐Islamic, Afro‐Western and Western. After providing a working definition of these types, we proceed to look at their average tendencies and characteristics in the areas of writing, geographical spread, demographic distribution and functional value. For a while these types existed in relative distributive and functional complementarity within the continental constellation of languages. However, new economic, political and cultural forces have acted in concert to infuse a spirit of linguistic competition in social domains, roles and functions and in creating new sociolinguistic dynamics and formations. In the process Afro‐Islamic languages have become secularised after passing through an ecumenical stage, while, among the Western languages, English has continued to expand its hold on the African continent in general. And as western techn...