Who owns Kiswahili, really?

Sometimes back in Dodoma, retired President Jakaya Kikwete made a light moment when he repeated the old joke that “Kiswahili was born in Zanzibar, grew up in Tanzania, fell sick in Kenya, died in Uganda and was buried in Congo”.

He was addressing a press conference, and someone from a neighbouring country could not speak Kiswahili. In future, we may see less and less of those scenes, as circumstances will force employees and the business community to learn Kiswahili and be able to speak and write it.

In the past, Tanzanians have been known for their smooth mastery of the Kiswahili language, and could be identified in the neighbouring countries simply because of how one spoke the language. On the other hand, Kenyans, Ugandans, and Congolese were generally said to speak “very bad” Kiswahili.

But slowly and surely, the language, instead of going to the land of the dead, it has become more and more alive, across multiple African countries and beyond. In a nutshell, anyone who says that Kiswahili is going global, it is a factual statement.

If you Google search universities teaching Kiswahili outside Africa, they are numerous. Our biggest complaint is that how come “Bongo”, we are the owners of the language, but it is Kenyan Kiswahili experts who get jobs for teaching the language abroad! I don’t know how true or false the claims are!

Yes, once upon a time, it was merely a native language of the Swahili people in the coast of Indian Ocean. Today, it is the most widely spoken language in Africa. Some data indicate over 150 million people use Kiswahili language for communication, making it the most powerful lingua franca in Africa and beyond.

In the history lane, after independence, Tanzania was fragmented in as far as languages were concerned, with over 120 tribes, each, with its own unique, and proud lingo. Founding President, who is also the Father of the Nation, Mwalimu Julius K. Nyerere, made it a deliberate policy to unite the country using Kiswahili, and he was greatly successful.

Today, we can truly say that we are a Swahili nation, as in every corner of the country you will find people communicating in the lingo.

Mwalimu Nyerere made Kiswahili also the language of Africa’s liberation struggle. Soldiers from almost every corner of Africa that came for training in Tanzania, most of them became fluent in Kiswahili.

Mzee Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya also promoted Kiswahili and moved quickly to make it a national language. Iddi Amin of Uganda also made it the language of the security forces in Uganda.

“Kiswahili is already in use in various communities including the East African Community (EAC), the Southern African Development Community (Sadc),” Vice-President Philip Mpango reminded us. He was addressing the 2nd Congress of World’s Kiswahili Services, which took place in Arusha last week and brought together international media outlets that use Kiswahili.

Sometimes back, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) declared July 7 as the World Kiswahili Language Day. Most likely, the nations, the people who will own the language in the future, are the ones who will showcase themselves most.

Tanzania has been the de-facto owner of Kiswahili for a long time. Tanzanian born Kiswahili writers have ruled the world of Swahili literature for a long time, but in recent years, we have seen others coming up from different nations.

It is high time as a nation we put in place plans on how Tanzanians will benefit from globalisation of Kiswahili language.

If as a nation we don’t take necessary steps, then in future, when we find out some business people patented some Kiswahili words, like “Mafuta ya Nazi,” “Khanga,” “Sembe” and so on, we should never say that we were not warned.