THE SWAHILI DEBATES
Unit Paper for HIST 101000 The Historian’s Craft
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Complexities of the Swahili identity are due to the reality that its language and culture are not divided by nation states or oceans, but by centuries of engagement that has allowed it to adapt and evolve throughout East Africa and abroad. Thus, the language has developed regional differences as the dialect spoken along the littorals differ widely in terms of tone and writing from those of the hinterland who may have received less primary communication from outside forces. Before the wave of nineteenth century European colonization, people’s status was another significant factor to the language’s current diversity. Whether one was a slave, foreign merchant, or soldier, Swahili was absorbed and adapted, multiplying into further dialects and further blurring what could be a true Swahili. This amalgamation is detected within loanwords as Swahili itself was used by Arabs as a term to categorize those non-muslin Africans along the coast, not to the whole speaking community. In contrast, later European attempts to de-Arabicize and standardize the language, creating the modern Swahili definition applied to generally describe all the people of the Swahili speaking countries in Africa. As a response, Africans of the continent and of its diaspora during twentieth century civil rights movements have reclaimed standardized Swahili in attempts to purify and uncover an unsullied language and culture. The stakes of such endeavor seem almost fruitless as Dr. Mugane’s book “The Story of Swahili” notes, “it is impossible to undo the anglicization of the ILC.”[1] Moreover, there is no one clear identity nor unaltered Swahili because it exists as a hybrid culture and language that was too many times altered and claimed by other’s outside Africa. Although many attempt to trace cultures back to its origins, it is almost impossible to purify the Swahili because of the millennia of exchange it endured, both adopted and enforced.
Prior to colonization, the Swahili speaking country ranging 2000 miles along East Africa from Somalia to Mozambique and to its outlying islands, was a mecca of trade between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean. During the ninth century, Arabs from the Persian Gulf took advantage of monsoon winds, engaging with the Swahili by trading goods such as ivory, mangrove poles, and medicine. This frequent communication naturally led to influence between each other through culture and religion such as Islam and importantly through language. This is seen paralleled through the remnants of certain Arabic loanwords lodged into current dialects. For example, the word Swahili itself was derived from the Arabic word Kiswahili meaning coast, a term used more to categorize those African individuals living in within this area who speak this certain language. However, there was not an obsession of a single identity at this time because Swahili was not confined to East Africa, but spread to the people they engaged with therefore making “the ‘Africanness’ of the Swahili…equally stereotyped [during the colonial era], with literally hundreds of ethnicities behind the people who claim[ed] that identity.”[2] An Arab may speak Swahili, but isn’t a Swahili person as they defined it. Arabic influences felt for over a millennium were applied and marinated making it impossible to strip this reality away. Swahili was undeniably the language of commerce meaning that it served as being a middle man of the crossroads making it a mixed language in origin. Soon enough, the Portuguese came in the seventeenth century, settled, waged war, and was soon followed by other European powers changing the spontaneous and cosmopolitan nature of the Swahili to one that was involuntary and racially stereotyped.
Upon making their presence along the East African coast, the Europeans realized how deep the Arabic and Islamic forces within Swahili culture resided. In fact, “The Swahili viewed the European imposition of Christianity as an attempt to overthrow a Muslim way of life that they have cultivated for centuries.”[3] Colonizers therefore attempted to enforce their own language and to their failure, attempted to standardize this ubiquity through Swahili translated bibles, dictionaries and books. They recognized the resilience of the language in particular and tried to accommodate that of their language to standardize it to their ease for establishment. This yearn to homogenize the Swahili, a language that incorporates hundreds of different dialects not subject to one race of people represents their overall racial prejudice of the Africans. The question of the Swahili identity manifests once the Europeans make it a matter of concern. As previously stated, the Swahili speaking people understood that most people shared this linguistic skill and would therefore acknowledge another identity such as Arabic, Kenyan, or Tanzanian. To categorize the Swahili as African alone, the colonizers were able to impose certain stereotypes but the Swahili themselves “identif[ed] themselves by the locations of the various dialects of the language, centered on the towns and islands where they have clustered through the years.”[4]
Presently, there is an existence of Afro-Centric purifiers and renegade reformers who emerged primarily from the American Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. As a reaction to the colonial era standardization, they have taken the liberty of tracing back the Swahili language to a state of purity, free of the corruption of English influence. More radically, there are some who attempt to go further and de-Arabicize the language, similar to the European objective when they tried to impose their languages. They argue that “European ‘fidgeting’ with Swahili rendered the language unnatural and de-Africanized.”[5] In addition, they see Arabic and Islam as an intrusion to a language and culture that already existed in these areas. The problem with such endeavors is that they often find themselves in the predicament where they can’t ignore the clearly present pre and post-colonial influences. The standardized Swahili has now become a second language for most East Africans, and its population of authentic bearers wither in comparison at a ratio of 100:1. Although it can be difficult to go back to a raw Swahili, that doesn’t mean that its story of development is concluded. Since it exists as a hybrid language, susceptible to change under whoever practices its tongue, “the language will be continually [be] shaped and reshaped by the millions who use it in their daily lives.” [6]
The formation of the Swahili language is almost impossible to pin down, but one can’t deny that what makes it what it is today, is held in its cosmopolitan nature. Although many attempt to trace cultures back to its origins, it is difficult to retrain the Swahili because of the ever-present of exchange it endures today. It lives in areas where the traffic and its eminence make it hard not to absorb. The late twentieth century development of the internet and the digital age ring this reality even more true. If post-colonial reformers want to reclaim Swahili, they must accept that Arabic influence and standardized Swahili not only represent its globalization but its endurance. “To understand the identity of Swahili, one must view the geographical, social context, and spread of the Swahili culture,”[7] and uncouple it from being strictly African.
[1] Mugane, John M, The Story of Swahili, 2015, 223
[2] Ibid, 36
[3] Ibid, 194
[4] Ibid, 32
[5] Ibid, 223
[6] Ibid, 228
[7] Ibid, 46