Recently, French studies at Wits University invited Aminata Sow Fall, a leading woman writer from Senegal, to talk about African literature, the issue of language and the state of French-speaking Africa.
When asked why she wrote in French rather than in Wolof, her mother tongue, she replied that when she began her literary career back in 1963, Wolof, the most widely spoken language in Senegal, had not yet been properly codified in the Roman alphabet. So she had no choice, she said. But she was quick to add that if she had not felt at ease in French, she would not have written a book.
Sow Fall’s response prompted me to revisit this burning issue as it is my belief that, to some extent, this debate also applies to English in Africa.
When most of the former French colonies became independent in the 1960s, it was a time of euphoria and great hope for the future of Africa. Less than a decade later, things were not going that well in francophone Africa. Neo-colonialism took hold of the economy and the political elites proved too greedy to honour the promises they had made at independence. A period of disillusionment followed.
The saga of Les soleils des indépendances (The Suns of Independence), a novel by Ahmadou Kourouma from Côte d’Ivoire, best illustrates this post-independence disenchantment. When Kourouma submitted his manuscript, it was refused by publishers in France and in Africa on the grounds that it was written in “incorrect” French. The manuscript was passed around until it was finally published in Canada in 1968. It became an instant bestseller and was subsequently bought by a prestigious French publisher in 1970.
Cheaper editions were produced for the African market and the book was read by millions of school children and is still being taught today.
What was revolutionary in Kourouma’s novel was the fact that for the first time a writer attempted to recreate the way common people in Africa really speak. Kourouma fused French with his Malinke mother tongue — French syntax and grammar were twisted and some words took on a whole new meaning. His language ignored basic rules. The style was exuberant and full of a raw sensuality.
Kourouma’s book showed that French wasn’t just the language of the former oppressors, that it was also possible to use it to serve our purpose and render our African experience. He demonstrated that the language belonged to us, too, and that we were free to use it how we wanted in order to communicate our reality.
Roughly 10 years later, Sony Labou Tansi, a Congolese novelist, poet and dramatist, came onto the literary scene to continue this linguistic revolution. His writing dealt with the rampant corruption and entrenchment of a decadent leadership. His weapon was political satire and his irreverence was also directed at the French language, whose conventions he deliberately broke, inventing his own literary aesthetics.
Labou Tansi had learnt French in a Congolese school where using his mother tongue was forbidden. He used to say that French was the language in which he was “raped”.
If it is true that the colonisers wanted to use French in the school system to make sure that they could impose a French linguistic and cultural model that would ultimately lead to assimilation, things did not go quite as planned. The French language has become a language in which Africans can express their own aspirations and fight for freedom. A language is at the service of whoever wants to use it, as long as it is seen not as an imposition but as something to be conquered.
Daniel Maximin, a writer and poet from Guadeloupe, says it is important not to confuse language and citizenship, to understand that the French language is not confined within the geographical borders of France. The French language is used to express many identities, from the Congolese to the Vietnamese, to the Canadian. There are more than 20 African countries in which French is the official language. Therefore, the question that remains is not why we write in French, but how we write in French.
Véronique Tadjo is a writer from Côte d’Ivoire and Head of French Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand.