10 African authors writing only in African languages
KIRE, MAGÎTÛKORA, MAGÎTÛOROTA Mokire na mîtokaa mîkururaniona thuti hûre bathina iratû njiru ta ndumana thaa irametameta. Magîtûkora tumîte ibarûana mathîna maitû ng’ong’oona mîatuka itû magûrûinîNa ndangari iria tûîkîraga. Makîîarîrîa na thiomi cia rûrayamagîtûorotaga ithuî andû ethîmakiuga ati mîthiîre ituTi ûmwe na ûndûire witû. This piece is a Kikuyu poem both written and translated into English by the Kenyan writer Bryan Ngartia. It is generally a story by a poor rural young person criticizing the ‘They’. These are the learned elite who take pride in their origins and culture but blame the youth for abandoning their cultures without seeing their “motorcades,” “ironed suits,” “polished shoes,” “glittering watches,” and “foreign languages.” The poem silently bites at this habit which is quite common in Africa.’ Though I do not speak nor understand the Kikuyu language, it is good to see and read a poem written in an African language. It is beautiful to write in one’s local language. Writing in general is not an easy task, let alone in an African language. However, with the aim of promoting and preserving their language, quite a number of brave African intellectuals have distinguished themselves by writing in their local languages right from the beginning of their careers or shifted from writing in foreign languages to writing in African languages only. This piece pays tribute to these courageous authors, of whom 7 have passed. I- AUTHORS STILL ALIVE 1- EBRAHIM HUSSEIN (Tanzania: 1943 – ) Ebrahim Hussein is an iconoclastic Tanzanian playwright and poet. He is a leading member of the pioneering generation of African theater artists that rose to prominence in the revolutionary ferment of the 1960s and 1970s. He is also one of the best-known Swahili playwright, Tanzania’s most complex literary personality and a theorist whose dissertation on the theater in Tanzania remains the standard reference work. His plays are a corpus of theatrical material with great significance to an understanding of Tanzania’s political and social development in relation to the Swahili/Islamic coastal culture, of which he was a part. The Ebrahim Hussein Poetry prize is an eponym literary prize which is awarded annually since 2014 to the winner of the poetry contest under the same name. Follow this link to get the full list of his works. 2- PENINA O. MUHANDO (Tanzania: 1948 – ) Penina Muhando is a Tanzanian Swahili playwright, theorist and practitioner of Theatre for Development (a movement that sought to encourage marginalized people to use plays to engage in issues important to their lives within their communities and with experts) in Africa. She is one of the few female writers published in the Swahili language as of the late 20th century. She rose to become a Professor and Head of the Department of Theatre Arts at the University of Dar es Salaam. Her plays explore a variety of themes but are generally concerned with contemporary problems involved in Tanzanian society’s rapid adjustment to development and westernization. In addition to her plays, Muhando wrote several scholarly works in English dealing with Swahili literature, including Culture and Development: The Popular Theatre Approach in Africa (1991). She also appeared in the film Mama Tumaini (1986). Her work is generally distinguished by excellent characterizations and a natural, realistic use of modern standard Swahili. 3- NGUGI WA THIONG’O (Kenya : 1938 – ) Ngugi wa Thiong’o, originally named James Thiong’o Ngũgĩ, is one of Africa’s most important and influential postcolonial writers. He began his writing career with novels written in English, which revolved around postcolonial themes of the individual and the community in Africa versus colonial powers and cultures. As he became sensitized to the effects of colonialism in Africa, Ngugi adopted his traditional name and also committed to writing only in Kikuyu and Swahili after a one year imprisonment without trial by the Kenyan government for the staging of a politically controversial play. He is a perennial favorite for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the winner of an uncountable number of awards and honors. His popular Weep Not, Child (1964) was the first major novel in English by an East African. In March 2021, The Perfect Nine became the first work written in an indigenous African language to be longlisted for the International Booker Prize, with Ngũgĩ becoming the first nominee as both the author and translator of the same book. He is the author of 8 novels, including 3 in Bantu, 3 short story collections, 3 plays in English and 1 in Bantu, 5 memoirs, 10 other nonfiction books, 4 children’s books. He considers language as a key tool for decolonizing the mindset and culture of African readers and writers and wrote the following works in Kenya’s Kikuyu : II- AUTHORS WHO HAVE PASSED AWAY 4- SHAABAN ROBERT, (Tanzania: 1909 – 1962) Shaaban bin Robert, is a Tanzanian poet, novelist, essayist, and biographer, considered one of the greatest writers of the Swahili language. This great man is also known as the “Father of Kiswahili Literature” or “the Shakespeare of Africa.” Aside from their purely literary value in the development of written Swahili literature, his works provided an important link between the origins of the language among the coastal ethnic Swahili and its acceptance and usage in the broader East African cultural milieu. He promoted the development and popularization of the Swahili language, principally through the writing of more than twenty works of multiple literary genres that were widely read in the 20th century. He wrote tales and poems such as “Sanaa ya Ushairi” and lectured on poetry and its relation to Swahili culture. He produced an autobiography, Maisha yangu (1949; “My Life”), and a biography, Maisha ya Siti Binti Saad, mwimbaji wa Unguja (1958; “Life of Siti Binti Saad, Poetess of Zanzibar”). His essays were collected in Insha ya mashairi (1959; “Essays and Poems’) and his notable work is Kusadikika. His remarkable contribution to the promotion of Kiswahili literature was celebrated through two awards, including the Margaret Wrong Prize and Medal for African Literature. 5– DANIEL OLORUNFEMI FAGUNWA (Nigeria – 1903-1963) D.O. Fagunwa was a fiction and creative writer, born at Oke-Igbo (now Ondo State). He was a teacher and Yoruba
