CLAIMS OF UGANDA DISLIKE OF KISWAHILI DENIED

 

BY GRACE MACHA IN ARUSHA

Claims that Ugandans are apprehensive on embracing Kiswahili are not true, the country's minister has said.

On the contrary, the country has been using the language since the early 1900s and was set to mark the second World Kiswahili Day on Friday July 7th.

"Kiswahili is doing well in Uganda not only as a medium of communication but also in unifying people", said James Magode Ikuya, the minister of State of East African Community (EAC) Affairs.

He added that a perception that Kiswahili had no place in Uganda was a mere rhetoric contrary to the reality on the ground.

Mr. Ikuya was speaking at Namanga border town during the launch of a peace caravan across East Africa organized by the EAC.

He downplayed a popular saying that the language was born in Zanzibar, grew in the Mainland, fell sick in Kenya and buried in Uganda.

"This is just a joke. I don't know where it came from but whoever came up with it had no good intentions", he said.

Mr. Ikuya said  it was not by mistake that the regional leaders elevated to an official language of the EAC from the lingua franca status.

Kiswahili, he pointed out, was the best medium of communication among diverse communities in the region, especially those living in border areas.

These include the pastoralist communities living in the remote zones, often impacted by conflicts over the grazing land.

The state minister said Tanzania and Kenya were not the only countries in the EAC  region where Kiswahili has been fully embraced.

"I was in Burundi two months ago for a peace workshop. Wanafanya vizuri sana huko (The language is doing well there)", he said during the launch.

But the outspoken minister who addressed the gathering with humour at the shared border post was soon to cause laughter to the audience.

"What has happened to Kiswahili in Uganda? We need to  enhance communication in Kiswahili", he  paused, knowing too well the reality on the ground.

Although Kiswahili was last year elevated to an official language of the Community, it has been recognized as the lingua franca since the year 2000.

However, Uganda has been wrongly or rightly seen as a pariah state in the promotion of the language which emerged as a common form of communication in the region for the past 100 years.

Even with the political support and introduction in the school curriculum, many Ugandans are to date not able to speak the language.

The first attempt to popularize the language was made by the then governor in 1903 when he ordered the teaching of Kiswahili in schools.

Other directives made by successive colonial and independence era governments were shattered as they remained in paper.

Kiswahili was to get a boost with the entry to power of the NRM government of President Yoweri Museveni in the 1980s.

Despite the policy guidelines - especially the teaching of Kiswahili in schools and use as an official language - observers say much has remained in paper.

The minister admitted that there were some challenges but said this would soon become history given the growing status of the language regionally and internationally.

Currently it is estimated that Kiswahili has more than 200 million speakers in the world and is the national language of Tanzania and Kenya.

The need for a language as a medium of communication was apparent at the Namanga ceremony where speakers were compelled to speak in the vernaculars.

In Tanzania, as the country marks its second World Kiswahili Day tommorrow, calls have been made for the media to spearhead the process.

A scholar Prof Kitila Mkumbo said  on Tuesday that Kiswahili should graduate from being a medium of communication to a language of business and diplomacy.