Language and Colonial Power: The Appropriation of Swahili in the Former Belgian Congo 1880-1938

216 Pages·1986·6.21 MB·English

by  Johannes Fabian

Johannes Fabian

LANGUAGE AND
COLONIAL POWER
The Appropriation of Swahili in the
Former Belgian Congo 1880-1938
JOHANNES FABIAN
Professor of Cultural Anthropology, University of Amsterdam
Foreword by Edward Said
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley • Los Angeles • Oxford
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
Oxford, England
© Cambridge University Press 1986
Library of Congress Catalogtng-m-Publication Data
Fabian,Johannes.
Language and colonial power: the appropriation of Swahili in the
former Belgian Congo, 1880-1938 / Johannes Fabian.
p. cm.
Reprint. Originally published: Cambridge ; New York :
Cambridge University Press, 1986. Originally published in senes:
African studies series; 48.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-520-07625-7
1. Swahili language—Social aspects—Zaire—Shaba. 2. Shaba
(Zaire)—Languages—Social aspects. I. Title.
PL87(M.Z9Z283 1991
496'.392'0967518-dc20 91-15091
CIP
Printed in the United Slates of America
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
Amencan National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Matenals, ANSI Z39.48-19B4. ©
Contents
Foreword page vii
Acknowledgements viii
A note on names and orthography ix
Introduction ]
1 Prelude: expeditions and campaigns 13
Polyglotta Afncana 15
Swahili guides for the road 19
On the road: language and travel 24
End of the road 33
2 Questions and queries 42
A question of law and rights: language and the Colonial
Charter 44
A question of facts: language in an early government
survey 49
Responses from businessmen and administrators 53
Responses from missionaries and educators 58
A question of power: warnings from Katanga 63
Some general conclusions 65
3 Settling in: colonization and language 70
Missions, education and the oeuvre civilisatrice 71
Missionary linguistics 75
Religious and secular colonization: common ground 78
Language guides and teaching aids 84
Colonial language training in Belgium 88
4 Labor and language in Katanga 92
Labor in Katanga: a complicated story 92
V
Swahili as a symbol of 'reorientation': consolidation of
Belgian rule in Katanga 100
Swahili as a work-language: some structural detenninants 106
5 Talking tough and bad: pidgmization in Katanga 112
Missionaries teaching colonists 112
Colonists teaching colonists: a guide for farmers in
Katanga 114
The most common words in Katanga: a curious early
manual 124
Conclusion: no missing link 133
6 The end: illusions of colonial power 135
Swahili and symbolic power 136
Codified Swahili in the eastern Congo: an inventory
1918-38 142
'Improved Swahili': Union Miniere and A. Verbeken 148
A voice not heard: A. Mclignon and the 'rehabilitation*
of Swahili in Katanga 157
Notes 163
Bibliography 188
Index 201
vi
Foreword
Johannes Fabian's Language and Colonial Power is a work of very high
scholarship and of a particularly valuable cultural critique. In a way that no
other analyst of imperial practice has done, Fabian shows that European schol
ars, missionaries, soldiers, travellers, and administrators in Central Africa dur
ing the late nineteenth and early twentieth century used Swahili as a mode of
extending their domination over Afncan territories and people. The language
was first studied and characterized, then streamlined for use among laboring
people, then regulated as such fields as education and finance were also regu
lated. The novelty of Fabian's approach is not only that he shows how ideology
informs discourse, but also how the inflections deriving from history itself
from differing situations, and individuals affect the historian's perceptions of this
subject. A central feature of this book is that "the appropriation of Swahili" is
seen to be a constantly changing contest, occurring at the level of micropolitics
as well as at the level of international politics. This study is a fascinating, even
gnpping work that places the civilizing ambitions of Franco-Belgian colonial
ism in a much more precise, disturbingly demystifying light. Any student of
what has been called Africanist discourse, or of imperialism will find Language
and Colonial Power an invaluable and path-breaking work.
Edward W.Said
Old Dominion Foundation
Professor in the Humanities
Columbia University
vn
Acknowledgements
Recognition and gratitude are due to many persons and institutions. I can
name only some of them. William J. Samahn pioneered inquiries into the
social history of language and colonization in Central Africa (see, e.g., 1982a
and b). Personally and through his studies on the origins of Sango and
Lingala, two 'vehicular' languages whose history in many ways parallels that
of Congo Swahili, he has been a source of inspiration and encouragement.
Most of the documentary material I found in the library and archives of the
former Ministry of Colonies at Brussels, in the library of the Benedictine
Abbey of St Andries near Bruges, in the historical archives at the Royal
Museum of Central Africa at Tervuren and at the departments of African
languages and linguistics at Leiden and Cologne. The director and the staff of
these institutions have been helpful with expert advice. Fr R. Lamey, archivist
of the White Fathers in Rome, generously provided bibliographic and other
information.
Completion of the book was made possible by leave from the University of
Amsterdam spent at the Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin. I thank the
library and secretariat for help in completing the bibliography and typescript-,
and my colleagues for having been sympathetic and encouraging listeners to
these exotic tales.
Berlin
April 1984
V11I
A note on names and orthography
Writing on African history requires choices regarding nomenclature and
orthography. Selecting and imposing names and ways of writing them,
m fact, belonged to the exercise of colonial power over language. When the
Belgian Congo became an independent country, African politicians and
scholars began to restore traditional names and, in many cases, to intro
duce innovations appropnate to symbolize the end of colonial rule. This is
legitimate even if it disturbs geographers and bibliographers. However, to
employ current names would make it necessary constantly to refer to earlier
usage (which, needless to say, did not remain unchanged from 1880). So as to
keep confusion within bearable limits, I have adopted place and other names,
as well as their transcription, as they occur in the sources and during the
period treated in this study. No political offence is intended, therefore, when I
wnte Congo instead of Zaire, Elisabethville for Lubumbashi, Katanga for
Shaba, Tanganyika for Tanzania, and so forth. Ethnic terms and names for
languages are most of the time rendered without prefixes unless such a
modification is distinctive (as in Tshiluba and Kiluba, varieties of Luba in the
Kasai and in Katanga respectively). Language quotations from printed and
manuscript sources are always as in the ongmaL Their inconsistencies and
linguistic deficiencies often contain precious information.
IX