The use of native languages conditions life and literature in the African continent
By Trifonia Melibea From Essen (Germany)
The language became an instrument of domination, as denounced ngũgĩ wa thiong’o in Decolonize the mind. On that issue reflects the author of the text, for which he approaches the Guineo, which is used in his native equatorial guinea. In addition, he approaches the literature of three African creators who have the Nigeriana Buchi Emecheta as reference.
The writer ngũgĩ wa thiong’o would take his hands to his head if he visited the continental region of Equatorial Guinea. Considered one of the Gurús of Self -Determination of Peoples through the recovery of their native languages, he predicted in Decolonize the mind (1986) that the effective independence of the countries of Africa would go through, among others, three phases: the institutionalization of native languages, the abolition of colonial languages and harmonization (reconciliation) of the minds decolonized with their native cultures. This emancipation alternative does not work in Equatorial Guinea. The country is immersed in a cold war that positions the Spanish Spanish language as a probable solution for social cohesion.
Black World commissioned me this article with a unique objective. The African people who write do they choose the native languages or those established by the old metropolis, which are also national in some cases? It was up to me to find the motivations of each author and author in the selection of the writing language. I have not done it. It seemed important to focus the text, first, on the specific use that the Guineoecuatorian population makes of the Spanish language to constitute itself outside of Spain and local political elites, demystifying W thiong’o.
And second, I consider that it is of the utmost importance to make a third way – femenine – in linguistic matters, based on the analysis of literature produced by three African and young women. This is Isabel Rope Mikue (Equatorial Guinea), Musih Tedji Xaviere (Cameroon), and Koleka Putuma (South Africa), three creators who dialogue with Buchi Emecheta, thinker and author of Delights of motherhood (1979), who published this work seven years before ngũgĩ wa thiong’o launched the emblematic work Decolonize the mind. The Nigeriana, writing in English, formulated very hard criticism against the IGBO tradition – its original ethnicity – and against British colonization, stating that her mind did not need a decolonizing process.
And I conclude, from the study of these works, that the authors question not only in what languages should be written, speak and decolonize the continent, which also, but in which of these it is worth mentioning – writing – about the right to the life of the black women of Africa.
We speak Guineo
Guineo -Ecuadorian families in the continental region – some river muni – feel stateless. They are holders of at least one mobile phone, of several contracts with national telephone companies and or with those manage to stop the powerful multinationals of Gabon and Cameroon. In the villages, families turn to locate the coverage zone: they have no choice but to kneel before neighboring countries. The consumption of the telephony network of environmental countries to communicate from cities such as Akurenam, Ebibeyín or Mongomo, with family and friendships residing in Malabo, Bata and other cities is not unusual.
The country’s island region faces, on the other hand, the powerful film industry – and musical – of Nigeria and abandonment. On one side, social and de facto integration on the island of Bioko contemplates as a main requirement the learning of Nigerian English –Nigerian Pidgin– and thePidgin English Fernandino Both tongues, spoken, constitute a rite of passage to be recognized as Malabeño or Malabeña, an identity that positions people in a modernity status before Guineoecuatory identity. The island of Annobón, on the other side, abandoned by the State, is more influenced by Portuguese -speaking countries and often lacks telephone connection, sea and air transport, and so on. The weakness of the State in linguistic matters creates tiredness, resistance, plus a deconstructed Spanish: the guineo.
The Guineo is a language framed in the line of thought of the Chinua Achebe writer. The Nigerian, in his large work, among which he is Everything falls apart, It contemplates that colonial imposition languages have been appropriate after independence, and so much, that they have acquired standards of the environment. Cristian Eteo, writer and activist, in a pending publication essay We speak Guineoemphasizes that «in equatorial Guinea, ethnicity has been instrumentalized at the political level. People need to relate, cohesive, so they have created and/or lent terms of ethnic languages and incorporated them into Spanish. The Guineo is a hybrid, guineanized, inter -ethnic. It is a Spaniard who claims the uniqueness of the country against more large ones such as Nigeria, Cameroon and Gabón, that surround us. A Guineoecuatorian person with the Guineo communicates, identifies, is done. It has its own accent and intonation ».
With just 28,000 km2 Surface, the Guineoecuatory population feels inferior to other countries in Central Africa. It has tied to Spanish as a survival measure. The fear is breathed, sometimes unfounded, that the surrounding countries could distribute their territory, marked by the indefinition of its borders. The island of Mbañé, occupied by Gabon for decades, does not predict a safe future, and constitutes an example of the collapse of the territory without public authorities capable of solving state problems.
The closest and recent linguistic resistance in the country to the position of NGũGĩ WA Thiong’o has its own name: Germán Paco Buika. Sculptor and poet, is the author of The poet’s song (Ë Rëppí Wallo), published in 2023. He confesses that he writes in the native Bubi language because it is his mother tongue, he is in danger of extinction and represents the diversity of the country. However, he confesses: “People take my work as a relic, an ornament, not as a usual reading book, and that should change.”
Necroeschritures in female
“We have to talk!” Thus would begin a conversation between the Guineoecuatorian writer Isabel Rope Mikue and the iconic defenders of the languages in Africa, including the philosopher Achille Mbembe with her work On the postcolony (2001). “Can we talk?” Isabel insisted. And speak in African languages, in European languages, in the languages that give life? In the languages that produce death?
Rope, who speaks at least four languages, supports the titles of his two novels in an native language: Fang. And moreover, the contents of his works are narrated in Guineo, in Spanish, sometimes he throws a wink to French, most of the terms are barely subtitled … Isabel denounces the use of African negative traditions (justice or To Kús) against women’s bodies.
Mikue’s second novel, The dance of sins either Abok-Missém (2022) describes a rite of purification. The clans expose the naked body of a girl who has been raped by a male family member to be reinserted in society, marking her life, her identity: she becomes a living corpse. And it is that the author’s mind is neither colonized nor neocolonized: it is pissed off. She is creator of stories whose reference – Buchi Emecheta – has fallen into oblivion and could be one of the first authors framed in African necro -writings in female.
The necro -writings, a term coined by Cristina Rivera Garza, are literatures that occur in environments of extreme mortality. In the case of Mexico, drug trafficking manufactures deaths, and in countries such as Nigeria, Cameroon or Equatorial Guinea, other powers, in collusion with the State – it is the case of negative traditions, paramilitary groups, extreme violence, civil wars -, kill. Necroeschritures arise to dignify life.
The protagonist of Delights of motherhood He has violated the rules of tradition. It dies alone, abandoned by families, and only honors a tombstone that venerates an Africa defeated by negrerera slavery. The continent aims to resurrect through the bodies of women, motherhood, “mother Africa.”
The tombstone in Delights of motherhood It becomes a pilgrimage space for women who want to be mothers: none achieves it. The Nigerian author, about a century later, reincarnates in the Cameroonian Musih Tedji Xaviere – in the photograph of the left – who publishes the novel These letters end in tearsand the plot, surprising, focuses on another tombstone, that of a girl who has been killed by her family. The protagonist’s body is buried in the surroundings of family home without a sign that he is found, and in a country, Cameroon, bled by a war that faces the Anglophone part with the Francophone.
Musih Tedji Xaviere, with a decolonial approach, writes in English. The readers of Great Britain – to quote some Anglophone and distant country – would hardly understand the universe in which the novel is set, which includes Pidgin EnglishEnglish, local music and central Africa, a performative approach that travels to South Africa, with the incombustible Koleka Putuma, author of Collective amnesia (2018).
Anti -racist and Africanist, the Putuma poems constitutes a challenge to the memory of the deaths of women who die daily in their country: deaths justified by carrying short skirts or being in the wrong place. The author attacks against the forgetfulness of the victims of the Apartheidof violence against women in the family environment and repression against feminism in Pan -African organizations. His work connects with Delights of motherhood Because the decolonial project, it maintains, controls feminist speeches that African women can or may not make visible.
The plot in Delights of motherhood He looks at a trial. The protagonist, who declares in favor of her husband, discovers that throughout her life she has rented her body, her motherhood and labor to a group of black men who, after independence, took power in the name of some traditions that only benefit them.
The reformulation of the decolonial agenda in Africa is a constant in the works of the authors of decolonized minds, and the languages, an instrument at the service of the rights of people – of women – and not an end in itself.
