Ngugi: Language and the African mind
By James Ene Henshaw Jr.
THE issue of language in African literature is deeply entangled with the continent’s history of colonisation, identity, and the struggle for decolonisation—not only of land and resources but of the very consciousness of African people. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, who passed on 28 May 2025, stands as one of the most eloquent and radical voices on this issue. His insistence on writing in Gikuyu, his native tongue, was not merely an artistic choice, but a political and philosophical statement—a call to liberate the African mind from colonial domination.
Ngũgĩ famously argued that language is not just a tool for communication, but a carrier of culture and worldview. In Decolonising the Mind (1986), he wrote, “Language, any language, has a dual character: it is both a means of communication and a carrier of culture. The domination of a people’s language by the languages of the colonising nations was crucial to the domination of the mental universe of the colonised.”
By writing in Gikuyu, Ngũgĩ sought to reconnect literature with the lived experience and consciousness of the common people. The success of Ngaahika Ndeeda (I Will Marry When I Want) was evidence of how language can make literature more immediate, accessible, and powerful for its intended audience. It was not simply about using a different code—it was about reclaiming agency over African narratives.
However, writing in native languages is fraught with practical challenges. Many African languages are oral rather than written traditions, with limited standardised orthographies, publishing infrastructure, or national literacy in those tongues. In multilingual countries, no single native language can serve as a unifying medium.
Chinua Achebe, while acknowledging the violence of colonialism, took a more pragmatic approach. He believed that African writers could ‘own’ the English language and shape it to tell African stories, “The African writer should aim to use English in a way that brings out his message best without altering the language to the point where its value as a medium of international exchange will be lost.”
Achebe did not reject English but rather ‘Africanised’ it. His novels, such as Things Fall Apart, are written in English but infused with the rhythms, idioms, proverbs, and worldview of the Igbo people. For Achebe, language was a tool to reach both local and global audiences—an instrument of cultural translation rather than domination.
The post-colonial experience has birthed hybrid forms of English, like Nigerian Pidgin, Kenyan Sheng, or South African Township English. Writers like Amos Tutuola, who penned The Palm-Wine Drinkard in heavily vernacularised (or Africanised) English, represent a different form of linguistic decolonisation—one that unsettles the boundaries of standard language and literary form. Yet, and rather unfortunately, such works are often marginalised in the writer’s own homeland and seen as folkloric or less ‘literary.’
This raises the question: is it the language or the gatekeeping literary standards—often based on Eurocentric notions of style and sophistication—that undermine these efforts? Ngũgĩ saw writing in a colonial language as perpetuating a colonial mentality—an internalised sense that one’s own language and by extension, culture, is inferior. He argued, “African writers who write in European languages are still living in the linguistic prison of colonialism.” But others contend that true freedom lies in writing in whatever language best allows the writer to express themselves. Writers like Tsitsi Dangarembga (Nervous Conditions) and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun) write in English, but use it to centre African voices and experiences powerfully. Adichie herself noted, “Language is the skin of our culture. We can wear borrowed clothes, but they do not define us.”
There is no single answer. The ideal may lie in linguistic plurality—supporting writing in indigenous languages, fostering translations, and embracing regionally-inflected Englishes. What is essential is the intention: Is the language being used to elevate, to communicate truthfully and authentically, and to challenge hierarchies of power? Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s legacy is not just in his linguistic choices, but in the questions he dared to ask: Who am I writing for? In whose language do I dream? And who gets to define what is literature? As African writers continue to navigate these questions, the struggle for the African mind—its liberation, its dignity, its imagination—continues.
Henshaw Jr. is the founder of James Ene Henshaw Foundation
