Uganda: Which Dialect of Kiswahili for Uganda's Schools?

The July 4, 2022 recommendation by Uganda's cabinet ministers on teaching Kiswahili as a compulsory subject in Uganda's primary and secondary schools was a surprise to many of us. This is because it immediately sparked off yet another series of discussions on what kind of Kiswahili would be used in schools.

Since we are in the era of social media, for almost 10 days or so of intense tugs of war (between the advocates of the new cabinet's position on Kiswahili and others), I experienced such discussions in high gears within and outside academic platforms. This made me think that probably discussions of the sort also happened in 1992 following the government's similar recommendation to teach Kiswahili as a compulsory subject in primary and secondary schools.

Nonetheless, whether such discussions happened in 1992 or not, the key concern that we can always interest ourselves in, should be: since Kiswahili is formally being taught in Uganda since 1992, how come concerns on which dialect of this language to be used in schools only surfaces 30 years later (i.e., in 2022)?

Well, had I known that in July 2022 I would experience a series of discussions on the dialect of Kiswahili to be emphasised in schools, probably, one of my recent articles "(Re)considering Haugen's model in the teaching and learning of standard Kiswahili in Uganda" would have been written differently.

Anyway, it should be emphasized that Kiswahili is a dialectal language with variations in use just like any other language (e.g., Chinese, English or Luganda). Since Kiswahili is among the non-native languages of Uganda, the Arabs who brought it from different geographical areas along the East African coastal societies and surrounding islands, spoke different dialects/varieties of this language.

In fact, even when the Europeans arrived in present-day Uganda, they also spoke it differently based on the dialect/variety used by the societies (either on the East African coast or inland ones) they came into contact with first before reaching Uganda. Indeed, when the different groups of European missionaries established schools in Uganda, they also emphasized the Kiswahili dialects/varieties that each missionary group knew.

Relatedly, the books of the Kiswahili language as written by these missionaries also exhibited a different Kiswahili dialect/variety as used by respective authors/researchers. Thus, the existence of several Kiswahili dialects in schools mainly across the then East African region (Kenya, Tanganyika, Zanzibar), led to the formation of the inter-territorial language (Kiswahili) committee in 1930. In the beginning, this committee was composed of only Europeans.

Its main purpose was to standardise and promote a single Kiswahili dialect across the region for mainly educational purposes. To a larger extent during its life span (1930-1964), the committee succeeded in promoting the selected single dialect, (i.e., the Kiswahili dialect, as used in Zanzibar) mainly in the production of scholastic materials (e.g., textbooks).

However, after its 'collapse' in 1964, each country began to independently, establish similar Kiswahili committees in form of councils (in Tanganyika and Zanzibar) or teachers' associations (in Kenya).

Unfortunately, for mainly unknown reasons, the newly established councils opted to divergently promote different Kiswahili dialects to suit the needs of their respective countries. For example, as Zanzibar promoted the Kiswahili Fasaha, Tanganyika (Tanzania mainland) developed further Kiswahili Sanifu. Probably, due to the absence of a national Kiswahili council to regulate and promote a particular dialect in Kenya, the rise of Sheng in this country was unavoidable.

Nonetheless, in Uganda, such councils or even teachers' associations were never established by then. Due to non-pedagogical reasons, Kiswahili had been completely ejected from the country's education systems by 1952. Since then, for so long, Kiswahili remained the language of instruction in the army and police schools by using the dialect/variety of this language best known to themselves.

This was the status quo of Kiswahili in Uganda's education systems until 1992 when it was reinstated in the mainstream schools, as indicated in the initial paragraphs of this writeup. It should be noted that following the formal reinstatement of Kiswahili in 1992, there has been, for instance, no policy provisions, statements or directives stating the dialect of Kiswahili to be used in Uganda's schools.

This suggests that the Kiswahili dialects/varieties used in Uganda's school are determined, for example, by the (i) conventions on which books of Kiswahili language as used in schools (or programmes and examinations); (ii) the dialect that a particular teacher of Kiswahili was exposed to while in schools or in the teacher training institutions; (iii) the dialect in which a particular teacher grew up using and (iv) a combination of all the aforementioned factors.

Since 2015, the East African Kiswahili Commission has been functional. This commission is an institution of the East African Community. The commission's strategic plan (2017-2022) outlines its primary mandate being that of coordinating and promoting the development and use of Kiswahili in the East African Community partner states. One of the ways to implement its mandate is by working closely with Kiswahili councils in different member states.

Thus, for the commission to be supported in sufficiently fulfilling its mandate, there is a need for Uganda to establish its national Kiswahili council. The council will be in a position to legally determine the Kiswahili dialect and issue provisions that should be advanced by the country or in schools per se.

Otherwise, in the absence of the council or the aforementioned provisions, concerns and discussions on which Kiswahili dialect is to be considered in Uganda's schools will never cease.

The writer is a lecturer (Kiswahili Pedagogues and Materials Development) in the department of Humanities & Language Education, College of Education and External Studies at Makerere University.

Uganda: Which Dialect of Kiswahili for Uganda's Schools?

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