and in royal praises in the form of izibongo, which are still very much cherished, particularly in Mzimba district. We might take Carol Eastman's (1990) argument that when a first language functions socially it tends to become part of one's ethnic identity regardless of whether it is used at all, or only used in particular domains.It is possible from this that some Ngoni by origin may have claimed to use Chingoni as a way of identifying themselves socially, when in fact they may not speak the original Ngoni or Zulu language at all. It is not uncommon for those who hail from Mzimba district to recite theirzithakazeloparticularly on social occasions, despite the fact that their original Ngoni or Zulu has now been absorbed by the use of Chitumbuka.
Homburg hat, walking stick, and an African medicineman's fly whisk, communicate to an audience?
~phande, 1996:81)
From the above picture, Banda is introduced as an enigma whose origins are shrouded in mystery, and his personality fraught with contradictions that arise from conflict within himself And this mirrors his contradictory statements pertaining to language policy statements, which he invariably, almost unilaterally whimsically decided upon and executed. In Shakespear's The Tempest, Caliban makes a claim to patrimony that 'This island is mine Sycurax my mother.' Banda would claim no less a line of succession, as he chose for expropriation aspects of the Chewa matriIeniaI social structure that were crucial for the control of land inheritance and language statements that he enforced. His nation state thus provided a platform from which to appropriate useable features of the national cultural landscape. For him the country was like his own estate, synonymous with himself. Banda was Malawi and Malawi could not be without him. Mchombo (forthcoming:08) makes this observation of the man: 'A very nationalistic Chewa, this is Kamuzu Banda who became the first president of independent Malawi and an autocratic ruler at that.'
With Mphande (1996) above, we see that Banda passionately adored everything English and European. His thirty-year rule of Malawi, 1964-1994, forged an African autocracy, shaped along the lines typical of Hitler, Mussolini and Generals Franco of Spain and de Gaulle of France. He created an oppressive regime of institutional structures which ensured a strict enforcement of Chewa culture. On 21 September 1968, Banda changed the country's national policy, making English the official language and Chinyanja, the national language. A presidential decree at the Annual Convention of the Malawi Congress Party, which was then the only political party, resolved that: •
1. Malawi adopt Chinyanja as the National language u. The name Chinyanja henceforthbeKnown as Chichewa
lll. Chichewa and English be the official languages of the state of Malawi and all other languages should continue to be used in everyday private life and in their respective areas.
We have observed in chapter two that the purpose of language planning with its by- product of formulating language policies is essentially a conscious effort aimed at solving communication problems. Ostensibly, it was not intended to relegate other ethnic groups with their languages and their cultures into lower statuses where their languages only become village languages of tribal identity. As in all African states, the selection or elevation of indigenous languages in Malawi hasbecome a thorny and contentious issue.
Inchanging the name of the proclaimed national language from Chinyanja to Chichewa, Banda claimed that the word was introduced by Europeans in the country. Obviously this was inaccurate. Inthe first place,Nyanjais not a European word and the early Portuguese explorers knew very little of local languages, if any. Earlier in this chapter we explained that the word Nyanjais a Chinyanja word for lake, and that the people were so named because they were largely lakeshore people.
The linguistic society of America published a supplement to the journal Languagee, which contained a monograph entitled A Grammar of Chichewa, A Bantu Language Spoken in British Central Africa. The author was an African-American anthropologist, Mark Hanna Watkins. Inthis publication, Watkins notes that Chichewa is only a variant of Chinyanja and this was not an accident as 'All the information was obtained from Karnuzu Banda, a native Chewa, while in attendance at the University of Chicago, from 1930 to 1932' (Watkins, 1937:7 in Mchombo forthcoming: 08).
What we can discern from this is that, as a student research assistant in linguistics, Banda had some knowledge of languages, their dialects patterns, but when he came to power he decided to elevate his own dialect to become the standard dialect and a national language.
Itis interesting, therefore, in this light that he opportunistically chose the Chewa dialect with its culture, refused to speak Chinyanja, which he renamed Chichewa during his rule,
and publicly maintained that his speeches be translated from English to Chichewa through a public interpreter at all functions.
The presidential decree on the promotion of Chichewa to the status of a national and official language resulted in Chitumbuka losing its official status as it was no longer used in the print press and on the radio. On attainment of independence, Banda inherited the colonial policy with English as the main official language along with the two indigenous languages of wider communication, Cbinyanja and Chitumbuka. Naturally, it was not surprising that the people in the northern region with five languages lost Chitumbuka, a regional lingua franca which they saw as symbolising their region. A Malawian sociolinguist and scholar, Matiki (1998:02),has observed that:
Changing the name from Cbinyanja to Chichewa also angered some people because there was no apparent justification in changing the name other than the fact that President Banda was an ethnic Chewa and wanted the language to be named after his ethnic group. The renaming also confirmed most peoples' doubts about the choice of Chichewa as a national language. It was widely believed that Chichewa was chosen as the national language because it was the President's mother tongue.
Some arguments could be advanced in st/pport of the arguments put forward in the above quote. First, Banda's pronounced new policy failed to conform to the accepted language planning procedures as we have observed in chapter two. Matters of language planning should be systematic along the lines proposed by Rubin (1971), Rufai (1977) and others.
Inthe Malawian case, apart from the 1966 census count, no fact finding was carried out before formulating a policy, which we have observed is itself skewed and therefore suspect. A country can therefore not base its language policy on such questionable statistical data. Secondly, contrary to accepted language planning procedures, Malawians were never consulted and their attitudes towards Chichewa's choice were not determined.
Even if we take the census figures suggesting that a considerable number of people understand Chichewa, people's aspirations, preferences and feelings about their O\\TI
languages ought to be considered in such studies. Proficiency in languages other than one's own cannot supercede the feelings attached to one's language. This only shows that any effort in language planning and policy formulation should first find out about issues of attitudes.
While the issue of national identity and the project of nation building could be invoked to justify the elevation and adoption of a language to the status of a national language, the strategythat Banda adopted amounted to nothing less than an imposition of a language on the people. Sentimental linguists like Timpunza-Mvula (1992:43) who supported the imposition of Chichewa as a national language argued that ' a common language is conducive to a unified and stable political order.' However, it is clearly not democratic to deny speakers of eight other indigenous languages- Chilomwe, Chitumbuka, Chiyao, Chitonga, Chinkhonde, Chilambya, Chinyakyusa and Chisena, to use them in early education, on the radio, in the newspapers and in other publications. The toleration of . other languages that the Convention decree refers to was only their oral use as village languages in their speech communities. Subsequently, little attention other than this came to be paid to them. Timpunza-Mvula's argument is now regarded erroneous, inconsiderate and therefore discarded. With regard to Chitumbuka, all teaching materials and textbooks in the language were withdrawn from use in early education and it was banned in the media. What remains are hymns and Bibles printed by Hetherwick Press.
Children whose first language is not Chichewa have not seen their mother tongues in print since this promulgation in 1968. Another immediate result of the banning of Chitumbukainearly education and the media was that it 'led to the violent destruction of a radio post inthe North' (Foster, 1991 :23), as people saw their common language sunk into oblivion, where the govemment chose not to communicate to them on the radio or in the print media particularly. This was truly a cause of major human rights abuse, in which the Tumbuka speaking peoples.'
linguistic and cultural values suffered a major onslaught of Chewa imperialism.
This was more so since the Tumbuka had well established dynasties and they had
developed their language, culture, as well as political and economic struggles with the Ngoni.
(Mchombo, forthcoming:09)
3.7 The concepts of national identity and national integration