I was an important event and was asked to say the word “institution” in Akan. And I had no idea. I still don’t know it. Germans and Chinese were able to tell and explain the word in their own mother tongues and I wasn’t.
This is not the first time this has happened to me. This has happened a few times I can recall. A few years ago, I was enrolled in a terrorism and security course and the same thing happened ;I did NOT know the “Akan” or “twi” word for “terrorism”.
These are some of the harm and destruction caused by the colonial regime and the colonial mindset people who are products of colonial regimes face always. This is worse in Africa where we are wannabe Europeans. Children are encouraged, coerced and at times forced against their will to speak colonial languages and even punished in some cases for speaking their own mother tongues.
African people claim they have independence and have driven away the colonialists but we inherited and have maintained nearly every aspect of the colonial structures.
Weeks ago, we had a similar discussion on this platform where Ghanaians claiming to be intellectuals were preoccupied with someone’s inability to speak fluent English and to them that signified “incapacity” or “competence”. Former colonies in Africa love their colonial languages: English, French and Portuguese to a limited extent. To them, speaking these languages equals civility and intelligence.
The colonial education makes people erroneously think those who speak foreign languages are better and more intelligent than those who do not speak or are not as fluent.
People prefer the colonial language than a local language. Africans love the colonial structures including language and the colonial “masters” than their own local structures or brethren.
When you start a discussion on such important issues many just start hurling insults and engage in hate speech instead of engaging in real intellectual exercise to address the issue.
I have written a few pieces on language and other traditional systems that we abandoned that play a role in our continual inferiority. I will continue to speak up despite being able to speak more fluent English than Akan.
We Africans do so much harm to us as a people. We are part of our own subordination and inferiority.
I hope this piece get well meaning people to reflect on their own attitudes and behaviours with respect to language and other issues for which colonialism had a devastating impact.
I hope people can avoid the mistakes made by our pioneers, parents and ourselves and give our children a better foundation and a reason to love their own heritage, traditions, identities and themselves.
Signed
Akosua G
Ontario Canada
March 17 2021
