The Politics of National Languages in Postcolonial Senegal By Ib ...

a total rejection of colonial languages and the language-in-education policies inherited from the former colonial powers. They advocated language-in-education policies that focused on African languages and cultures; African literature, they argued, should be written in African languages. Their primary goals were to resist and wipe out the colonial and imperial legacies (Fanon, 1952), to decolonise the African mind and personality (Wa Thiong’o, 1993), and to recentre the African education model in local contexts in order to give local cultures more prominence and assert African culture and identity as a whole (Mazrui, 1978; Wa Thiong’o, 1993). Wa Thiong’o, one of the most radical and controversial postcolonial writers, described using Western languages for education as a ‘means of spiritual subjugation’ (1993, p. 28); he advocated a clear rejection of the colonial policies relating to language use and language education.

The struggle to affirm the African culture and identity and to dismantle the colonial legacy (in education, institutions, the government administration, and religion) has taken various forms, ranging from the abundant production of literature glorifying and deifying African cultural values and belief systems (Laye, 1994; Maran, 1921; Senghor, 1948) to vivid denunciations of the colonial oppression and its devastating effects on African culture (Achebe, 1958; Sembène, 1956, 1960; Wa Thiong’o, 1986, 1993). Activists taking the latter approach rejected the colonial legacy because it embodied humiliation and the destruction of African cultures, languages, and values and epitomised the Western ‘superiority complex’ (Achebe, 1958; Wa Thiong’o, 1993). Well-known writers such as Fanon (1952, 1961) and, to a certain extent, Sembène (1960) went so far as to advocate violence and militancy in the struggle for liberation from (French) imperialism because they believed that ‘violence is a cleansing force. It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect’ (Fanon, 2006).

Methodology

Several data collection tools were used in the research leading to this book. A series of interviews were conducted during several short visits