Emmanuel Ngara of Zimbabwe feels that “to choose a language is to choose an audience and by the fact of writing in English, French, or Portuguese the poet has chosen to address members of the African petty bourgeoisie and westerners.

But others, like Dambudzo Marechera, the late Shona and Zimbabwean poet, choose the English language “as a means of escape and mental liberation while at the same time undermining and subverting the former colonial language and its implications.” (Edited here)

The English language and other Western influences pervade daily life in African countries, like Zimbabwe, once colonised by the British. Even today, the Western way of life is considered the ideal, while the traditional African lifestyles are quickly becoming part of a distant past, and persons who desire to write poetry are systematically forced to decide whether to write in English or in their own African languages.

Whatever their choices, African poets know that they are excluding part of their intended audience and limiting their own creative mode of expression, since most are, because of colonisation, quite literally multi-lingual people. Within these choices of language, such multi-lingual African poets find limitations to overcome and freedoms to enjoy. Use of the English language, which carries the baggage of the oppressor’s culture, usually becomes a mode of stimulating mental exercise.

On the other hand, the Shona and Ndebele languages, which are most Zimbabwean poets’ more natural forms of communication and expression of feelings, unfortunately limit the global exposure of their work.

Taken from Mother Tongue: Interviews with Musaemura B. Zimunya and Solomon Mutswairo, By Angela A. Williams. The Journal of African Travel-Writing, Number 4, April 1998 (pp. 36-44). Copyright © 1998 The Journal of African Travel-Writing