Ex-First Lady lays accent on Kiswahili use

FORMER First Lady Salma Kikwete, who is the Kiswahili Ambassador in Africa, has reminded Tanzanians to be proud of the language and desist from appreciating foreign languages as doing so is tantamount to slavery.

She made the remarks in Dar es Salaam on Monday night when she was chief guest at an event of awarding the 2016 three winners of the Mabati Cornell Kiswahili Prize for African Literature. Fiction category winners are Tanzanian authors Idrissa Haji Abdalla for ‘Kilio cha Mwanamke’ and Hussein Wamaywa for ‘Moyo Wangu Unaungua’.

Ahmed Hussein Ahmed from Kenya received the poetry prize for ‘Haile Ngoma ya Wana’. Abdalla and Ahmed both received 5,000 dollars while Wamaywa received 3,000 dollars.

The event was also attended by the Deputy Minister for Information, Culture, Arts and Sports Anastazia Wambura and the Acting Dar es Salaam Regional Commissioner (RC), Mr Ali Hapi.

The prize is supported by Mabati Rolling Mills Limited of Kenya and ALAF Limited of Tanzania in addition to Cornell’s Office of the Vice-Provost for International Affairs and the Africana Studies and Research Centre.

“I advise my fellow Tanzanians that we need to invest in the intellectual revolution for speaking Kiswahili. Kiswahili is a complete language and no language is better than the other. We have to be proud of Kiswahili as our identity worldwide,” said Ms Salma.

The Chairman of the Prize’s Board of Trustees, who is also a Kenyan writer, Abdilatif Abdalla, said the annual prize is awarded to the best unpublished manuscripts or books published within two years of the award year across the categories of fiction, poetry, memoir and graphic novels.

The winning entries are published in Kiswahili by East African Educational Publishers and the poetry winning entry in English translation by Africa Poetry Book Fund.

“The Mabati Cornell Kiswahili Prize was founded in 2014 by Lizzy Attree, Caine Prize director and Mukoma Wa Ngugi, an Assistant Professor of English at Cornell to recognise writing in African languages and encourage translation from African languages,” said Abdalla.

He said other fiction works shortlisted for the 2016 prize were “Mmeza Fupa” by Ally Hilal and “Mkakati wa Kuelekea Ikulu” by Hussein Wamaywa, both from Tanzania; the poetry work “Umalenga wa Nyanda za Juu” by Richard Atuti Nyabuya from Kenya, was also shortlisted.

On behalf of the winners, Idrisa Abdalla advised the public to build the culture of reading books as the only way to promote and develop the use of Kiswahili language in Africa.

Daily News