It is also true in the case of domestic colonialism, like the Norwegian suppression of the language of Sami people, and variations of the same in other Scandinavian countries. The suppression of the languages of the dominated and the elevation of the language of conquest and domination were integral to the education system, which accompanied conquest and colonial occupation.

The language of a region holds the most effective and wide-ranging knowledge of the environment of that particular region. Destroy a people’s language, and you destroy the vocabulary by which they understood their environment, and consequently all the knowledge and information developed in the course of their interactions with that environment.

The language of the outsider becomes the language of power and normality. The vocabulary by which the conquering outsider looks at the conquered, their history, their productive capabilities, is that of the outsider. The colonial education system, enforced by the colonial language, was imbued through and through with the worldview of the outsider looking in. Those who went to the colonial school can remember lessons in geography and history that started with those of Europe.

The educated African may have consciously or unconsciously come to adopt the view of the outsider looking in. And in postcolonial Africa, the European language-educated elite has normalized the viewing of Africa from outside itself.

The African continent continues to suffer the consequences of linguistic conquest. Political independence may have freed the body, but it certainly did not free the mind. This is the long-term effect of linguistic domination.

The result for Africa is a gigantic disconnect between the educated middle class and the general population, which was always the intention of the colonial enterprise. If you think of languages in terms of war, it was as if the African generals became captives in the enemies’ camp. By generals, I don’t just mean government alone.

In the South African system, people see the bitter fruition of at least five forces that have bedeviled the development of human beings: classical colonialism, neocolonialism, slave wages, racism, and the usurpation of the people’s sovereignty through the denial of democracy.

But Black South Africans are not endlessly helpless victims of superior forces. Their history presents a people who have been pioneers in the struggle for communal survival, national liberation, and social emancipation. The ferocity of Black South African resistance blunted the determined efforts of European settlers to annihilate them.

The first act and indeed the signal victory of colonial capitalism was the destruction of the African artisan class. These were the workers in iron, copper, and gold. These artisans made things with the raw materials around them. They made jewelry: copper rings to decorate legs, arms, and necks, as well as earrings. They were the minds and hands behind the defense industry, making spears, arrowheads, and swords. They made cooking utensils. Their tools sustained the textile industry, making clothes out of leather and the bark of trees.