Tanzania adopts Swahili to unite the country

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 30 November 2023

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

After Tanzania, then called Tanganyika, became independent from Britain in 1961, the country's leader, Julius Nyerere, made Swahili the national language to unite its people.

Walter Bgoya tells Ben Henderson about his conversations with Nyerere and how the policy changed Tanzania.

(Photo: Julius Nyerere. Credit: Keystone via Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Doleepa, and I'm at your service.
0:04.7	Join me as I serve up personal conversations
0:07.1	with my sensational guests.
0:08.9	Do a leap, interviews, Tim Cook.
0:11.2	Technology doesn't want to be good or bad.
0:15.0	It's in the hands of the Creator.
0:16.7	It's not every day that I have the CEO of the world's biggest company in my living room.
0:20.6	If you're looking at your phone more than you're looking in someone's eyes, you're
0:24.7	doing the wrong thing.
0:25.9	Julie, at your service.
0:27.8	Listen to all episodes on BBC Sales. Hello and welcome to the Witness History podcast from the BBC World Service with me Ben Henderson. Today I'm taking you back to Tanzania,
0:47.0	today I'm taking you back to Tanzania which was then called Tengenika
0:52.0	in the early 1960s when the country's first post-independence
0:56.4	leader Julius Nerere adopted Swahili as the national language to bring the country together.
1:02.4	Nereira's policy. language to bring the country together.
1:03.0	Niede's policy we are to unite the people.
1:07.0	He spoke also against tribalism and against each ethnic group demanding or a feeling certain kind of its own identity
1:17.0	in order to create a big identity of Tanganyikas and eventually Tanzanians.
1:22.0	The impact of Nerele's policies was to make Kiswahili
1:28.3	not just a language but a symbol of cultural pride.
1:34.0	This is Walter Boguia,
1:38.0	founder of one of Tanzania's best-known book publishers
	...

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