My reading left me rather irritated. No doubt Ngũgĩ, present as a young man at a difficult time in Kenya, had had bad experiences. But his promotion of Kikuyu (Gikuyu in Wikipedia) over English, struck me as rather partial. There are a huge number of languages in Africa, and while Kikuyu might be the biggest language in Kenya, there are quite a few others, as can be seen from reference 3.
Perhaps Swahili was chosen as the second official language, along with English, as a compromise which the non-Kikuyu speakers could live with.
Linguistic diversity is not a simple problem and there is not a simple answer. Just think how long it took English to emerge from the contributions of the various people who colonised us, back in the day. Just think of the contortions Canadians get into over the use of French - which might also be viewed as a legacy of British colonialism. It was not all a dastardly plot by the colonial government to crush the many native languages: there was and is a lot to be said for there being a single language of government - and English was a gateway to the rest of the world in a way that one of the many Bantu languages was not. See reference 7, from which the snap above is taken. The oranges spots mark the two languages of present interest.
I associate first to the British members of the Indian Civil Service who contributed so much to the study of ancient Indian languages. Then to the present government of India promoting the use of Hindi, which might be a dominant language, but which is by no means the only one. Also to one Professor Elkins of reference 4.
But I then thought I ought to find out a bit more about Ngũgĩ, starting with reference 2. It turns out that both he and his family had had rather turbulent lives. Starting with the expropriation of the family farm by something Wikipedia calls the 'Imperial Land Act of 1915'. From Google and then Gemini, I learn that this act probably does not exist, but I get to reference 5, from which it is clear that something bad was going on. The man drawing attention to this was one Lord Olivier, a long time colonial civil servant, made a peer by Ramsay MacDonald in 1924. Gemini was needed to track him down too, Google search being rather blocked by his nephew, the actor.
And maybe the stodgy style of the present essay is the result of Ngũgĩ's adoption of something called Fanonist Marxism. Fanon being someone else from the colonies with an interesting life. Someone else who must have had enormous talent - and good luck - to survive, prosper even - for as long as he did.
After all of which I am much more Ngũgĩ-sympathetic - and a visit to Waterstones is indicated.
References
Reference 1: Liberate the tongue, free the mind - preface by Aminatta Forma, essay by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Guardian - 2025.
Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ng%C5%A9g%C4%A9_wa_Thiong%27o.
Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Kenya.
Reference 4: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2013/07/elkins-and-out.html.
Reference 5: https://hansard.parliament.uk/lords/1932-03-23/debates/603f066c-0475-414d-9451-b5286d6080f3/EastAfrica.
Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frantz_Fanon. '... After German forces had been pushed out of France and Allied troops crossed the Rhine into Germany, Fanon and his fellow black troops were removed from their formations and sent southwards to Toulon as part of de Gaulle's policy of removing non-white soldiers from the French army. He was subsequently transferred to Normandy to await repatriation...'.
Reference 7: A guide to the world's languages. Vol. 1: Classification – Merritt Ruhlen – 1987. Rather old now, but I dare say it does for present purposes.
Reference 8: Nehru and the language politics of India - Robert D. King - 1997. Does not seem to have made to the archive, but it was, as I recall, a good introduction to language politics in India. And one which does not go in for tiresome Brit-bashing.
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