Come now, translate Uganda, E. Africa Community anthems

 

 

As it is, protocol demands that at national events, at the opening, the Ugandan anthem be sung first followed, in short order, by the East African Community one.

 

At the end of the ceremony, the reverse is done, with the regional anthem being played before the national one puts a conclusion to proceedings.

 

In so doing, the national anthem sandwiches the occasion at either end, with everything else forming the butter and jam of the day. It is a well thought-out procedure.

 

So last Wednesday, the choir sang with antiseptic efficiency. Every line, each word of the three-verse x thrice-sang chorus of the regional anthem was belted out with a sharpness of voice and roundedness of lip that can only be mastered by a well-practiced choir. Only that it was in Kiswahili. And herein is the problem.

 

The choir was made up of sweet-voiced boys and girls aged, visibly, between 6 and 12, give or take a couple of years. Hardly any of the boys had broken their voices, and so there was a noticeable absence of the tenor and bass voices.

 

Much more alarming for me, though, was the creeping suspicion I had that  hardly any of the young choristers would have known or fully comprehended the words they were singing.

 

Why? Because we hardly speak Kiswahili – there is no reliable data, but anecdotally I reckon that it is only about one in 20 Ugandans (5%) that speak Kiswahili fluently.

 

Maybe I am wrong, but my suspicion was given apparent credence in an environment characterised by an audience that was still and funereal in its silence as the Kiswahili stanzas rolled by.

 

Could it be that we were simply quiet, in patriotic contemplation? Me thinks not, for you could sense a mortified reluctance to utter sentences that we could not understand, totally unlike the alcohol-fuelled linguistic blunders in the years when Lingala language music from the Congo held sway in Uganda.

 

That is the East African anthem. How about the Ugandan one? After the regional slumber, the heartiness with which we all engaged with the familiar refrains of ‘Oh Uganda, may God uphold thee’ was as refreshing as it was embarrassing.

 

Of course the Ugandan anthem is almost 50 years more familiar than the East African one, so it has an obvious edge. But that is for the elite; the kind of crowd that was in attendance at the prayer breakfast, and is to be found in the special tents at most national events. 

 

But spare a thought for the average non-English-speaking Ugandans bussed in to public rallies and official holiday celebrations. Then watch these grassroots Ugandans or even the Cranes national footballers try to sing along when the brass band plays the anthem.

 

There is a palpable half-comprehension in the air, something I had observed many years ago with the humble children at my mother’s school who would conclude morning parade singing the final verse of the first stanza as “united free for liberty together we’ll always stand – thank you madam”, all in the same breath. 

 

The solution for this, the vast majority of Ugandans, is to translate the anthem into comprehensible local languages. My own experience being involved in worship at church is that Ugandans, even non-native speakers, tend to relate much more vigorously to songs in indigenous languages – there is a gusto when we sing ‘Wipolo po Lubanga’, ‘Hariyo amagara owa Yesu’, ‘Omwoyo Omutukuvu ng’Azze’, or ‘Eyalama, Ejok edeke’ – than to many otherwise familiar English-language hymns and choruses. That is the nature of Ugandans, and it is time we took care of that with the national anthem, the song that unites us all.

 

Who would not like to listen to those final lines in the anthem, “for our own dear land, we’ll always stand: the Pearl of Africa’s Crown” being rendered in Lukonzo, Lumasaba, Urufumbira or Nga’karimojong (the bonus being that, sang in local tongues, it would last a little longer, given that the English rendition is currently one of the shortest anthems in the world. Ask gold medallist Kiprotich)? 

 

There, I have done my little bit of patriotism.