Mazrui’s intellectual assembly was a combination of the plurality of issues, the plurality of subjects, the plurality of perspectives, and the plurality of languages. But that plurality of languages was enfolded in what I have identified as the recourse to orality, the constant references to fragmented histories and memory. But as Mazrui deployed the English language, he needed to fracture and fragment himself, that is, his own being and body; his presentation of the past, grounded in orality, sometimes became “mythical.” Indeed, he often took the Islamic as “indigenous,” thus casting its impact in mythical ways as well.  This is where Mazrui not only betrayed his preference but his transparency: the Western and the Christian became patriarchal and masculine, in opposition to the innocence and femininity of the mythical.

The dominance and status of the English language in Mazrui’s work are clear. The English language was used to present Africa to Africans and to the world, and to re-Africanize Africans in drawing from lost traditions. A blended language, the “Englishes” with doses of Swahili and Arabic revealed creativity but drew attention to curiosity as well. Creativity and curiosity raised questions not just about intellectual innovations, but the content of ideas. A language has such a powerful linkage with culture that writing in English does not mean a rejection of one’s cultural immersion. Let me illustrate this point with a citation from The Power of Babel:

Where do the ‘pronouns’ come in? Languages betray the cultures from which they spring. Pronouns are part of that story. In referring to a third person English is gender-conscious—so the pronoun he refers to the male and the pronoun she refers to the female. In many African languages pronouns are gender-neutral. The words for ‘he’ or ‘she’ are fused into one. To the present day many Africans competent in the English language sometimes refer to a third person female as ‘he’ when speaking in English because of the linguistic influence of their own mother tongues. [ 210.]

And there are cultural nuances:

Most African languages do not have separate words for ‘nephews’ and ‘nieces’ because your sister’s children are supposed to be equivalent of your own biological children. The same word which is used for your child (mtoto in Kiswahili) is used for your niece or nephew. Very few African languages have a word for ‘cousin’. Your uncle’s daughter or son is the equivalent of your sister or brother, so cousins are counted almost as siblings. Once again language betrays the tightness of kinship ties in the African extended family. [The Power of Babel, 210.]
 
Identity is central to this language use: how Africans see themselves, how others gaze upon them, how they are represented. Mazrui had to define himself, and language enabled him to do so. Then he had to define his continent, again falling on the power of language to do so.

Turning again to The Power of Babel, specific elements emerge in how Mazrui and his co-author presented language in terms of its acquisition and usages, its universal nature, its connections to ethnicities, and its linkages to identity and nationalities. The way and manner that words are used can reveal a lot about people and places.

Mazrui presented the creative aspect of language in many ways. He used language to inspire heroism, as in his celebration of the career of poet-president Léopold Sédar Senghor, who was nominated many times without success for the Nobel Prize for his command of French (written and spoken), and his poetry and philosophy. To Mazrui, the love for John Milton’s Paradise Lost is said to have influenced Apolo Obote (1925—2005), president of Uganda, to adopt Milton as his first name. Mazrui was full of praise for Julius Nyerere, the late president of Tanzania, who translated William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and The Merchant of Venice into Swahili. Mazrui valued these translations for advancing the modernist agenda of African languages.