Note 15 to the author's "The Interpreters' Cultural Politics, Or Soyinka's Postcolonial Otherness"
See Ngugi's statment in "The Language of African Literature": English, like French and Portuguese, was assumed to be the natural language of literary and even political mediation between African people in the same nation and between nations in Africa and other continents. In some instances these European languages were seen as having a capacity to unite African peoples against a divisive tendencies inherent in the multiplicity of African languages within the same geographic state. (Ashcroft et al, 1995: 285).
Ashcroft, B. et al (eds) (1995) The Postcolonial Studies Reader. London and New York: Routledge.
Ngugi, W.T. (1981a) "The Language of African Literature," in Decolonising the Mind: the Politics of Language in African Literature. London: James Curry.
