Swahili Mijikenda: facing both ways in Kenya

Abstract

Opening Paragraph I describe a people who, in aspiring to Swahili Islamic values and life style, marginalise themselves economically and politically. The title of the article both indicates the dilemma of their identity and, for scholars who study Swahili-speaking peoples, is deliberately provocative. How can people whom we call or who call themselves Swahili possibly also be referred to as Mijikenda? After all, these two peoples have in other descriptions been shown to be sharply distinct, either as enemies, as traders in separate goods, or as employers and labourers respectively. Yet, though this is a reasonable characterisation of a difference of great historical significance for the creation of Kenyan coast culture and hegemony, it forgets the areas of overlap between the two peoples, where, in effect, it becomes sometimes impossible to posit consistent differences. The sharp delineation conventionally recorded by writers between the Swahili and the Mijikenda (and the various names by which they have been known before the use of this term in 1945) is as much a result of the conditions under which such writings were produced: they unconsciously reproduce the very distinctions by which pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial authorities administered and ruled the area and its peoples.

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