Bantu Sociolinguistics in Wangari Maathai's Peacebuilding Rhetoric

ABSTRACT

This article argues that appreciating the holistic approach Wangari Maathai embraced in both her environmental and peacebuilding work requires attending to the abiding influence of Kikuyu language and culture throughout her long career. To highlight the specific connections between her rhetoric and its cultural contexts, I approach Maathai’s discourse and activism from the perspective of Bantu sociolinguistics. Through a sociolinguistic analysis of Maathai’s spoken and written words, I demonstrate how the integration of peace and environmentalism for which Maathai was renowned resonates with notions of mariika (“generations”) and ukama (“relatedness”). Viewed from this perspective, Maathai’s insistence that there was no peace without environmental stewardship and effective democracy appears neither idiosyncratic nor incoherent but a nuanced extension of a rich cultural legacy. This study illustrates the heuristic utility of Bantu precepts of rhetoric by applying them in a critical appreciation of Maathai that expands understandings of peacebuilding rhetorics and integrates environmental communication into other political discourses.

KEYWORDS:

• African feminism
• environmental communication
• Nobel Peace Prize
• peace
• rhetorical theory
• ubuntu
• Wangari Maathai

Acknowledgments

A previous version of this article was presented at the 2012 Central States Communication Association annual convention. The author is indebted to Eddah Mutua and Lindsay Harroff for reading and commenting on drafts. Many thanks to Joan Faber McAlister and the anonymous reviewers for their generous guidance and insightful feedback. For Ben Warner, without whom this would not have been.

Notes

All direct quotations from Maathai’s lecture are derived from a modified transcript based on the official transcript released by the Norwegian Nobel Committee that I altered using a C-SPAN audiovisual archive of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize lecture. The C-SPAN archive of the entire ceremony is available at https://www.c-span.org/video/?180483-1/nobel-peace-prize-ceremony.

Many of the studies listed in the Rhodes University (South Africa) Thinking Africa Project’s extensive (though not exhaustive) “Ubuntu Bibliography” approach it as an ethical framework, the goals of which are manifested in/through ideal personhood. The bibliography is available at http://thinking-africa.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Ubuntu-Database.doc.