Book Review: Afrikan Alphabets
One of the assertive and creative ways people on the continent called “Africa” have adopted the personal computer outside the realm of music and film making is for the field of glyphic imagery or typography. At first glance, Saki Mafundikwa, his book, Afrikan Alphabets, can be seen as a celebration of the African tradition of typography.
The opinion here is that this book can sit side by side with European typographic catalogues like The Postscript Font Handbook in order to remind the people who care that African technology is still useful and, the scholarly research shows, fundamental.
And, for those readers who are young and/or under-educated, the mixture of the words “African” and “technology” (written in any Latin glyphs) means controversy. Saki Mafundikwa founder of ZIVA—Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts (ziva.org.zw)—takes this controversy into trouble when he describes with deliberate determination why the usage of the word “Afrikan” persists in his aesthetic, technical and historical prose. This specification, along with the subject matter itself, explains more than enough to me why it took the author decades to complete this book. Further, the difficultly surrounding obtaining a copy of this book (it is now available at Amazon.com) or even visiting the ZIVA web site to me cannot be a simple tale of yet another Black man’s lack of “reliability.”
So when a member of Qalam, “a mailing list about the world’s writing systems,” makes an effort to correct alleged historical errors in the Saki Mafundikwa book, choosing to use the word “absurd” in the process—or when an apparently sympathetic reader of the book describes it as “eye candy” and takes the time to insist that they are taking the book “seriously,” my years of experience of how African scholarship is “received by the establishment” flood in. My view of Saki Mafundikwa, his work in Afrikan Alphabets, is not confined in the container labeled “linguistics”—nor is it in the little bottle of graphic design fragrance.
Saki Mafundikwa is wading deep into the ancient pool of humanity’s intellectual origin—and none of us born after the birth of Columbus are experienced swimmers. So, yes, when Mafundikwa states, “I cannot recall any African language that spells Africa with a c,” so many modern African errors are being made here:
- First, it is an error to assume that the concept of “spelling” is universal instead of an administrative task descending from an Indo-European province of robust ethnicity.
- Second, it is a grave, deadly error to assume that the letter “c” must appear in every African language. This almost subconscious assumption that Latin glyphs must be used by Black people to contain all of the meaning of African language—African consciousness—is clear, present, fragrant evidence of the power of European colonization. There are people with strong African features walking the Earth today by the millions who just “know” that intellect is European without question. For these sad people, to remove European left-brain dominion means being left with a reptilian brain in raw, naked savagery.
- Third, it is an error to assume that the African languages in use today, standardized and homogenized in Latin glyphs are to be respected as African languages from thousands of years ago. In order to avoid offending any proud, Black government officials who may happen upon these words, may I refer you to “Dr. Ernest N. Emenyonu: Achebe and the Problematics of Writing in Indigenous Languages”?Now, in most strange African, post-colonial irony, my words will continue in these Latin glyphs you are reading right now… (and please, reader, know that the purpose here is not to “attack” or make inferior Roman, Latin glyphs; the intent here is to remind the reader that the Roman Empire used writing for specific purpose and it is foolish for a thinker of African descent to be satisfied and resting content with these imperial design goals).