The Great English Heist in African Studies

This is a paper in celebration of Ngugi wa Thiong'o's contribution to the way we think about language. I argue that the discussion of English in the academy needs to move forward from the possession/ownership question whether English is an African language or not to the dispossession/cost question what it is that we lose, forfeit and suffer through when we have English as the medium of Africa's intellectual work and debates. The argument is that an official, formal register of English, which I call 'vertical' English, is the sole passport to academic advancement, visibility and membership to the official intellectual production fraternity of the world. This is despite the fact that vertical English is an elusive dream to many Africans, unlike the 'horizontal' Englishes spoken by many. The great English heist refers to the phenomenon of attributing to vertical English that which is largely achieved through engagements in horizontal English and African indigenous languages. Overlooked and often lost in the process is the contribution that horizontal languages make to intellectual work, learning, teaching and research.