Change the name ‘Lake Victoria’

By Mboneko Munyaga

East African News Agency

As East Africa inches towards integration, there is great need, as in the words of Professor Ngugi wa Thiong’o, for the region to also ‘re-member’ its broken past. One of the tragedies of colonialism was to treat the people in colonized lands as if they had no past or meaningful pre-existence.

Thus in the name of religion, the people were given new names or local names were Anglicized in order for them to appear ‘civilized.’ It is not uncommon that names like Choga became Chogs, which I believe, has no meaning in the English language.

Conversely, I believe no Englishman would be happy, talk less of feeling proud, to be called Irungu, although the name in parts of East Africa, means god of the Forests, thus implying strong attachment to the land and protection of the environment.

One name that has always tortured my conscience is the so called Lake Victoria. Scientifically, the Lake has existed for thousands of years and as fate would have it, it now unites the people of East Africa. Tanzania has about 49 per cent of the lake followed by Uganda 45 per cent and Kenya six per cent. Its catchment area stretches to both Rwanda and Burundi.

On the Tanzanian side, the Lake was for years known as Lake Ukerewe, named after its biggest Island of Bukerebe or Ukerewe. It was also known as Nalubaale, Sango, or Lolwe in other parts of East Africa.

However, the Lake was generally called the “Nyanza,” a Bantu word that translates roughly as the “Sea.”

In 1858 it was named Lake Victoria, after Queen Victoria, by two British travellers, Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke who were sent by the British Royal Geographical Society to find the source of the Nile. The two gentlemen were the first Europeans to see the Lake and tragically, their word is what still rules us today. The Tanzanian side still has even a Speke Gulf!

For the integration process to take root there must be pillars of common identity and icons of cultural pride for East Africans to feel one and the same people, exactly like what Lake Ukerewe or Nyanza has been doing for thousands of years. For a greater part, the people around the lake speak more or less the same language.

The Bachiga, Baganda, Banyankole, Basoga, Banyoro, Batoro in Uganda and the Bahaya, Bazinza and Bakerebe in Tanzania do not need translation to talk to each other. The British colonial masters knew that fact very well but still they made the people feel that they were ‘very different people!’ For, how less could they divide and rule them?

And, roughly 50 years after independence, East Africans still call their common highway, culture and economic activities, Lake Victoria, a medieval Monarch no longer a household name in British society itself. I strongly suggest therefore that the East African Parliament should take the lead in changing the lake’s name to a more appropriate one for East Africa and its people.

It could be argued that what is in a name? To skeptics I would simply say that names are value statements and expressions of aspirations and common heritage in society. With a surface area of 68,800 square kilometres (26,600 square miles), Lake Victoria is the world’s largest tropical lake and Africa’s largest fresh water body. Must it continue to carry a name that is totally un-African?

On the other hand, it could be argued that Africa’s massive poverty could be attributed directly to the continent’s reluctance to cut the ‘umbilical cord’ to former colonial masters even after the child had been born to lead an independent life in this world where only the strong ones survive.

Therefore, East Africans need to change many things that are nuanced to their colonial past and glorification of foreign empires and masters. Africans will never be themselves unless in all generations they learn to reject past injustice meted out to their people and forever to keep burning the zeal and spear of freedom.

The name Lake Victoria is an insult to the dignity of Africans in general that the people of East Africa continue to accept without hard feelings. It cannot get lower than that.