In 1962, Ngugi wa Thiong'o was invited to attend an historic conference of African writers at Makerere University College in Kampala, the capital of Uganda. The formal title of the gathering was “A Conference of African Writers of English Expression.” In other words, the conference openly excluded those African writers who wrote in indigenous languages.

As Ngugi goes on to argue, he found this somewhat problematic as well as absurd. Whereas someone such as himself, a writer with only two published short stories to his name, was able to attend, more established writers who wrote in African languages, were disqualified. By virtue of its inherent exclusivity, the Makerere Conference ignored a vast wealth of African literature, written in languages as diverse as Swahili, Amharic, and Yoruba.

The general consensus among the attendees at the Conference was that European languages—or “borrowed tongues,” as the author calls them—were best placed to express the various facets of the African experience. What's more, it was also argued that European languages could actually provide Africans with a common language “with which to present a united front against the white oppressor.” The language of the colonizer had political as well as literary uses.

But in looking back on the Conference, Ngugi completely rejects the logic of this position. He sees the embrace of European languages, and its corresponding rejection of African languages as a means of literary and political expression, as conniving in the spiritual subjugation of the African people. What the Berlin Conference, which carved up Africa among the European colonial powers, started politically, the Makerere Conference continued culturally by its adherence to linguistic and cultural imperialism.