Talk:KiKAR

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Disingenuous statement

The statement: "Although there were, by design, no native Swahili speakers among the KAR" is disingenuous. It implies there was an ulterior motive to purposefully exclude Swahili speakers from the KAR.

News Flash: Apart from the coastal regions (Swahili coast) and some trading settlements forged by the Zanzibaris in the interior there were very few Swahili speakers in the interior of East Africa at the end of the 19th Century. Native languages would have been Kikuyu, Maasai (Maa), ... etc (about 100+ different languages existed amongst the many different tribes and ethnicities that populated that area). Swahili (which itself has dozens of dialects) only became the lingua franca of East Africa because 1) the existing prevalence of its usage in trade by the Zanzibaris in the region and 2) the requirement of German and British administrators for a common native language for teaching, administration and the basic cohesiveness required for "nation building".

There may be an argument that there might have been an underlying desire to exclude muslim soldiers from the KAR (Muslims in East Africa being typically Arabs, Waswahili or Somalis(southern clans)). However it should be pointed out that the Waswahili would likely have very little desire to join KAR regiments anyway. Having considered the interior tribes to be uncivilised savages for centuries the notion of bunking with them would have been beyond contemplation (a sentiment that persists to this day).

144.134.99.146 (talk) 12:43, 16 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]