LIKE NYERERE! “Prayer is not a spare wheel you pull out when in trouble but a steering wheel that directs the right path throughout life”, someone argued.
After reading the news that Rwanda Journalists Association “ARJ” has a new Executive Secretary one Emmanuel Habumuremyi, I approached Professor Pacifique Malonga a member of ARJ Board of Governors to seek his impressions.
Professor Malonga says that firstly every new born day, he prays that God blesses this land and his ever voluntary work of promoting the art of writing and Kiswahili in particular as a language of integration and wider communication (Photo/Panorama)
I first of all wanted to know what his real identity is apart from being a member of this prestigious scribes Association. Professor Malonga commonly known as “Tujifunze Kiswahili” because of his several appearances on RTV and his voice on Radio Rwanda, when he benevolently introduced that programme to sensitise Rwandans 15 years back on the need to use and develop Kiswahili in Rwanda, EAC and beyond, he firstly gave me his service identity.
This ever smiling and jovial independent journalist is also a well known writer who has published several books and co-authored with another famous Kenyan writer and journalist Ken Walibora an “English- Ikinyarwanda- Kiswahili Dictionary”.
This 60 year old gentleman is also a Board member of Rwanda Society of Authors (RSAU), The Coordinator of Kicukiro District Arts Coordinator, African Union Academy of Languages (ACALAN) Kiswahili Commissioner and the only Rwandan Board member of Global Association of Kiswahili Promoters (CHAUKIDU).
With his many achievements as a man of languages, Prof Malonga scored a highly impressive life goal when he started Kiswahili Promotion Network (KIPRONET) the first ever Kiswahili Library Rwanda in collaboration with the Kigali Public Library ( KPL) in March 2020.
Asked about his career as a journalist and how they selected the new ARJ Chief Executive Officer, Malonga said Habumuremyi was one of his many former brilliant University students at UNR those good old days.”
“I was not part of the panel that selected this man, I was just informed on his selection in our Board meeting today” but if I had been asked my view I could have given him my vote “
Asked about tribalism and ethnicity in Rwanda, Professor Malonga replied in Kiswahili “Rwanda kuna kabila moja tu la wanyarwanda, mengine ni maswala ya Wanyonza na Waziba kama alivyosema mwalimu Julius Kambalage Nyerere akizungumzia Wahaya.” Meaning “You can’t talk of ethnicity or tribalism among people who fully share same language, same traditions, and same customary practices and intermingled in the same villages and religions.”
On COVID-19, Professor Malonga regretted and deplored the high loss of his services and expressed his frustrations caused by this World pandemic which badly affected most artists including Malonga himself and his office shut down due to the pandemic and is he was hit by hard times for the last eight months for lack of financial means .
On what he likes most and how he would like to die he repeated the words of Stephen FRY, “old Professors never die, they just lose their faculties’; but if people must die. Let them nobly die leaving a good name behind them, with patriotic, loyal and humble services to their fellow men and women not like hogs hunted and penned in inglorious spot as Jones said.”
“All things in life are indeed temporary, they come and go but wisdom remains forever”, Professor Pacifique Malonga concluded.
Rwanyange Rene Anthere
