Heckles and eyebrows are rising at the news that Disney Corporation has trademarked the Swahili tagline “hakuna matata” from the film The Lion King. First popularised in 1982 in the song Jambo Bwana from the Kenyan band Them Mushrooms, then Disneyfied a decade later, the phrase roughly translates to “no worries”. Though Disney applied for the trademark when the movie came out in 1994, a petition was launched asking us to “say no to Disney or any corporations/individuals looking to trademark languages, terms or phrases they didn’t invent”. It has already received more than 120,000 signatures.
And the resistance is coming from Africa itself. Shelton Mpala, who started the petition, told the BBC: “Growing up in Zimbabwe, I always had an understanding that a culture’s language was its richness.” Mpala doesn’t speak Swahili himself – the language is spoken in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Mozambique, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. But the diaspora has had enough. The post-colonial empire is striking back.
Continue reading...from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2CqJ0xs
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