When Tanzania gained independence in 1961, the government faced the dilemma of which language to choose as its official national language. Choosing one language from over a hundred indigenous languages, each associated with a particular tribe, would have simply provoked discontent, if not inter-tribal warfare. Choosing English for a newly independent nation seemed inappropriate (though many other nation have had little choice but to use the language of former colonizers as their only official language). The first President of Tanzania Julius Nyerere, chose Swahili, a language of the Bantu language family, which was widely used throughout the country as a lingua franca in many contexts. There were some obvious reasons for his choice. Some were pragmatic. Swahili was already the medium of primary education, for instance, and so all Tanzanians learned the language at school. Other obvious reasons were more ideological. Ninety-six per cent of Tanzania’s languages are Bantu languages, like Swahili, so it could be clearly identified as an African language. Moreover, Swahili had served as the lingua franca of the anti-colonial political movement for independence. In the role, it had acted as a kind of social cement between very disparate groups. It could hardly have had better credentials from a political and social of view.