The experience of Africans under Arab colonialism and its antithesis

Dedicated to Rita-AdzoThe experience of Africans under Arab colonialism and its antithesisPaper delivered 12th November 2008, at the international colloquium on ‘Teaching and propagating African history and culture to the Diaspora and teaching Diaspora history and culture to Africa’, held in the State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, November 11th-13th 2008The root causes of the war in South Sudan and the Anya-nya armed struggleAfricans in general find it difficult to accept the root causes of the last phaseof the protracted war in South Sudan , which ran from 1955 to 1972 and from1983 to 2005. In order to establish the causes, the book of Lt Gen Joseph Lagu (Rtd),entitled ‘Sudan – Odyssey through a state – From ruin to hope’ will beextensively drawn upon. The key to understanding Afro-Arab relations, pastand present and the relevance of South Sudan to Africans in future is found inthe reasons for the conflict.Lagu, who is alive and well, spending a good part of his time in Juba, South Sudan, in his pamphlet ‘ Anya-nya Armed Forces – South Sudan Liberation Movement; what we fight for’, issued to fighters in his then capacity of Major-General and Commander-in-Chief of the Anya-nya Armed Forces (A.N.A.F) in January 1972, goes straight to the point and says, amongst other things :-When in 1954 the British and Egyptians decided to end their condominium rule of the Sudan and grant this country independence, our political leaders clearly foresaw that the South was facing domination by the North. They therefore asked at once for guarantees that would safeguard the interest of the South. Both the British and Egyptians, however, disregarded this reasonable demand because it conflicted with their own interests. Thus was the future of the South recklessly gambled with and the seeds of trouble foolishly sown.Lagu goes on to state :-As the British started leaving the South, their administrative posts andbusiness firms were taken up by Northern Sudanese who previouslyhad not been allowed to work or settle in the South. The Southernersbegan to feel more and more strongly that their country was beingcolonized by Arabs and that their great expectations from independenceboiled down to the replacement of one master by another. The Northernofficials looked down upon the Southerners, openly discriminatingagainst them and on the whole treated them as subject people. Theirarrogance and contempt towards the Southerners soon becameunbearable. They kept on insulting and abusing us, often using theword ‘abeed’ (slaves) when referring to Southerners.Further on Lagu says that whilst the British Governor-General and British troops were still in Khartoum and Southern soldiers of the Equatoria Corps had rebelled, the northern Prime Minister of Sudan at the time refused to intervene, so the British were requested to intercede. This was accepted but :-There was no investigation and no justice. Instead, after theSoutherners laid down their arms, Northern troops were let looseon them by (the Prime Minister) while the last of the British leftSudan for good. There followed a blood-bath in which manySouthern soldiers, policemen and warders were killed and theremainder taken to the North to serve long terms of imprisonment.…there came the systematic Neo-colonialist and Imperialistrobbing of our country; a genocidal campaign of mass murder,looting, rape abduction, setting on fire of villages and crops.Hundreds of thousands of our people including many leaderseither took to the bush or fled to neighbouring countries wherethey live as refugeesCommenting on the the eight years which passed from 1955 to 1963, Major-General Lagu said :-Only one thing stood out clearly and this was what the Arabsthemselves wanted then, as they do now: to dominate andcolonize the South. To achieve this they try to impose on usAfricans their religion, language and customs. By this methodthey want to turn us into Arabs and thereby conquer ourcountry for good.On the rise of the Anya-nya Major-General Lagu stated :-At the beginning we had to depend on our native weapons –spears, bows and arrows, but during 1964-65 the bad windswhich blew over the Congo blew good over South Sudan.Arms belonging to the Congolese rebels passed into Anya-nyahands and our operations against the Arab enemy soonbecame more numerous and more effective. Enemy unitsambushed by the Anya-nya provided us with more weaponsand ammunition. We grew stronger and grew quicker.On family and ethnicity the manifesto stated :-The enemy is waging a war of annihilation against us; he wantsto destroy us completely so that he can take over our countryfor himself. For generations past he was trying to do this, evencarrying away our women and children to sell them as slaves inforeign landsOn culture and traditions it is stated :-The enemy looks down upon our customs and traditions. Hebelieves his Arab cultures and traditions are superior andshould therefore be imposed on us, if necessary by force. Thisis just another way, on the spiritual level, of destroying us asa people. Our answer to this kind of attack is simple: You Arabskeep your Arab culture and traditions and let us Africans keep ours.and if you try to impose on us your ways by force, you willbe met by force.From the African nationalist/Pan-Africanist perspective, on defending Black Africa, Lagu said :-Our brothers and sisters in East Africa must realize thatever since the first Arabs reached Malakal, Juba and Wau,we, the people of South Sudan, have been defending not onlyourselves but also them from the onslaught of Arab Colonialism.We have never ceased the struggle against those barbarians andwe never shall until we triumph. The harder and more successfullywe struggle the more our neighbours will recognize the vitalimportance of our struggle to them and the more ready they willbe to support us…..Therefore we, the African people and soldiersof South Sudan, must keep bringing these facts to the attentionand consciousness of Black Africans all over the continentSpeaking on objectives :-The goal of our struggle is clear and straightforward – theright of self-determination of our people.On fighting offensively :-The Anya-nya Armed Forces are conducting a guerrilla war,which means a small war. Our enemy is a professional modernarmy equipped with everything including tanks, heavy guns andan air-force. We have only light weapons. If we try to beat theenemy in battle in the open field, we would do exactly what theenemy wants us to do because then we would be defeated quicklyby his superior weapons. To avoid this, we chose the guerrillamethod of war which gives us many advantages while placingthe Arabs at disadvantage. And as long as we fight this kindof war, the enemy will never be able to defeat us.Summing up Major-General Joseph Lagu advises the Anya-nya liberation Armed Forces of South Sudan :-That our specifically African – as distinct from Arab – identityand the common aspirations which unite all our tribes in a commonstruggle fully qualify us for nationhood and the right of self-determination.That by rejecting the attempted Arabization of South Sudanand by adhering to our African identity and heritage we exercisea basic human right which is bound to be recognized byeverybody sooner or later..The extensive use of quotations from the Anya-nya document of Major-General Joseph Lagu, who lead the armed struggle of the South to the Addis Abba Peace Agreement of Febuary 1972, with the Khartoum government, makes it clear that the armed struggle was not about religious convictions. It was unambiguously about culture/race. Class was not mentioned in the pamphlet as Anya-nya was not guided by Left ideology. In the Darfur conflict of the 21st century the Islamists in Khartoum have sort to expel the black Moslem African groups, such as the Fur, Masaleit and Zaghawa from their traditional lands, in order to change the demography of Darfur, by settling in those lands Moslem black African groups, which are more Arabised, such as Taouregs from west Africa.To round off this section of the paper reference is made to page 572 of Lagu’s book, which quotes from the Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/SPLM) Leaflet of the 18th November 1983, quoting Col John Garang de Mabior, Chairman, Provisional Executive Committee of the SPLM and Commander-in-Chief, SPLA at Paragraph III :-The SPLA irrevocably believes in the unity of the Sudanese people…we therefore make it very clear in the SPLA/SPLM Manifestothat our struggle can neither be racial nor religious in any way.At Paragraph VIII Garang is quoted as saying :-Because of the oneness of the Sudanese people and unity andintegrity of the Sudan, the armed struggle in the South mustof necessity eventually engulf the whole of SudanThe Borderlands of the African NationThe issues that the Borderlands raise, being that area of Africa stretching from Sudan on the Red Sea to Mauritania on the Atlantic Ocean, date back thousands of years. That area provides a sharper historically based holistic definition of the African nationality than that hitherto offered by the Black consciousness movements in the Americas and southern .The last population census conducted in Sudan was in 1983. Population figures in Sudan, and especially southern Sudan, are the subject of continual dispute. Sudan’s total population was estimated to be close to twenty million people, with 80-85% settled in rural areas. While 39% of Sudan’s population considers itself as ‘Arab’, the ruling elite in Khartoum present Sudan as an ‘Arab’ country, which most international bodies and scholars accept. In Sudan, mainly around Khartoum, exists a minority group of mixed race Black people who do not consider themselves Africans and who participate in the oppression and the enslavement of the majority African population. Clearly what is at stake here is not a matter of colour, but a question of culture. What the Borderlands teach us is that the African nationality is primarily cultural, not race based. This has profound implications for the struggle of the Africans in the new millennium. For the African unity movement it means wiping the slate clean and returning to the drawing board. With hindsight we conclude that too much emphasis was placed on colour, politics and economics as a basis for unity, at the cost of marginalising the significance of culture, and that indeed culture is the missing link in our development planning, something that apparently the Rastafari concluded early on in the elaboration of their philosophy, with their acknowledgement of the centrality of culture, whilst not denying race, whereas the Communists, as seen in South Africa and Sudan, mistakenly denied race as a factor in social relations, only referring to class , despite their familiarity with the national question. The correct analysis should weight race, culture and class equally as social determinants.As regards the historical progression of humanity in the Borderlands, the doctoral thesis of Cheik Anta Diop in 1960 established the cultural origins of the Egyptian civilisation as being African. This was further affirmed at the UNESCO sponsored Symposium on the Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the Deciphering of the Meriotic Script convened in Cairo, Egypt 28 January to 3 February 1974 and attended by Diop and Theophile Obenga. An examination at the National Museum in Khartoum, in Sudan, in December 2002 found irrefutable evidence that the earliest civilisations in the area of present day Sudan were African cultures. With the passage of time an Indo-European peoples entered North Africa through the Nile Delta pushing southwards the Africans, so that today the Borderlands define the line of confrontation between Afro-Arab cultures. In the Borderlands, due to the Arabisation of its peoples, some of those leading the fight southwards are Black people, culturally Arabised, who have been denationalised. With increasing repatriation to Africa, Diasporian Africans will encounter Borderland issues in places such as Mali, Sudan and further northward. In an increasingly globalised world geo-politics affects us all, especially as regards future development planning.It is no accident that the longest war in Africa was fought in the Borderland area of South Sudan starting, in the current phase, on 17th August 1955. The fact is that the Borderlands wars have been going on and off for hundreds of years in a relentless Arab advance, pushing southwards, supported latterly by Arab League members. The costs of the protracted war were the debasement of the value of human life, the stoking of ethnic divisions as a basis for control and the disconnect between the authoritarian leadership and the mass movement, manifest in an absence of caring and social responsibility for the other, such that there is visible indifference to suffering within the ranks and the random use of violence. All these are manifest in Southern Sudan society today. It is a situation of survival of the fittest, with an absence of the rule of law, with high levels of corruption due to shortcomings in the apparatus of the state. The war tore the social fabric, traumatising the entire population, destroying what little infrastructure, such as roads, there had been, ending education, health and social services, creating a society where informants and collaborators flourished and the honest were considered naïve. Recent population estimates for southern Sudan (1998-2004 ), being extrapolations derived from multiple sources and indicators, vary widely from three to eight million.This push southwards is openly supported by Arabs in general. Conversely the war of resistance by the Africans in the Borderlands is not supported by the Organisation of African Unity/African Union (OAU/AU), which has no position on the issue. Prof. Helmi Sharawy of the Arab Research Centre for Arab-African Studies and Documentation (ARAASD) in Cairo, headed by Prof. Samir Amin, in his paper entitled ‘Arab Culture and African Culture: Ambiguous Relations’, defines the current status of Afro-Arab relations as ‘ambiguous’. Whereas the war in the Sudan is above-ground, that in places such as Mauritania is manifests by way of social tension and from time to time, by physical conflict. The state of social relations throughout the Borderlands in places such as Niger, Mali, Tchad, Southern Libya and Algeria would be described as tense, in places conflict driven. In Mauritania a small Arab/Moor group holds in awe the majority African population, through an oppressive social system permitting the hereditary enslavement of Africans.Pan Africanism or Continentalism ?The hypothesis ‘Pan-Africanism or Continentalism ? ’ was posed at the Institute of African Alternatives in London on the 13th March 1991. In 2002 following on the decision to replace the Organisation for African Unity (OAU) with the African Union (AU), the question was rephrased ‘Revisiting Pan-Africanism or Continentalism ?’. Should the unity of the African Nation as an operational structure, be a unity of Africa south of the Sahara and its Diasporas, or should it take the form of a continental union, a United States of Africa, or should it be a combination of these two types of structures, in which case questions of sequencing and prioritisation would arise.In the formation of the OAU Charter provision was made for a union of African states and not a union of African people. By resolving to strengthen the links between the African states ‘through the establishment and reinforcement of common institutions’, the OAU Charter represented an abrupt break in the history of the Pan-African movement, as it failed to incorporate the aspirations of the African people (rather than their neo-colonial states) and the destiny of Africans in the Diaspora, despite the fact that the creation of the organisation owed its origin to the work of African nationalists/Pan-Africanists, many of whom came from the Diaspora .The newsletter of the African Association of the Political Science (AAPS) Vol. 6 number 1 of January – April 2001, at page 13, carries the ‘Report of the meeting of Legal Experts and Parliamentarians on the establishment of the African Union and the Pan-African Parliament’ dated 17-20 April 2000, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Ref. CAB/LEG/23.15/6/Vol/IV. Paragraph 48, which appears under the rubric ‘Consideration Protocol relating to the Pan-African Parliament’, in the section referring to Article 4, ‘Objectives’, states as follows:-‘On the issue of composition it was proposed that the prospective members should represent not only the people of Africa and those who have naturalised, but peoples of African descent as well. However, other delegations were of the view that only African peoples should be represented in the Parliament …’At paragraph 55 appearing under the same rubric as paragraph 48 (i.e. Consideration Protocol relating to the Pan-African Parliament) in the section referring to Articles 2 and 3 ‘Establishment and Relationship with the OAU’, it is reported ….After effecting certain amendments to paragraphs 1 and 2 of Article 3, the reference to members of Parliament representing all people of ‘African descent’ was deleted.’Africans from outside the continent were excluded from the deliberations of both the OAU and the AU and from working in their Secretariats, even though it should be well understood that the fate of all Africans is interconnected. States peopled by a majority of Africans could not join either body (e.g. Haiti).The Key LinkOne of the central connections of Africa with its Diasporas is culture. However Arabised and westernised the African Diaspora, it retains elements, sometimes distant, of African culture.The study of African society, especially from the cultural perspective, teaches us that the unity movement of Africans should have consciously advanced through culture, then the economy, to finally arrive at the political union of Africans within or outside the continent – for the movement towards unity began in Africa, was taken outside Africa and was then carried back to Africa. The Charter of the OAU taught us that the organisation was dedicated to continental unity only, despite the Pan-African impulses which lead to its creation. Neither the OAU nor the AU made any pretence to include the African Diasporas in their deliberations or administration. Yet the key link in the history of the African unity project is the linkage of Africa with its Diaspora.As the significance of the struggle in the Borderlands is better understood, so will the contestation around the African identity intensify. The paper of Helmi Sharawy provides some indications of the possible outcomes arising from these developments. One consequence is likely to be fresh thinking about the sequences and consequences of unity.Despite the happenings in the Borderlands (e.g. slavery, genocide, wars, racial oppression etc) the neo-colonies of Africa have in general chosen to ‘look the other way’, as regards these events, on the basis of non-interference in the affairs of sovereign states. Thus the realities in the Borderlands were ignored as an issue at the OAU/AU and elsewhere by those who would be expected to champion the cause of their kith and kin. There has even been talk that concerned persons should ‘not disturb the peace’ by raising such issues at this time. Some Africans are saying that the issue of reparations for Arab-led slavery should not be addressed in this period of world history due to ongoing developments in the Middle-East, again deferring the Arab question.One of the first steps taken by the Khartoum government after self-government, was to join the Arab League. The support by the Arab League states to the government of the Sudan in Khartoum in its fight against the south and African nationalism is long standing and substantial. The support of the Arab world by way of finance and in terms of military supplies, has at times taken the form of volunteers. Ben Laden, the Muslim fanatic, spent time in Sudan and in Juba, fighting on the southern front of the fundamentalist global Jihad. This war by the central government in Khartoum has received consistent support from the Palestine Liberation Organisation and Hamas, it’s Islamist wing. Africa has no comparative reaction to the quest of Arabia to push southwards its interests and to secure for Egypt control of the headwaters of the Nile, as far south as Uganda, if needs be. The mercenary Lords Resistance Army (LRA) was based in Juba and supported by Khartoum. Rather Africa has remained in a defensive posture in its confrontation with Arab hegemony and has sustained its support for Arabia in its conflict with Israel. Africans obtained no respect from Arabs, for their defence of Arab global interests vis-à-vis Israel.Despite the various international conventions supposedly assuring human rights for all, Africans were only recently considered subjects of international law, whereas before they were treated as its objects, and it was well known that in places such as South Africa, they were denied human rights by the apartheid system, later considered to be a crime against humanity. It was only by 1994 that the racist authorities in South Africa had come under sufficient international pressure, that a planned regime-change took place in that country, prior to which the international community had chosen to ‘look the other way’ as far as the human rights abuse, which went on in the country, despite the work of Smuts in the formation of the League of Nations.Sudan and other countries in the Borderlands continue to experience a similar situation as South Africa prior to 1994. However, it needs to be stressed, that the situation in the Borderlands is more complex and its problems far more deep rooted than those found in Southern Africa. Sudan today, like South Africa was in 1994, is ruled by a minority, in this instance, a ‘coloured’ mixed race group implementing a Bantustan – type policy of separate development, with Khartoum accorded the benefits and South Sudan, Darfur, Nubia, Blue Nile, Nuba Mountains, the East etc, being marginalised and denied development. Under Khartoum’s social conventions, Black Africans are permitted status, only if they Islamise, Arabise and denationalise. Central government in Khartoum is at war with large parts of the rest of the country, including areas, such as Darfur, where the population is largely Muslim. Weapons of mass destruction such as poison gas, aerial bombardment were/are used by the government against defenceless people. The pattern of human rights abuse by Khartoum against not just South Sudan, but other areas where Africans are found and the absence of a co-ordinated international response proves that Africans remain partial beneficiaries, of international human rights norms. In the current Afro-Arab civilization monologue, the relationship remains at the level of master and servant and human rights do not enter. For Arabia, Africa remains a civilisation vacuum, whatever the truths of history concerning the African origins of world civilisation (Cheikh A.Diop), such tenets are not taught in schools in Arabia. African political elites are accorded deference in the Arab world and diplomatic protocols are observed in state to state relations. It is at the level of ‘people to people’ or ‘state to people’ relations that the spirit of the OAU/AU supposedly guided by Pan-Africanism, is betrayed.Arab society permits the practice of chattel slavery, which western society, through its human rights concept, has banned. It is no excuse that Africans practice chattel bondage amongst themselves (e.g. Ivory Coast). Two wrongs do not make a right. Forward thinking Africans militantly oppose the continued practice of feudalism in African society. They oppose oppressive antiquated social systems which inhibit development. In this, progressive Africans are locked in a political struggle with conservative traditionalists, linked to overseas financial interests.The whittling away of the remains of settler colonialism is proceeding with increased democracy, in Southern Africa. There is no parallel process of decolonisation in the Borderlands, rather an internationally co-ordinated aggressive action is underway, to coral the Sudan liberation movements into a peace ‘laager’, with the generous dispensation of petro-dollars. Given that the area of ‘ambiguous relations’ has been pushed southwards into the Sudan as a result of hundreds of years of interaction, it would be illogical to expect such a process to stop from one moment to the other. The push southwards by the same forces in the West African region, explains the tensions in the Ivory Coast, and the generalised fighting which took place in West Africa.Arabia has used the so called ‘peace pact’ to its advantage, as a strategy to relentlessly push its influence southwards. It was used effectively by the LRA. Like the UNITA movement of Jonas Savimbi in Angola, the tactical use of the temporary cessation of hostilities, to lull the opposition into a non-combatant posture, creating a breathing space, whilst restocking and preparing for the next offensive, is as old as time itself. Such ceasefires do not last. The attempts by certain quarters to withhold the Writ issue by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Joseph Kony of the LRA defeated the ends of justice and permitted him to relocate to the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the bloody costs of the Congolese. This relocation needs further investigation.The relentless push southwards by Arabia has never abated – indeed some westerners would say that the major new pre-occupation in international relations at the turn of the century was the global Jihad, which emerged as a counterpoint to the existence of Israel, spreading outside of the Middle East and African theatres, to terrorise the world.In this connection it is worth recounting the words of Joseph Lagu the Anya-nya leader at page 339 of his book ‘Sudan odyssey through a state – From ruin to hope’, a 2006 publication. Concerning his interaction with Col Muamar Gaddafi during an official Sudanese visit to Libya in 1975, he recounts :-‘He (Col Gaddafi ) told us that other Arab leaders and he would like to develop Southern Sudan, but for that to be possible we should allow the South to be islamised and arabised. He said that he did not mean that we leaders should change our religion, for he knew we were already Christians. He said he referred to those without religious affiliation that formed the bulk of the population. He told us that for him to get Arab funds for the development of the South, he needed to tell the Arabs that Southern leaders accepted the Islamisation of the South. He made it clear to us that Arabs consider their aid to other people in that perspective’.In effect what is being posited here is that there can be no peace in the Borderlands, without a structural change in Afro-Arab relations and that such a realignment must incorporate not only the admission of guilt but also atonement. There cannot be closure without an opening by the wrong-doer, to enable review and judgement. These are prima facie requirements to begin the Afro-Arab civilisation dialogue. Without atonement space is created for Great Power intervention in place such as the Sahel..Slavery has existed in all the ancient civilizations of Asia, Africa, Europe and pre-Columbian America. It had been recognized and accepted by the Abrahamic religions- Judaism, Christianity and Islam (Prah 2005). With both Arab and European slavery, Africans were not the machines, but the cogs in a process whose outcome was unknown to them. The denial of their languages and cultures in effect denationalised the Africans, turning them into Arabs. The Sudanese scholar Yusuf Fadl Hassan ‘On the historical roots of Afro-Arab relations’ stated in ‘The Arabs and Africa’ (1985):-‘Slavery is slavery and cannot be beautified by cosmetics. It left an extreme bitterness in the central parts of the [African] continent against the Arab minority which lived on the coast. Because this issue disturbs Afro-Arab relations it should be studied courageously and objectively’.Arab-led slavery of Africans in the past and in the present goes to the core of the relationship of Africans with Arabs, it is an issue that both Africans and Arabs frequently treat as a matter to be hushed-up because of the embarrassing reaction it generates. It is a historical reality which differentiates the fate and the aspirations of Africans on the one hand and Arabs on the other, in their different attempts to achieve African unity and Arab unity respectively. Both Pan-Africanism and Pan-Arabism, if pursued democratically, would assist in the emancipation and development of the two peoples. At the heart of the complex Afro-Arab relationship are the realities of racism and forced Arabisation / Islamisation . The Durban United Nations World Conference on Racism of 2001 chose to avoid racism in Afro-Arab relations. It did humanity a disservice. It took Darfur to bring the issues of racism and forced Arabisation / Islamisation to global focus, yet Southern Sudan went to war with Khartoum in 1955 due to those same issues, one year before Sudan achieved self-government. This was a war in which over two million Africans lost their lives in South Sudan. Racism is a reality of life in the Borderlands of the African Nation, in places such as Sudan, Niger, and Mali etc. Akbar Mohamed, the African American spiritual leader, is quoted at page 53 of the Amman Seminar ( 1983 ) Report on Afro-Arab relations as follows:-….Akbar Mohamed, in a lecture delivered at the Institute for African Studies in Cairo, argued that there is still some subconscious racism on the part of the Arabs toward the Africans, that slavery is very strongly exploited in Africa against the Arabs, and that the Arabs do not try to discuss this issue with the Africans.While the truth is uncomfortable, it is impossible to move forward towards historical reconciliation through ‘holocaust denial’ or by ‘collective amnesia’. Denying the truth will not assist reconciliation. These issues will be discussed between the people of the area, not those removed from the scene, from places such as southern Africa or the Western Diaspora. For more than a thousand years the Sahara has been the melting pot of the two cultures, moving southwards. Slavery was generalized in the Borderlands, stretching from Mauritania on the Atlantic, eastwards through the Sahel to Sudan on the Red Sea, with slaves being captured from Black Africa and taken, often on foot, northwards through the Sahel into Arabia and out of Africa. Whereas the trans-Atlantic slave trade has been the focus of the on-going struggle for reparations, Adwok Nyaba states that Arab enslavement of Africans, has either been ignored, minimized or completely rejected on false account that the Arabs either were ‘brothers in Islam’, equally colonized and oppressed by the West or participated in the decolonization struggles of the African people. In the history of Africa there have been two major hegemonic interventions. The first was by the Arabs starting in the 8th century AD, and the second was via the European expansion, which was consolidated in the 19th century. Whereas the European penetration subsequently partially withdrew leaving in place neo-colonial entities called states, after the according of ‘self-government’, the Arab presence was characterized by the denationalisation / Arabisation of the people and a sustained campaign to annex territory, Islamise and practice slavery. This process is seen today in Libya, Mali, Niger, Chad, Sudan, Mauritania, in the area called the Afro-Arab Borderlands (Prah 2001).From the proceedings of the UNESCO Symposium held in Cairo, 28 January to 3 February 1974, on the Peopling of Ancient Egypt at page 45, it is stated that archaeological studies indicate that trade between Sudan and Egypt was taking place as early as 4000 BC or earlier and that the trade in gold and slaves was thriving between 700 and 400 BC. Adwok Nyaba, the current Minister for Higher Education and Scientific Research in the Khartoum government of national unity, states that slavery of Black people in the Nile Basin began in earnest with the defeat of the Mamelukes of Egypt by the Ottoman Empire in 1517 and that the commodification and merchandisation of the slaves route down the Nile to southern Europe, Arabia, Persia and China, which is traced to the first quarter of the nineteenth century.Africa has a Western Diaspora, in the Caribbean, Europe and in the Americas, and an Eastern Diaspora, which is less known by those living in south and west Africa and in the Western hemisphere. The Eastern Diaspora includes Arabia and points east of Africa, in the Gulf States, the Middle-East, north Africa and Asia, where people of African descent are found. Hunwick states in Joseph Harris’ edited text ‘Global dimensions of the African Diaspora’ (1993), that the movement of slaves along the Nile to the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, Persian Gulf and India probably accounted for the uprooting of ‘as many Africans from their society as did the transatlantic trade’.Arabia has ambiguous views about the role of the Western Diaspora in Africa. It has long pursued a deliberate policy of dividing Africans from their Diasporas and thus ruling the Africa Nation. At page 42 of the Report on the Amman Seminar of 1983 on Afro-Arab relations convened by the Centre for Arab Unity Studies and the Arab Thought Forum, Yusuf Fadi Hasan states, in his concluding remarks on the historical roots of Afro-Arab relations:-…The Africans assimilated the Arab-Islamic culture and became part of it, participated in spreading it and relating it to their own cultural needs, and defended it. It took root to varying degrees in many parts of Africa, though some remote areas were never affected by it. When colonialism took over, it obliterated such Afro-Arab relations as existed in both east and west Africa. When the Arabs and the Africans began their struggle against colonialism, no coordination between them existed…The African Nationalist movement was a secular one. It was started by black Americans as a reaction to racial discrimination and its call for African unity centered around negritude. After the 1945 Manchester Conference the movement transferred to Africa but was kept out of North Africa, and it seems that the role of African Muslims was limited from the outset.Hasan on the same page, states the preference of some, such as Senghor, to see the unity of Black Africa first before the establishment of cooperation with Arab Africa.Under Arab slavery men were castrated and the women were used as sex-machines, so that over generations the off-spring of the enslaved women merged into general Arab society, albeit into an inferior caste-type class of sub-species. Today we have slave descendants across the Sahara and into Arabia, such as the Harantines in Mauritania and the ebony blacks in Arabia. This is because the slaves were so many that the slavers could not ethnically dilute them into café au lait. Castration and male culling was and still is practiced.Mekuria Bulcha ( Bulcha 2003 ) estimates that over 17 million Africans were sold to the Middle East and Asia between the sixth and twentieth centuries. In Bulcha’s view the distinction between western and Islamic slavery is largely figurative. Both arrangements involved violence and cruelty as well as the devaluation of humanity. Africans in the Middle East and Asia remain ‘a disjointed Diaspora’, although records indicate a persistent desire amongst them ( in the Eastern Diaspora ) to repatriate.Arab slavery is still on-going in Africa in the Afro-Arab Borderlands. In South Sudan it goes by the name of ‘abduction’ and is also practised amongst certain ethnicities. Much of the attention to contemporary Arab slavery of Africans focuses on Sudan and Mauritania but in Mali, Algeria, Niger, Libya and Chad slavery exists. Afro-Arab relations will remain distorted so long as Arabia considers Black Africa a civilization vacuum and so long as Africans in general remain uninformed and the elites indifferent to their history. To change perceptions, developed over a millennia, poses challenges for all, which should be met rather than avoided. Arabia also needs to confront the historical dimensions of slavery rather than pretending its non-existence.Throughout African history, in the current millennia, those who militated for progress were proscribed, attacked and rendered useless by Africa’s enemies. Marcus Garvey comes to mind and Kwame Ture. However, other races ensure the security and well-being of those who advance their cause, as those powers-that-be, which oppose their cause, seek to destroy them. With the Africans this absence of collective defense/security for leaders has mean that few speak out for fear of co-option/elimination. This problem needs urgent attention if progress is to be made, if Arab racism and hegemony is to be addressed in the future. All societies which progress protect their own. The fear factor should not be underestimated. In the West it is the major impediment to Diasporan engagement with the issues of the Eastern Diaspora, along with Arab penetration of African American communities in the US by Arab interests. The fear of sanction by authority, the loss of academic promotion, retrenchment, the withholding of funding support etc, have been used effectively to inhibit Black US involvement with the African Eastern Diaspora and the Sudan issue. These sanctions are used against Africans at home and abroad, who defend race and culture when the Arab issue arises in the western hemisphere and in reactionary African social settings. It is the fear factor, at base, which lead the AU to support the withholding of the Writ issue for genocide against the Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir in the later half of 2008.**EXCERPTED: See the attachments for the rest of this article

The experience of Africans under Arab colonialism.rtf

RIO Conference PROGRAMME.rtf

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South

Abdurrahman T. L. Nelson April 18, 2009 at 5:53pm

This nonsense is much too long. The real issue in Sudan and much of Africa can be summed up in one word: OIL. Western Europeans want cheap oil. So, they hire thugs and traitors to deliver it at a lower cost than OPEC and the central governments of Nigeria, Sudan, etc. Yet, in the above, I did not see (of course, I did not read that garbage word for word) the word oil is not mentioned even once. This is not rocket science.
Mickel Hendrix aka Nat Turner November 13, 2008 at 1:29pm

hetep,

one thing's for sure, information and how we apply it or put it into practice is very crucial to the survival and liberation of afrikan peoples. and it is imperative that we see things through afrikan eyes, not through afrikan-amerikkkan eyes, black muslim eyes, etc., etc., because the afrikan has been violated inhumanely by the cultures of the various so-called major religions.

as a conscious afrikan, in which i consider myself a black nationalist revolutionary, who, though recognizes the oppressive conditions of other so-called people of color by the white supremacist imperialist inhuman disease, i have no doubts as to who the enemy has been and still is. and there must not be any disintegration of a non-compromising mentality on the part of us afrikans, who know what time it is, because the masses of our people, whether in the amerikkkas or at home in afrika, are so mentally vulnerable, that they are very easy to exploit and not know that that's what's happening to them.

case in point: the shaping and packaging of barack obama, and the effect that he has had on brothas and sistars in the amerikkkas and afrika, especially in kenya, the homeland of his father. and because of false and complicit negro leadership, as opposed to genuine black leadership, the black collective has been further duped and enslaved within the global structure of white supremacy.

therefore, politically conscious afrikans must make it protocol to be uncompromisingly stuanch, beginning with a restructuring of the afrikan mind, which means that afrikan people have to obliterate the non-afrikan social construct that they've internalized at the hands of alien religio-cultural complexicities. we must make it a priority to begin within our own, in terms of afrikan leadership, shaping it in a way that such black leaders will understand that there will and must be dire consequences for them, if they are going to be heading any type of agenda that will effect the black collective.

we'll only survive if we can produce the next patrice lumumba, the next marcus garvey, the next george jackson, the next kwame ture, the kwame nkrumah, the next qwueen inzinga, and not the next martin luther king, not the next jesse jackson, not the next al sharpton, not the next nelson mandela. we'll only survive and overthrow arabism and euro-amerikkkanism by a stuanch revolutionary ideology, based on afrikan nationalism, rooted in afrikan traditional habits, via indigenous and original afrikan spiritual cultivation, which gave birth to the basic tenets of the three major so-called religions.

it is not enough to be a progressive or a liberal coming from the left, because that will only repackage arabism and euro-amerikkkanism under another name called reform, which means that the house will have only gotten a new paint job, while the structure has been left untouched, unshaken, undemolished, therefore continuing to exist, in the service of arabo-white supremacy. it is obvious that the scum of the earth are its original people, and that that people, which is afrikan, must be made to understand that islamism, christianism and judaism have been a detriment and can never be our friends. our war is for afrikan survival, period, whether culturally, spiritually, economically, socially, politically and historically!

uhuru!
KWASI Akyeampong November 12, 2008 at 9:33pm

Submitted by:
concerned.migrants@gmail.com; Colloquim on African History, Culture opens in Brazil

Written by Mcphilips Nwachukwu, in Brazil
Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Rio De Janeiro—The five-day international colloquim on the theme; Teaching and Propagating African History and Culture to the Diaspora and Teaching Diaspora History and Culture to Africa opened at the State University of Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, Monday with over 25 scholars from across the globe in attendance.
It was a busy day as scholars converged in their numbers in an atmosphere of comradie and scholarly euphoria in their attempt to define and deliberate on the ways forward for blacks both at home and in the Diaspora.
Declaring the five day international colloquium open, African Union Ambassador and Permanet Representative to United Nations, Ambassador Amina Ali said that history is now on the side of Africa. History according to her, was what brought people into the Diaspora and therefore, Africans have no choice than to know their history.

Praising the Centre for Black Afrocan Art and Civilization, CBACC for her noble role in organizing the program and also, extending her hand of fellowship to the University authorities of the State University of Rio De Janeiro, Ambassador Ali said that "If we as Africans know where we are coming from , we should know what our history and Culture portray, but if we fail to know our history, we can't stand and proud and face the challenges of life."

Also responding in his own opening remark, Nigeria's retired General Isola Williams, Secretary of Pan African and Strategic and Policy and Research Group, PANAFSTRAG, challenged Africans to come to the front burner of world Affairs . In his words, " there is nothing like Africans in the Diaspora, what we have instead is non resident Africans and Africans in Africa."

He reminded Africans abroad to always be conscious of where they are coming from and see all Africans all over the world as one.

Also responding, Dudley Thmpson, a world known Pan Africanist and former Jamaican Ambassador to Nigeria, first paid tribute to the memory to South Africa's popular musician, Maria Makeba, whom she said spend all her times fighting inequality not only in South Africa but globally.

He pointed out that the role of Maria Makeba and others like Dubois, Martin Luther Kings Jnr, Malcom X, Kwame Nkurumah, Jomo Kenyatta have all resulted in contributing to the emergence of the recently elected Barack Obama as the first African American President in the United States of America.

He thanked Nigeria for keeping black spirit alive. He also recalled his stay as Jamaican Ambassador in Nigeria with nostalgia and said that Pan Africanists must follow global change based on justice and equity for all.

According to him," It is a great euphoria for Africa to lead the world now. Africans must not be complacent now. It is time to keep moving on."

Prof. Abdias Do Nasmento of Brazil lamented that the Brazilian society for which the blacks laboured to build in the days past has not been adequately acknowledged the blacks contribution to society.

In a long speck delivered in Portuguese, he called on the Brazilian government to now come out of the shell to acknowledge the role of black Brazilians in building a modern Brazilian society, which is still being appreciated by the world.

He not only thanked Nigeria and reminded her of her many cultural values that must be tapped for humanity , but also reminded the entire world that African mode of religions are still practiced in Brazil today."

Africans came with their religion, they came with creativity and abundance of human resources, and today Brazil is the better for it. We as black Brazilians are proud of all these.

"But we as a nation have not shown gratitude to Africa in this regard. Now is the time to do so for history is seriously being reversed. Africans fought in the past, bled, died, but they have built national structures not only in Brazil , but world wide. But today , you all can see that in history for history has vindicated the black man", he said.

Ali Moussa Iye of UNESCO, in charge of issues of slavery world wide and a citizen of Djobiti said that time has come to deal with issues of slavery and suffering of the black man as part of world wide history." It is time to put African culture on the right track and teach African history and re-connection through out the world.

We in UNESCO are always behind this kind of project. It is time for us to re-examine our hopes , visions and experiences to rebuild and re-connect with ourselves wherever we are because that is the only way we can move forward as a people ready to re-make history.

Welcoming the August gathering, Director of CBAAC, Professor Tunde Babawale, who also stood in for Nigeria's Minister of Culture and Tourism, Adetokunbo Kayode first thanked the Vice Chancellor of University Rio DE Janeiro, Ricardo De Castro for his love to host the colloquium and also for his positive attitude to African ideas, history and Culture.

He recalled how Africa was raped, tortured and enslaved by other peoples in the world and how today events in the Diaspora have proved the resilience and love of Africans for new ideas, creativity and ideals.

"Brazil is a true demonstration of this development and Barak Obama is that symbol. CBACC is equal to the task and we will continue to play the role in uplifting African spirit ." He said.

The five day colloquium will have scholars from across the globe: Europe, America, the Caribbean, Asia and Africa coming together to discuss diverse issues concerning the black race.

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Who I am for Africa and Africans?

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