The text finds its origins in the paper ‘Pan Africanism or Continentalism’? presented by the author on March 13, 1991 at the Institute for African Alternatives in London, England.¹  The introductory note of that text stated:-

‘The linkage of Africa with its Diaspora is merely one of the important elements in the advancement of the Pan African Project.  This linkage is only one of the keys to Pan Africanism – another is the issue who is an African – yet another is the question of Pan Africanism or Continentalism?’

The inability of African political leaders to confront a situation, which in many respects appears overwhelming, some might say god-given, the absence of a collective sense of nation, and the ability of the denationalized African elites to ignore the problems of other Africans living elsewhere – has meant that Africans in general as represented by their governments, have chosen ‘collective amnesia’ as regards some events happening in other parts of Africa and its Diaspora.  So it was that the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) failed to act on one and a half million lost lives in the Sudan since 1983 and four million displaced, or when thousands were massacred or displaced in Mauritania, and reports filtered through of genocide in other parts of the ‘Borderlands’, and of the harassment of African communities.  The Borderlands is that area of Africa running from Mauritania on the Atlantic Ocean, eastwards through the Sahel, to Sudan on the Red Sea.

The OAU which emerged as a compromise from the earlier Pan Africanist struggles, based its project for unity, on unequal Afro-Arab relations, which did not reflect the lived experience of the Afro-Arab interchange, which was less than cordial at the point of contact in the Sahel.  There is a view that Africa was saved from being annexed by Pan-Arabism by the Jewish settlement of the Palestine.  Later the examples of Sudan and Mauritania will be used to illustrate the reality in the Borderlands.  The marginilisation of Africans in the area was, after all, not a new phenomenon and had been centuries in the making.  One of the foremost exponents of the OAU approach to unity had married an Arab to symbolize his aspirations for continental union, by a co-habitation.

With hindsight one increasingly asks how the leaders of the 1950’s and 1960’s believed that they could short circuit centuries of history and move to immediate union with a people who had pursued a policy of expansion over centuries and who by the mid-twentieth century had created their own pan-movement for Arab solidarity, lead by the Nasserite revolution, which captured the imagination of the Arab world and sporned the Arab nationalist Baath parties of Syria and Iraq. The policies pursued by the Baath party were but a continuation of the age old policy of Arab expansion into Africa, with the Iraqi Baath party training the elite military structures of the Mauritanian army, the Republican Guard; with Iraq supplying mustard gas to Khartoum to be used in south Sudan.  The question needs to be asked, what interests did these countries pursue, so far from their territorial borders?

The formation of the OAU Charter was contested and the Charter itself a compromise.  The Charter provided for a loose cooperation 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 trajetory of the Pan African movement, as it failed to incorporate the aspirations of the people (rather than their states) and the destiny of Africans in the Diaspora, despite the fact that the organization owed its origins to the work of Pan Africanists.

Apparently the Founding Fathers of the OAU, or at least some of them, did not know the real nature of Afro-Arab interaction in the Sahel, and were ignorant of the grassroots conflictual relations which exploded into violence in Nouakchott, Mauritania for the first time in 1966.²

As the movement gained momentum towards the revision of the OAU structures, some observers monitored closely the formulation of the Charter of the emerging African Union (AU).  This was not easy, given that the elaboration took place, at least in the early stages, away from public scrutiny and knowledge.  From 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,³ at paragraph 48, under the rubric ‘Consideration Protocol relating to the Pan African Parliament’ at the section referring to Article 4 ‘Objectives’ it is stated:-

‘On the issue of composition it was proposed that the prospective members should represent not only the people of Africa and those who have naturalized, 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 paragraph 1 and 2 of Article 3, the reference to members of Parliament representing all people of ‘African descent’ was deleted.’

It is no secret that Arabia in the OAU never saw a place for the African Diaspora in its deliberations, whereas Africans in general embrace their ‘kith and kin’ taken out of Africa through slavery. Mohamed Fayek, Director-General, Dar Al-Mustaqbal Al-Arabi, Cairo, Egypt in his contribution to the Amman Seminar on Afro-Arab relations points out that prior to the Nasserite Revolution of July 23, 1952 Egypt had no organic relationship with the rest of Africa and there existed no linkage movements.  He goes on to state that:-

‘… The African movement itself, which was initiated by black Americans in reaction to discrimination against them, adopted the theme of the black man’s dignity and freedom and his returning to his roots – while the black Americans had neither knowledge nor concrete links with the African continent, other than the colour of their skin.  Hence the birth of what is called ‘Africanism’ based on their African descent – but only with black Africa in mind.  African unity was to them as much a way of reviving the ancient African empires of Ghana, Songhi, Mali and others, as it was the unity of black Africa.  With this, Africanism, before reaching the African continent itself, took a separate path from Arab Africa.  Egypt, therefore, as well as the rest of North Africa, had no connection with this particular African movement.⁴

The Borderlands and the Sudan

It is submitted that the resolution of the problems in Afro-Arab relations, specifically as reflected in the Borderlands, will require time and introspection.  As these issues are addressed, it will result in the re-orientation of African international relations.  It will affect how Africans see the world, how African unity is constructed and how the rest of the world sees Africa.  This strategic shift in intra-African relations represents the first major departure from the interpretations and ‘set of problems’ left to us by those who formed the OAU in the 1960’s, which precepts have remained unchallenged in conventional circles from the formation of the OAU to its re-incarnation as the AU today.

The establishment of the Afro-Arab ‘dialogue’, if needs be, will require as its principal interlocutors, from the African side, the people of the Borderlands who have co-existed with the Arabs. Not the coastal peoples of west Africa, nor the central, east and southern Africans, who have in general chosen to ignore the problems in the Borderlands.  It is with the people of the Borderlands that the Arabs north of the Sahel, the Moroccans, Egyptians, Libyans, Tunisians, Algerians (whose government, less we forget, needs to resolve its differences with the Berbers in their midst) et al that the dialogue may take place.  Some Africans are saying that the issue of reparations for Arab-led slavery should not be addressed in this period, when the Middle East is being regime changed.  Here again such tactical questions need to be answered by those living in the areas affected.⁵  The attempt to postpone the issue of reparations equates with the existing generalized Arab disrespect of Africans.  It is a reminder that Nigeria, Senegal and Uganda have renounced rights to reparations for slavery.

The Arab world in general as represented by the Arab League, as well as the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), has supported the Sudan government in its war in the south against African nationalism.  In the Sudan, as in the Borderlands in general, Africans have had to contend with Arab expansionism.  In these circumstances they had to choose whether to Arabise and Islamise or to take the option of African nationalism.  Those who chose the later option, some of whom opted for Christianity, have been fighting central government in Khartoum.  The major opposition is formed by the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM), although other groups are also at war with the central government in Khartoum.

Kwesi Kwaa Prah has explained the reason why the Sudanese conflict has failed to find definitive settlement.⁶  It is the oldest war in Africa, having started in 1955.  Prah states that this has been due to the inability of the warring parties to achieve a political and constitutional arrangement which would resolve the contradictions on which the civil war was premised.  The intractability of the war reflects the depths of the contradictions.

Essentially the war in the Sudan represents a clash of African and Arab nationalism, contending for economic, cultural, political and social stakes within the colonial bequeathed borders of the Sudan.  Prah states that the dominant feature in the Sudan situation is the national question.  This he states, is illustrated by the fact that in the Sudan :-

‘an Arab minority controls state power, dominates the armed forces, the civil bureaucracy, the political elite, commerce, trade, banking and the judiciary and orders these instruments of state power towards a spoken and unspoken policy of Arabisation of the African national majority’. 

The discovery of large quantities of oil in the Sudan adds further fuel to an inflammatory situation.

Although Sudan on independence rushed to join the Arab League, only 39 per cent of its people consider themselves Arabs.  Sudan is, in effect, a minority ruled state.  The majority of its people are Africans, who are mainly concentrated in the south, where the cultural features are less Arabised and the people are partially Christian.  The north is predominantly Islamic and Arabic, including blacks who opt for Pan-Arabism.  Prah states ‘the unresolved national question and its class underpinning can be identified as the fundamental cause of the civil war’.

The issues the Borderlands raise date back thousands of years and it is suggested that the 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 Africa.  In the Sudan, as in the Borderlands in general, exists a minority group of Arabized black people who do not consider themselves Africans and who participate in the oppression and enslavement of the majority African population.  Clearly what is at stake is not a matter of colour, but a question of culture.  A fact which was confirmed by the author on visit to Khartoum in December 2002.  The Borderlands teach us that the African nationality is primarily cultural, not race based.  For the African unity movement the implications of this mean a need to ‘wipe the slate clean’ and a need to ‘return to the drawing board’.  Too much emphasis was placed on geopolitics, economics and race at the cost of marginalizing the significance of culture.  Indeed culture is the missing link in development planning.⁷

We need to recall at this point how Africa, from the Mediterranean Sea southwards, had been originally populated by black people.  The doctoral thesis of Cheik Anta Diop of 1960 established the cultural origins of the Egyptian civilization as being African.  This was affirmed in Cairo January 28 to February 3, 1974 at the UNESCO sponsored Symposium on the Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the Deciphering of the Meroitic Script, attended by Diop and Theophile Obenga.⁸

The author examined at the National Museum in Khartoum in December 2002 irrefutable evidence that the earliest civilizations in the area of present day Sudan were African cultures.  We know that with the passage of time other Indo-European peoples entered North Africa through the Nile Delta pushing southwards the Africans they met, so that today the Borderlands define the point to which Africans have been pushed southwards, generally to arid, infertile areas.  In the Borderlands, due to the Arabisation of its people, some of those leading the fight southwards are black people culturally Arabised, who have been denationalized and thus reject their African national identity.

The Annual Report of Sudan Organisation Against Torture (SOAT), on the situation of human rights in Sudan for the period March 2002 to March 2003 refers to the situation in the province of Darfour in Western Sudan.  The problems in the area arise from what the Sudan government terms as ‘tribal conflicts’ between Arab tribes from Chad and Darfour and the African tribes of Darfour.  This conflict provides the material evidence of the nature of the contact between Arab and African cultures in the Borderlands today, the point of conflict having over centuries been pushed by the Arabs down from the Mediterranean coast to Darfour in the Sudan and other points westwards, towards the Atlantic.

According to SOAT, this ‘tribal conflict’ has taken the form of attacks by militia from the Gangawied group of 28 Arab tribes, amongst them the Mahariya, the Zizeigat and the Iraqat, against villages of the Four, Massaleet and Zagawa African people, in which at least 75 people had been killed since May 2002, many more injured, hundreds of houses destroyed and thousands of livestock lost. 

The Report goes on to state:-

‘Large numbers of people have been displaced by these attacks and left without shelter and food in an area where prolonged drought has resulted in consistently high levels of food insecurity.  The authorities are aware that these attacks are taking place, but no investigations have been launched and none of the perpetrators pursued, despite the fact that leaders of the Four and Massaleet tribes have identified leaders of the militia attacks to the Government of Sudan.  The Four tribe have accused the Government of Sudan of training and supporting militia from the Arab tribes.

The Government of Sudan maintains that the conflict in Darfour is primarily a tribal one, centred around competition for land between pastoralists and crop farmers in the area.  Whilst this is true to a certain extent, as drought in Darfour has led to severe shortages of pasture land and conflict over viable land between tribes has occurred, this is not thought likely to be the primary cause of militia attacks on villages of the Four, Massaleet and Zagawa.  Leaders of the Four tribe insist that the consistent depopulation of villages by Arab militia attacks and the changes in land ownership which have resulted are part of a government strategy to change the whole demography of the region of Darfour.  To date, 59 Four villages in the region have been depopulated in attacks by militia from Arab tribes.’

From time to time the National Islamic Front (NIF) government in Khartoum has talked of capturing Kampala as a strategic objective to control the headwaters of the Nile and to push Arabisation further southwards, over the Equator.  The situation in the Sudan and the progress of the war is regularly put on the political agenda of the Arab League at a time when it has never been raised in or placed on the OAU agenda.  The Arabs led by Egypt have tenaciously resisted the inclusion of the conflict at the various OAU summits and ministerial meetings, on the basis of it being an “internal matter”.  The support of the Arab world in general by way of finance and in terms of military supplies to Khartoum, has at times included volunteers, such as Bin Laden, the Muslim fanatic.   Dr Hassan Abdalla El Turabi, the then chief ideologue of the NIF government, was quoted as saying in February 1999 ‘we want to Islamise America and Arabise Africa’.⁹

Slavery

The Johannesburg Arab-led Slavery of Africans Conference on February 22, 2003 looked at slavery in Berber society, trans-Saharan slavery, the slave markets and Islamic societies of the Middle East, the slave trade in East Africa (1840’s to 1890’s), slavery in Niger, African slave trade in central Europe and the Ottoman territories in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, and slavery in Mauritania, amongst other issues.  This Conference convened by the Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS) of Cape Town, and the Drammeh Institute of New York, issued a Declaration calling for, amongst others, reparations; the establishment of relations between continental Africans and the African Diaspora in the Arab world; that the issue of Arab-led slavery of Africans be placed on the agenda of the AU and condemning forced cultural Arabisation.

The Borderlands in general

Adwok Nyaba, in his paper ‘The Afro-Arab Conflict in the 21^st Century: A Sudanese Viewpoint’¹⁰ informs us that the Arabs arrived in North Africa, driven there mainly by hunger and the wish to capture richer lands.  In the wars that ensued in North Africa they looted and stole moveables and occupied lands.  By 640 AD Arab armies had ransacked Tripoli. Carthage was raised to the ground and the Magreb in general put to the sword, thus breaking the resistance of the Berbers.

It is impossible to obtain detailed figures of those who have lost their lives in the Sudan conflict.  According to Adwok ‘the world watched the people of South Sudan bleed about one and a half million people to death in the seventeen years’ war.’¹¹  In Mauritania, likewise, figures on the genocide are hard to come by with many killed, with deportations of Africans reaching 130,000 by mid-1989, and with 100,000 full time slaves and 300,000 semi-salves and ex-slaves still held in bondage by Arab Mauritanians (out of a total population estimated at 2 million in 1988).¹²  In Mauritania on April 24^th – 25^th, 1989, according to the report issued by Africa Confidential, elements of the government supported Structures De L’Education Des Masses (SEM) massacred more that 1000 Senegalese, black Mauritanians, Guineans, Ghanaians and Ivorians, without reaction from the OAU.  The United States Congressional Record, Extension of Remarks of July 9, 1991 E2465 condemned:-

(1)        ‘the forcible expulsion in 1989 and 1990 of up to 80,000 black Mauritanians into Senegal and 10,000 into Mali, where most continue to reside in refugee camps;

(2)        the burning and destruction of entire villages and the confiscation of livestock, land and belongings of black Mauritanians by the security forces in 1989 and 1990 in an effort to encourage their flight out of the country;

(3)        the death in detention as a result of torture, neglect or summary execution of at least 500 political detainees, following the arrest of between 1,000 and 3,000 black Mauritanians in late 1990 and early 1991;

(4)        discrimination against non-Hassaniya speaking black Mauritanians in all walks of life.  Including unequal access to education, employment and health care;

(5)        an aggressive policy of ‘Arabisation’ designed to eradicate the history and culture of black ethnic groups; and

(6)        the use of state authority to expropriate land from black communities along the Senegal River Valley through violent tactics.’

Mauritania had no serious problems of land ownership before the 1970’s and 1980’s droughts.  Arabs led a nomadic way of life in the north of the country while the blacks continued their mainly settled way of life along the Senegal River Valley.  The drought of 1968-1985 decimated the camel, goat and sheep herds of the Arabs.  In 1983-84 new land laws were adopted.  African customary land ownership in the south of the country was abrogated to allow the state to allocate fertile African lands along the Senegal River to Arab nomads and businessmen from the north.  Both Arab nomads and businessmen moved en masse to colonize the south.  The ensuing tensions lead to the formation of the African Liberation Forces of Mauritania (FLAM), which launched an armed struggle for the political, economic and cultural rights of African Mauritanians.  The current regime of Taya, which seized power on December 12, 1984 responded to black demands with violence and discrimination. As the 1983-84 land reforms were implemented by the regime, the Prefect of Boghe, Ould Jiddou, issued Circular no. 19/DB in May 1988 confiscating all black – owned farmland in the Boghe area.  Some of these farms were owned by farmers living on the Senegalese side of the river.  Their rights to farm in the area pre-dated the arrival of Arabs in the area and the creation of the state of Mauritanian itself.

As relations developed on a daily basis of conflict between Arab settlers and black farmers, so relations between Mauritania and Senegal deteriorated.  This lead to the 24^th – 25^th April 1989 anti-black massacre.  Black Africans were identified as Senegalese by the regime and were rounded up into detention for deportation to Senegal and Mali and for summary execution.  These events were reported in the Amnesty International Newsletter of September 1990 and in the New York Times of June 17, 1991.  30,000 to 40,000 Senegalese immigrant labourers in Mauritania were repatriated.  This operation was assisted with air transport from France, Morocco, Algeria and Spain.  Mauritania then began an unprecedented campaign of deportation of its own black citizens to Senegal and Mali.

No independent Commission of Inquiry was set up by Mauritania to investigate these events and the loss of life.  By 22^nd April 1992, Senegal, which had come under intense pressure from the donors, restored diplomatic ties with the Mauritanian government.¹³  The donors insisted on privatization and the establishment of large projects in the Senegal River Valley, which attracted Arab agribusiness investments, which were facilitated by the availability of slave labour.  

REFERENCES

1. Bankie, B.F. (1995) PanAfricanism or Continentalism?, African Opinion Series No. 4.  Cape Town; Harps Publications.
2. Diallo, G. (1993) Mauritania – The Other Apartheid? Uppsala; Nordiska Afrikainstitutet P.9.
3. “Report of the Meeting of Legal Experts and Parliamentarians on the Establishment of the African Union and the PanAfrican Parliament”, in, Newsletter of the African Association of Political Science. Vol.6, No.1 January-April (2001) (Harare, AAPS) Pp.15-16.
4. Fayek, M.  (1984) “The July 23 Revolution and Africa” in Khair El-Din Haseeb Ed, The Arabs and Africa (London: Croom Helm) Pp 90-91
5. Prof. Tier, A. Dean of the Faculty of Law, University of Khartoum, specialist in Human Rights law, December 12, 2002, in Khartoum endorsed the legitimacy of reparations for Arab-led Slavery.
6. Prah, K.K. (2000) “Constitutionalism, the National Question and the Sudanese Civil War” in Nnoli, O., Ed, Government and Politics in Africa – A Reader. (Harare: AAPS Books) Pp. 392-410.
7. Prah, K.K. (2002) “Culture, The Missing Link in Development Planning in Africa” in Karikari, K., Ed, Where has Aid taken Africa? Re-thinking Development. (Accra: Media Foundation for West Africa) Pp. 107-126.
8. Diop, C.A. (1992) “Origin of the Ancient Egyptians” in Sertima, I.V., Ed Great African Thinkers (Rutgers, New Jersey: Transaction Books) Pp. 35-63.
9. Nyaba, P.A. (2002) “The Afro-Arab Conflict in the 21^st Century.  A Sudanese Viewpoint” in Tinabantu Vol.1, No.1, May. P. 27.
10. Nyaba, P.A. (2002) Op cit.  P.35.
11. Ibid P. 37.
12. Diallo, G. (1993) Op cit.  Pp. 11,22,28,41,43.
13. Ibid P. 13.
    

September 2003

Mr Bankie Forster Bankie

Member of the General Council

Sudan Commission for Human Rights (SCHR)

E-mail            wau@worldonline.co.za

B.F.Bankie

Sudan Sensitisation Project (SSP)

www.bankie.info