B.F. Bankie: ANTITHESIS – THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE AFRICAN UNION (AU) AND ITS CO-ORDINATION WITH THE ARAB LEAGUE FOR A VIABLE AND SUSTAINABLE SOLUTION FOR THE UNITY OF AFRICANS ‘ The Africans may borrow a leaf from the Pan-Arab Movement and solidarity in terms of it’s form and structure but with different social and cultural content’ ( Nyaba 2007, 26) Introduction Franz Fanon, the Algerian revolutionary of African descent stated, ‘ Each generation must out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfil it or betray it’. The challenge confronting African researchers, arising from the information from the Afro-Arab Borderlands, is the determination of what should be done to resolve the historical denial, inaccuracies and inactivity in the processing of this information. This paper critically reviews the falsification of history through the ages, the events in Sudan and the Borderlands in general, the work of the Arab League and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, as well as the Organisation of African Unity and the African Union, drawing conclusions on the way forward. The falsification of history Some 150.000 years ago beings morphologically identified as human, were living in the region of the Great Lakes at the source of the Nile and nowhere else (Diop 1990 ). This lead to the conclusion that the earliest men were Negroid, who left the area via either the Sahara or the Nile Valley. The Nile Valley civilisation was black African. Diop’s melanin dosage test determined the skin colour of the ancients from their mummies. It was at the Symposium on the Peopling of Ancient Egypt, which took place on the 28-31 January 1974 and at the Symposium on The deciphering of the Meroitic Script, which took place 1-3 February 1974, both in Cairo, that Diop presented his detailed thesis. Van Sertima, in explaining the many rejections of Diop’s Doctoral thesis, before it was accepted ( in Nabudere 2007, 10 ) stated that this was because it ran :- ‘… counter to all that had been taught in Europe for two centuries about the origin of civilisation’. Sudan originally extended from the Red Sea to the Atlantic. It’s location on the Nile meant that it impacted the first advanced civilisation with western outreach of homo sapiens sapiens, which was Egypt, which drew its culture and ideas from the African hinterland (Chami 2006 ). Sudan had its black African advanced cultures, predating Egypt, such as Kush and Naphata, which bequeathed us their pyramids, which remain visible in the sands of Sudan today. Chancellor Williams (Williams 1976) identifies some nine periods in the history of north-east Africa, where the earliest civilisations centred around the capital cities of Naphata and Meroe in present day Sudan, their cultures spreading northwards to the Nile delta, when north-east Africa was peopled by black Africans, with people he refers to as white Asians entering later, occupying Lower Egypt and north eastern Ethiopia. This, in his view, marks the date of the beginning of the falsification, by writers, of the contribution of black Africa to civilisation. One of the consequences of the arrival of the Asians in north Africa was to push, more and more, the black people away from the coast into the interior. The traffic of black women in slavery northwards, gave rise to a new type of Afro-Asian, who due to their estrangement with their African Mothers came to be called Egyptians, Arabs and Moors, depending on where they lived in north Africa. This lead to the enslavement of Africans deeper into black Africa, which falls into William’s third period of the black history of Egypt, beginning in the Seventh Dynasty 2181 (BC), which lead to the Arab invasion and the destruction of black civilisation. Nyaba ( Nyaba 2002 ) dates the Arab conquest of Egypt at 640AD. Williams says ( Williams 1976, 49 ) that whereas students have dwelt on the Egyptian penetration of Africa, they ignored:- ‘… the most damaging developments from the Arab impact before the general European take over in the last quarter of the nineteenth century ’. He goes on to state :- ‘From the earliest times the elimination of these ( black African) states as independent African sovereignties has been an Asian objective, stepped up by Muslim onslaughts after the seventh century AD’. Prior to the arrival of the Europeans, the Africans, according to Williams, at the point of contact between the two nations, were harassed, hunted as animals or enslaved, leading to permanent migration and wondering, descending into a state of semi-barbarism. When the Europeans arrived to impose their rule over both the Africans and the Asians, the re-established black states were still being conquered and Islamised. Thereafter the history was deliberately falsified. What transpired in Egypt was reproduced in Sudan to a greater extent. Egypt transformed from black, to brown and then white, whereas Sudan in the northern part, in general, transformed from black to brown, with some black pockets, such as the Nubians, who remain encircled by brown. The process underway currently in Darfur, which was preceded by South Sudan, where war broke out in 1955, bears striking conformity to the ancient historical process of demographic engineering, using genocide and rape as a weapon, and in the modern circumstance, precision aerial bombing of civilian targets. Williams goes on to state that these events have been the subject of an international conspiracy of falsification and denial of history. It is this that has rendered Africans ignorant of some of the key components of their patrimony and an understanding of their place in world history. It was the long running war in the south of Sudan, which came to a negotiated cease-fire by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of 2005, which created an awareness amongst the marginalised of the periphery in Sudan in particular, and the Afro-Arab Borderlands in general ( herein after referred to as the ‘Borderlands’ ), of the possibility for change in Sudan. At the point of convergence of the two nations, Arab and African, there had long existed unequal relations based on a complex mix of ethnic, religious, linguistic and cultural historical factors. In his address delivered at the 1965 Round Table Conference, convened in Khartoum, Aggrey Jardan, the Southern Sudanese nationalist, stated ( The Sudan Mirror of 10th September 2007, 21 ):- ‘There are in fact two Sudans and the most important thing is that there can never be a basis of unity between the two’. He went on to say :- ‘… above all, the Sudan has failed to compose a single community. The northern Sudanese claim for unity is based on historical accident and imposed political domination over southern Sudan’. Looked at from the Borderlands perspective it is Barnal ( Barnal 1987, 241 ) who sheds light on Arab attitudes to Africans. According to him the Egyptian problem was :- ‘ First to deny that the Ancient Egyptians were black; the second was to deny that the Ancient Egyptians had created a ‘true’ civilisation; the third was to make doubly sure by denying both…’ Barnal asserts that the Ancient Egyptian civilisation was black African. He notes that Arabia in general has refused to accept this. Therein lies the core of the unease between the two Nations and the reason why the residual tension in the relations between the two nations makes the African Union (AU) an ineffective instrument in Borderland conflict resolution in states such as Somalia and Sudan. Added to which is the aversion by Arabia to the African western Diaspora, although Col Ghaddafi’s statement in July 2009 in Sirte, inviting the Caribbean to the AU appears as a new departure, perhaps related to an African-American being elected President of the United States of America late in 2008. The admission of the African Diaspora as the Sixth Region of Africa by the AU has not been realised and based on historical research was a non-starter, due to the Arab ruling principle of dividing Africa permanently from its Diaspora. Bernal refers to the ‘national renaissance’ of modern Egypt lead by Mohamed Ali, the Albanian, such that by 1830, Egypt was second only to England in its modern industrial capacity. Yet this renaissance failed to affect western scholars racial stereotypes of the ancient Egyptians. He states ( Bernal 1987 246 ) :- ‘ The failure of the Egyptian renaissance to affect scholars racial stereotypes of the ancient Egyptians tells us something very significant about them.’ According to Bernal it was in the period 1831 to 1860 that the Egyptian view of Ancient history was destroyed and replaced by the European view, as expounded in western scholarship today. Egypt today remains the centre point of Arab culture. Hunwick and Powell ( 2007 ) note the belated attention of the Arab world about those of African descent in their midst and their enslavement. In the past Muslim scholars refused to refer to Arab slavery of Africans. Hunwick states that the reason for the neglect of African issues in Arabia was that there was no identified constituency in those societies pressing for investigation and research into the conditions of the Africans. Those of African descent in north Africa had no defenders. A number of north African countries have sizable ‘hidden’ oppressed African populations, who do not feature in their national affairs. Such marginalisation was one of the root causes for war in South Sudan. In Libya and Algeria, for example, Abdelbagi states ( Southern Times, Windhoek, 7th June 2009, A4 ) :- ‘…southern Libya and Algeria are black countries with millions of invisible oppressed Africans, but we do not hear their voices or see their faces’. Hunwick explains that the Algerian of Arab descent, for example, would not perceive of himself as an African, is not conscious of living in Africa and that this would only happen when the blacks become essential to him. In Algeria, amongst those of African descent, there is a reluctance to acknowledge a past of slavery, because in the Muslim world a past of slavery indicates ‘unbelief’ ( Kufr ) – that one’s ancestors were pagans. Also in Arabia, African Muslims, like any other Muslims, like to trace their linage to Islamic antecedents, cutting themselves off from their African roots in the process. Factors such as these have lead to a dearth of information on the trans-Sahara slave trade. Turning to academic responsibilities and the lack of published work on these matters, I am reminded of a Southern civil servant, who asked in Juba, around 2007, how come Kush civilisation does not feature in the Pan-African narrative. I responded that it is the responsibility of Sudanese to write their own history. Western academia regimented area studies into categories, such as African Studies and Middle Eastern Studies, whereas those of African descent in north Africa do not fit into such compartmentalisation. Sudan and Mauritania fell into this limbo. The Sahara has been a no-go area in western scholarship, not accommodated in such area studies. This neglect, institutionalised in the colonial era, haunts African knowledge systems today, making certain places and people ‘out of bounds’ in the media, foreign policy, school curricula and so forth. Issues from the Borderlands President Omar Hassan Al Bashir, President of Sudan, in his address to the Organisation of Islamic Conference (IOC) in Abuja, Nigeria 24-28 November 1989, declared that the destiny of Islam in Africa is to win. Such a statement represents a direct challenge to African sovereignty and a calculated threat of interference in the internal affairs of all the states of Africa. In 1998 he introduced an Islamic Constitution into Sudan making Sudan a de jure Islamic Republic. Sharia Islamic codes became applicable against non-Muslims, using Islam to Arabise all the people of Sudan. Al Bashir stands indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur, in western Sudan, a region of some seven million people. The conflict subsisting in Darfur has left some 200,000-450,000 black Africans dead and over 2.5 million displaced. The resolution of the Darfur conflict, like that in South Sudan, which preceded it and which took its lessons from South Sudan, represents a challenge not only to Africans, but to humanity in general. The ascension, career and fate of persons such as Musa Hilal and Haruna, Sudanese indicted by the ICC, provides a graphic illustration of the nature of northern/Khartoum society and its distorted racism and interpretations of Islam. On closer inspection we find that similar societal problems are manifest right across the Borderlands, with greater or lesser emphasis, from Port Sudan on the Red Sea, between the Beja and Khartoum. They are reflected through Tchad, Niger and Mali, to Mauritania. The latter, which has a caste system dating back centuries, with successive governments since self government, has been unable to uproot slavery, whereby families are inherited as slaves from one generation to another. A classic example of the volatility of the Borderlands is found in the northern areas of Mali and Niger, an area inhabited across borders by the Touareg, a black Negroid people who were Arabised and who enslaved their neighbours. They had been given reason to hope, in the scramble to decolonize, that they would be accorded their own state. Rather, they were divided up between the new states which were created, finding themselves administered by African political leaders, some of whom were the descendants of their former slaves. Libya funded several armed Touareg groups dedicated to fight the governments of the new states. Together in the 1960s they called themselves the Azawad United Front ( Diakite 2006). The Touareg have been found in recent years settled in the villages abandoned by the Fur, Massalit and Zaghawa in Darfur. Their rebellion, mediated by Algeria, continues to this day. The Arab League has not been able to end this long running Borderland conflict, which receives little coverage in the western media. At the 7th Pan-African Congress (PAC) held in Kampala, Uganda in 1994, without doubt the heavy northern Sudanese attendance, which included Sudan’s current Ambassador at the UN in New York Abdulmahmuud Abdulhaliim, was explained, not by any affection for Pan-Africanism/African nationalism, but by the unique opportunity it provided to update understandings of the trends and concerns of the Africanist movement ( Bankie 1995 ). Northern Sudanese owe their loyalty first to their Arab identity and the Arab League. This conclusion and its implications fits into what has been defined as Afrocentric social and human sciences, seeking to reposition African people in the new world:- ‘… to reclaim African heritage that had long been denied, stolen and plundered’(Nabudere 2007, 8 ). Nabudere goes on to spell out that the production of knowledge in the African context, in the past, was done for purposes of control, which had been the overall historic aim of European scholarship in Africa. Colonial scholarship needs to be archived and replaced by knowledge based on sound research done by Africans in the context of African realities. In a situation of increasing and potential generalised conflict, with the possible break up of the neo-colonial entity known as Sudan, matched with the inability of the organisation of first resort, the Arab League, to resolve the multiple potential conflicts in Sudan or head-off the potential armed confrontation, what is to be done ? The Arab League and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference We are told (Nyaba 2002 ) that the progress of the war in Sudan was regularly put on the political agenda of the Arab League, at a time when it had never been raised in or placed on the agenda of the Organisation for African unity ( OAU). The Arabs led by Egypt tenaciously resisted the discussion of the southern conflict in the various OAU summits and ministerial meetings, on account of it being an ‘internal matter’. Even considering it’s weariness in handling the issue of sovereignty, the Arab League failed to influence the end of the conflict in the south. This was due to it’s support for Arab interests in the area. It has been noted that conflicts in the Borderlands go on without limit. Where peace does persist in Borderland conflicts, which is rare, it is as a result of intervention of force brought to bear from outside the Afro-Arab world, never from within. Nyaba states that the Africans in Sudan have awoken to the reality of their collective oppression and are now engaged in a process for their total liberation and emancipation. The Egyptian government first promoted the idea of a League of Arab states in 1943. Egypt and some other Arab states wanted closer co-operation without the loss of self-rule that would result from total union. The original charter of the Arab League created a regional organisation of sovereign states, that was neither a union nor a federation. Amongst the objectives of the League was the winning of Independence for all Arabs still under alien rule and to prevent the Jewish minority in Palestine ( then governed by the British ) from creating a Jewish state. The members eventually formed a joint defence council, an economic council and a permanent military command. As at now, the League has many Councils and Commissions, and some fifteen specialised agencies, from other related organisations, as well as seventeen offices around the world. In Africa it has offices in Addis Ababa, Nairobi and Dakar with its headquarters in Cairo, two offices in Asia and an office in Russia. All member states have Arabic as their official language and Islam as their religion. This unity around one language and one religion is in striking contrast to the Organisation of African Unity(OAU)/African Union (AU), which is multi-ethnic and multi-cultural in its composition. The Arab League is a voluntary association of independent countries. Its stated purpose is to strengthen ties amongst members, coordinate their policies and promote their common interests. It has launched several programs to promote politics, the economy, culture and social safety in the Arab world. It has structured academic curricula in schools in Arab countries, as well as preserving Arab manuscripts. The Arab League has twenty two members. Chad is not a member, although Arabic is both the official and vernacular used language. In September 2006 Venezuela was accepted as an Observer. In 2007 India was also given Observer Status. The Charter of the Arab League endorses the principle of the Arab Homeland, thus recognising the Arab Nation with its own specificity. Within this dimension, South Sudan was always referred to, within the League, as the bread basket of the Arab world. Despite its foundation on cultural basis, rather than on geographic location and despite its longevity, the Arab League has not achieved a significant degree of regional integration, probably due to the unwillingness of its members to surrender sovereignty and submit themselves to real Pan-Arab unity. Its principles espouse a united Arab nationalism and a common Arab interest. The Pact establishing the League of Arab States was signed in March 1945 and its Cultural Treaty in November 1946, whereby all members have cultural organisations, especially co-operating in matters of education, so that educational syllabi and certificates are harmonised. The Arab Charter of Human Rights came into being in September 1994. The Charter states at Part 1, Article 1 (b) :- ‘Given the Arab nation’s belief in human dignity since God honoured it by making the Arab world the cradle of religions and the birthplace of civilisation which confirmed its right to a life of dignity…’ It’s commitment to the individuals ‘… enjoyment of freedom, justice and equality of opportunity…’ is far from realisation in its member state Sudan. The Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is the second largest inter- governmental organisation after the United Nations, with a membership of fifty seven states spread over four continents. The first meeting of the Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers was held in Jeddah in 1970, establishing a permanent Secretariat in Jeddah. Since the nineteenth century, Muslims aspired to unite the Ummah, leading to the formation of the OIC at a time when Muslims lost the Holy sites in Jerusalem. In August 1990 the Foreign Ministers of the OIC adopted the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, to guide members on the compatibility of human rights with Sharia and Quranic Law. Writing in ‘Philosophy of the revolution’ in 1954, the Egyptian leader Gamal Abdul Nasser, pledged his support for the decolonisation of the rest of Africa, whilst pursuing a vigorous Pan-Arabist agenda. He worked well with the Ghanaian leader Nkrumah, supporting the immediate unity of Africa. Mansfield ( Mansfield 1965 ) refers to the doubts of those times as to whether Pan-Arabism and Pan-Africanism were fully compatible in the Egyptian case. Nasser’s support for African nationalism was reversed by his successor Anwar Sadat, when he signed the Camp David Accords with Israel. Joshua Nkomo the African nationalist ( Nkomo 2001 ) at some stage sojourned in Nasser’s Egypt. He states that Sadat, then head of the Arab Socialist Union , Egypt’s main political party, tried to obstruct his access to Nasser, saying of Sadat ( Nkomo 1984, 67 ):- ‘He was not remotely interested in Africa – indeed he gave the impression that he wished Egypt, were part of Europe, so strong was his indifference to African problems’. The Organisation of African Unity ( OAU ) and the African Union ( AU ) The OAU came about through a long historical process, which sort the realisation of Pan-Africanism/African Nationalism, starting with the abduction of African slaves from Africa to the western hemisphere, where the incubation of Africans, in the ‘new world’, was built on the elimination of its indigenous people and the harnessing of black labour for development, which lead to a conscientisation around common experiences of enslavement, racism and exploitation (Sabelo 2008), leading to the Garveyist ‘back to Africa movement’ and the Pan African Congress series of Du Bois. This in some measure replicates the experience of Africans, especially women and children, who were victims of the trans-Saharian slave trade and those taken into Arab bondage. The substantial difference was that the Europeans, apart from attempting conversion to Christianity, did not succeed in denationalising those taken to the western Diaspora, whether to the Caribbean, north/south America or Europe. In contrast, as seen in Sudan today and graphically illustrated in Darfur, where the conscientisation around African identity is recent and its future uncertain, Africans in the eastern Diaspora ceased to be Africans and became Arabs. It is the loss of identity under the Arab system, which renders reconnection with the African eastern Diaspora in the Gulf, Arabia etc, a major cultural challenge with deep psychological implications. Within Pan-Africanism, it is Esedebe who noted that after the 1945 Fifth Pan-African Congress there was a shift. He states ( Esedebe 1994, 229 ) :- ‘ Up till then, the Pan African movement concerned itself with the problems of Africans and their descendants in different parts of the globe. But despite the adjective Pan-African, the movement driving this period was not truly Pan-African in membership. For every practical purpose Arab north Africa remained outside the pale of Pan-Africanism’. Largely through the influence of Nkrumah, who was Secretary General of the 5th Pan-African Congress (PAC), the Pan-African movement turned 180 degrees to become ‘continentalist’ lead by Ghana, under his leadership, with north Africa being admitted into the movement, without a quid pro quo of black Africa south of the Sahara being admitted, on any basis, into the Arab League. At Sirte at the 4th Extraordinary Summit of the OAU in September 1999, Colonel Muammar Ghaddafi Head of State of Libya, presented a draft charter proposing the establishment of the United States of Africa with one government, one leader, a single army, one currency, one central bank and one parliament providing for the laws for the whole continent, which would be borderless, to be in place by 2000. What was adopted was a compromise outside the Libyan leader’s hopes. One of the major problems of the OAU/AU was the non-provision by member states of funds to drive the organisation. To keep the organisation afloat, some paid more than others. The cultural approach to unity The premise of this paper, for the creation of an African League, is axed on the inability of the Arab League to resolve issues within its membership in north Africa and that the OAU/AU is not able to resolve these issues either, so that the logical progression, given this set of circumstances, is the creation of an African League, with updated authority, being a culturally based organisation first and foremost, to act in tandem, where the need arises, with the Arab League, to realise at some future point the unity of the Arab and African Nations, on a basis of mutual respect. It is proposed that the AU subsists as a forum for the Afro-Arab civilisation dialogue, which has barely started, on the basis of mutual respect, without rancour or racism. The failure of the Arab League to resolve issues, arising in the Borderlands, requires a solution. At present, as South Sudan and Darfur are witness, Africans in their millions are exposed to Arab racism, of the extreme type, for example, genocide, without remedy by way of official solutions from the OAU/AU, to the age old problems of marginalisation, slavery and their consequence, which have persisted for over a millennium. Presently the AU finds itself unable to guarantee the safety and security of its African constituency, as distinct from its Arab members in north Africa. Arab north Africans do not depend on the AU for protection, as they resort under the Arab League. Sudan is an illustration of a situation which is glaringly inequitable for it’s marginalised African population, who are dependent on the largesse of Khartoum. What is required is new thinking around these matters, by those who are concerned , so that African nationals are catered for. Nobody defends the African youth in flight in their thousands from Africa to Europe. There is lots of information available in situ about what happened in south Sudan. Darfur developments can be tracked daily, as can those in other parts of Sudan, such as Nubia. The answer as to why so few know what has been going on since time immemorial in this area of Africa, is due to the distortion of history through the ages. Due to that, Africans chose, and as a matter of convenience, and still do, not to interest themselves in such problems. The question needs to be answered – why did Nkrumah not pronounce himself on South Sudan, yet his plenipotentiaries attended the Roundtable Conference in Khartoum, in March 1965, on peace in south Sudan ? African research by Africans The paper has explained why the African presence in north Africa and the Borderlands was a blind area, especially in western scholarship. This does not explain why today the area continues to be the subject of conspiracy theories, on- going rumours of slavery, genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. This void in information leaves the African people in general ignorant about a part of their patrimony, in terms of education and knowledge systems, to an extent as to seriously weaken their ability to make informed decisions as regards their destiny . This is changing. Few of African descent, from the Borderlands, due to the effects of the denationalisation system, have spoken out or written about Arab racism, presumably because they believed that the situation there was preordained and irrevocable. There are notable exceptions such as Garba Diallo, Jibril Abdelbagi, Jalal Muhammed Hashim and Adwok Nyaba, who have opened up their world to African field researchers. Southern Sudanese have born the brunt of Arab expansion southwards into east Africa and the Horn. Few of them have taken their experience to the global African community. Article 2.9 of the CPA puts the articulation of foreign policy both for Khartoum and Juba in the hands of the Government of National Unity (GONU) in Khartoum. This left the International Liason Offices around the world of the Government of South Sudan (GOSS) inaudible and inactive. These Offices are silent about the realities of South Sudan and the other marginalised in Sudan, leaving the responsibility to disseminate the facts, particularly to Africans and globally, to Africanists. Alternative approaches The existence of the Arab League grew from the aspirations, which were frustrated by the British and the French, amongst the Arabs, for unity after World War I (Geiss 1974 ). Cultural solidarity stressed the concept of a single Arab Nation. This Nation looked back to the ancient Arab empires of the Umayyads and the Abbasids, noting that Arabs had ‘civilised’ Europe in the Middle Ages. When it was established, the Arab League re-affirmed the principles of sovereignty and non-interference, with decisions to be taken by a majority. Such a cultural collective for Africa south of the Sahara was promoted by Cheik Anta Diop in his work on the cultural unity of Black Africa. Indeed it is astonishing that little serious effort has been made to research the establishment of an African League/Nation, given the respect accorded to Diop and the long standing conclusions he arrived at. Conclusions The Late John Garang de Mabior ( Garang 2008 ), based on his understandings of Sudan and its place in Africa and the world, came out strongly for a unity of Africans south of the Sahara. His African Nation concept was to be an ideological weapon to arm the African youth. He stated (Bankie and Mchombu 2007, 214 ) :- ‘ Are all parts of continental Africa parts of this African Nation ? Arabia has its own nation incorporated in the Arab League. Do we want in our African Nation people belonging to another nation ? The time has come for the African youth to determine who will lead the national movement’. Prah in his discursive reflection on nationalism in a substantial work about what he terms The African Nation, defines this as ( Prah 2006, 230 ) :- ‘ I speak of and mean nationalism, based on the unity of Africans as a whole – Pan Africanism’. Prah is of the view that the states in Africa are still born and will never be viable. He refers to the work of Samir Amin, towards the achievement of the Arab Nation, which organisational framework is represented by the Arab League. Prah opts for a unity of the Africans based on the African Diaspora plus sub-Saharan Africa. This paper posits the establishment of the African National League based on a foundation of Africa south of the Sahara plus the African Diaspora in the east ( Gulf States, Arabia etc) and the African Diaspora in the west ( America, Caribbean etc ). B.F.Bankie, Windhoek, October 2009 REFERENCES Bankie,B.F.1995. Pan-Africanism or Continentalism ? Cape Town, Harp Publications , African Opinion Series Number 4. Bernal, M. 1987. Black Athena – The Afroasiatic roots of classical civilisation. London, Vintage. Chami, F.A. 2006. The unity of African ancient history , 3000 BC to AD 500. Dar es Salaam, E & D Ltd. Diakite, S. 2006. Racial prejudice and inter-ethnic conflicts : The case of the Afro-Arab Borderlands in the western Sahel – In racism in the global African experience. Cape Town, CASAS. Diop, C.A. 1990. Origin of the ancient Egyptians – In general history of Africa, Abridged edition, Vol II. Paris, UNESCO. Esedebe, P.O. 1964. Pan-Africanism : The idea and movement, 1776-1991. Washington, D.C, Howard University Press. Garang, J.D. 2008. Pan-Africanism and African nationalism: putting the African nation in context , the case of Sudan – In Pan-Africanism/African nationalism : strengthening the unity of Africa and its Diaspora. Trenton/New Jersey, Red Sea Press. Geiss, I. 1974. The Pan-African Movement : The history of Pan-Africanism in America, Europe and Africa. New York, Africana Publishing Company. Hunwick, J. Powell, E.T. 2007. The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean lands of Islam. Princeton, Markus Wiener Publishers. Mansfield ,P. Nasser’s Egypt. Harmondsworth, England, Penguin Books. Nabudere, D.W. 2007. Cheik Anta Diop : The social sciences, humanities, physical sciences and transdisciplinarity- In the International Journal of African Renaissance Studies. Pretoria , UNISA. Nkomo,J.M.2001. Nkomo: The story of my life. Harare, SAPES Books. Nyaba, P.A. 2002. The Afro-Arab conflict in the 21st century. A Sudanese viewpoint – In Tinabantu Journal of African National Affairs Vol 1 No 1. Cape Town, CASAS. Nyaba,P.A. 2007. What is African liberation ? – In South Sudan Post, November 2007. Juba, Centre for Documentation and Advocacy. Sibanda, S. 2008. Pan-Africanism and Afrikan nationalism : putting the Afrikan nation in context –In Pan-Africanism,African nationalism : strengthening the unity of Africa and its Diaspora. Trenton/New Jersey, Red Sea Press. Prah, K.K. 2006. The African Nation : the state of the Nation. Cape Town, CASAS. Williams, C. 1976. The destruction of black civilisation. Chicago, Third World Press. by BF Bankie https://theblacklistpub.ning.com/bfbankie
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  • DMV
    Well stated Ausar (Osiris) . Well stated indeed. You are Maakheru (True Of Voice). By the way, may I suggest that you start using the indigenous name of Ausar instead of its greek version Osiris. Hetepu, Baba Olatunji
  • South
    When it come to the place call Afrika and the people who first occupied that land and you claim to be Black so call Afrikan, and you Divinely know thyself, then in no way will you suggest that the original people should compromise that reality, by relenting to share the Mother and Father Land with anybody who is not of the DNA of our Ancient Cosmic Divine First Way Ancestors, in a dominant way.

    The problem with Black so call Afrikans are that we have lost the Divine Mind we came to this planet with and it is such a lost that have us not to be qualified, when searching for the Divine Truth about who we are, and to know how we must learn of the Divine Truth, concerning Black people on this planet.

    Our Ancient Cosmic Divine First Way Ancestors pointed to us the way we must look to see, in order to know and understand who we really are, and it require that we venture much further back into our Divine Mind in order to discover who we Truly are.

    So all of ths limited so call research we make claim to do and the information gleaned from such an effort we make claim to be all there is for us to know, concerning our black so call Afrikan selves, only prove that the Mind we Black people now function with, is not the Mind that came with your Ancient Cosmic First Way Ancestors.

    Those Ancestors who were in the know of who they were and who you now know nothing about, they pointed out to you Black people where you must look to see from whence you came, and it most certainly was not from on any place on this earth.

    So if you are serious about learning about our Black so call Afrikan selves, you must be willing to learn how to reclaim the original Mind you inherit from the goddess and gods, our Cosmic Ancestors, they who informed us that we are people that came from another constellation of Stars and proceeded to point to us where such a contellation of stars are located by constructing the Great Pryamid of so call Giza, the Greatest Universe telescope left for us to learn from.

    Yet here we are attempting to start not at the beginning of the Divine Black so call Afrikan Being life, but at a dispensation of Time that is no where comparable to the Time we need to know about, if we are ever to learn Divinely about our Black self.

    Our Ancestors, they who came to this so call Land call Afrika, the area of the planet earth that our Ancient Divine First Way Ancestors Landed and procceeded to verify their Divinity by the Divine intelligence they verified by having the information that was in their possession and they shared with us about the Divine Essence, (GOD) the Universe, both of them, and about who they were in relationship to such a universal phenomenon in motion and did establish the most Divine civilization ever has been upon the earth without the need to construct an institution of religion full of doubts and lies.

    So no, there is not to be a compromise of our mother and father land by allowing people in Afrika who should not be there in the controlling capacity that they are, controlling a portion of our mother and father land and they have a history of stealing from, disrespecting us Black people, and abusing Blacl people, as they now occupy all of Nothern Afrika and we Black Afrikans have not the will to do anything about it, but to acquiesce the Nothern part of Afrika to a thief and a robber, the Arabs I speak of.

    Your research is flawed if it does not begin out in the Universe on another planet in our Milky Way Galaxy when seeking information about the Black Divine Being now call Afrikan, and you need to be in use of your Divine Mind in order to perform such Mental research of a universe nature, beloved

    So not until Afrika is housing a United Black Nation in one undivided Land call Afrika, then all that you speak of and pretend to seek about the Black Afrikan, and Freedom for Black so call Afrikans are not your goal, then all of your effort contradict the wisdom of the Honorable Marcus Garvey, he who made it plain, that Afrika is for the Afrikans, and the Black Afrikan Nation must become reunited again, if we are ever to have respect in the world again.

    Be Kind To Your Self, Beloved

    Please visit iuniverse book store and check our my recent released book, that not just Black people need to have in your possession, but everybody, regardless of Race, Creed or Religion, it is a book title: Divine Spirituality: Revealing Information About The Real You.

    Be Kind to Your Self, Beloved

    Hoteph
    Osiris
    Chief Elder
    copyright@2009
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