Paper delivered 12 th 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 2008
The root causes of the war in South Sudan and the Anya-nya armed struggle
Africans in general find it difficult to accept the root causes of the last phase
of the protracted war in South Sudan , which ran from 1955 to 1972 and from
1983 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 be
extensively drawn upon. The key to understanding Afro-Arab relations, past
and present and the relevance of South Sudan to Africans in future is found in
the 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 and
business firms were taken up by Northern Sudanese who previously
had not been allowed to work or settle in the South. The Southerners
began to feel more and more strongly that their country was being
colonized by Arabs and that their great expectations from independence
boiled down to the replacement of one master by another. The Northern
officials looked down upon the Southerners, openly discriminating
against them and on the whole treated them as subject people. Their
arrogance and contempt towards the Southerners soon became
unbearable. They kept on insulting and abusing us, often using the
word ‘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 the
Southerners laid down their arms, Northern troops were let loose
on them by (the Prime Minister) while the last of the British left
Sudan for good. There followed a blood-bath in which many
Southern soldiers, policemen and warders were killed and the
remainder taken to the North to serve long terms of imprisonment.
…there came the systematic Neo-colonialist and Imperialist
robbing 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 leaders
either took to the bush or fled to neighbouring countries where
they live as refugees
Commenting on the eight years which passed from 1955 to 1963, Major-General Lagu said :-
Only one thing stood out clearly and this was what the Arabs
themselves wanted then, as they do now: to dominate and
colonize the South. To achieve this they try to impose on us
Africans their religion, language and customs. By this method
they want to turn us into Arabs and thereby conquer our
country 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 winds
which blew over the Congo blew good over South Sudan .
Arms belonging to the Congolese rebels passed into Anya-nya
hands and our operations against the Arab enemy soon
became more numerous and more effective. Enemy units
ambushed by the Anya-nya provided us with more weapons
and 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 wants
to destroy us completely so that he can take over our country
for himself. For generations past he was trying to do this, even
carrying away our women and children to sell them as slaves in
foreign lands
On culture and traditions it is stated :-
The enemy looks down upon our customs and traditions. He
believes his Arab cultures and traditions are superior and
should therefore be imposed on us, if necessary by force. This
is just another way, on the spiritual level, of destroying us as
a people. Our answer to this kind of attack is simple: You Arabs
keep your Arab culture and traditions and let us Africans keep ours.
and if you try to impose on us your ways by force, you will
be 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 that
ever since the first Arabs reached Malakal, Juba and Wau,
we, the people of South Sudan , have been defending not only
ourselves but also them from the onslaught of Arab Colonialism.
We have never ceased the struggle against those barbarians and
we never shall until we triumph. The harder and more successfully
we struggle the more our neighbours will recognize the vital
importance of our struggle to them and the more ready they will
be to support us…..Therefore we, the African people and soldiers
of South Sudan , must keep bringing these facts to the attention
and consciousness of Black Africans all over the continent
Speaking on objectives :-
The goal of our struggle is clear and straightforward – the
right 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 modern
army equipped with everything including tanks, heavy guns and
an air-force. We have only light weapons. If we try to beat the
enemy in battle in the open field, we would do exactly what the
enemy wants us to do because then we would be defeated quickly
by his superior weapons. To avoid this, we chose the guerrilla
method of war which gives us many advantages while placing
the Arabs at disadvantage. And as long as we fight this kind
of 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 – identity
and the common aspirations which unite all our tribes in a common
struggle fully qualify us for nationhood and the right of self-
determination.
That by rejecting the attempted Arabization of South Sudan
and by adhering to our African identity and heritage we exercise
a basic human right which is bound to be recognized by
everybody 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 21 st 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 18 th 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 Manifesto
that 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 and
integrity of the Sudan , the armed struggle in the South must
of necessity eventually engulf the whole of Sudan
The Borderlands of the African Nation
The 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 Africa .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 17 th 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 13 th 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 Link
One 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 8 th century AD, and the second was via the European expansion, which was consolidated in the 19 th 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 the 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, 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.
Yusuf Fadi Hasan in his contribution on the historical roots of Afro-Arab relations, in the Report on the Amman Seminar of 1983 on Afro-Arab relations, at page 35 refers to the Arab cultural, social and spiritual homogeneity pushing southwards in Sudan, eroding African cultures. This relentless push southwards of Islam and Arabisation is what we witness today in Darfur with the Janjaweed attacks on the African sedentary farmers. It was seen earlier in south Sudan . This is the spatial pattern in the Sahel .
The subject of Arab slavery of Africans is one which many, including the African states, would prefer to have buried and about which there is an unspoken understanding that Africans should remain silent, including Nkrumah. The practice has existed 1400 years, but both Africans and Arabs in general, for different reasons, exhibit sensitivity to it. Muslim academics, both Arab and African, shy away from the Arab slave trade. Islamic leaders are profoundly defensive on the issue. In the proceedings of the Cairo symposium of 1974 it was recognized that Blacks peopled Sudan ‘since very ancient times'. MacGaffey (1961) is quoted, writing on north Sudan , that Black people came down the Nile and entered Nubia . He calls these people ‘invaders'. They mixed with the ‘Hamitic' people of the desert. MacGaffey refers to ‘endemic struggles between riparian Negro populations and desert dwellers'. There exist, we are told, the contrary thesis of the Egyptian historian, A. Batrawi, of waves of immigrants entering into Sudan from the north.
Civilization was centered in the Nile Delta where irrigation allowed for food surpluses and thus food security, allowing for the development of a powerful civilization. The civilizations of the Sudan were attributed by Adams (1949) to successive waves of immigrants from the north. The same symposium refers to those living in the Nile valley south of the tenth parallel, as different from those living northwards. These people, it is stated, due to climatic conditions did not move northwards. These people (i.e. Southerners) were described as being ‘without history' and of interest only to anthropologists. The south, as far as Egypt and the colonialists were concerned, was peopled by savages. Southern Sudanese have a responsibility to Africans, to disseminate and vulgarize the history of Sudan , based on their historically lived experience. So far, this they have failed to do. In this they have been compromised. This task should form their contribution to humanity.
Ronald Segal in his book ‘Islam's Black Slaves: The Other Diaspora', explains that the Islamic slave trade began some eight centuries before the Atlantic trade and was conducted on a different scale providing slaves more often for domestic – including sex – and military service. In the Arab-led slave system, some slaves achieved positions of authority, a few became rulers. In Segal's view, because of specific spiritual teachings, Islam was generally more humane than the West in its treatment of slaves and in its willingness to bestow manumission, although the process of captivity, subjugation and transportation was extremely cruel. Segal looks at the appeal of Islam to African American communities and the denial by some Black Muslim leaders like Louis Farrakan, of the continued existence of African slavery and oppression in contemporary Mauritania and Sudan . An interesting point made by Segal in an interview was that ‘whereas the gender ratio of slaves in the Atlantic trade was two males to every female, in the Islamic trade it was two females to every male.' It needs to be noted that the Arab slave trade concentrated particularly on children. The Arabs focused and still do on children, because children are easier to re-educate and Arabise. They are also easier to capture and transport to Arabia . The significance of the title of Segal's book is that it brings to the attention of the global audience that there is another African Diaspora, in this instance – the Eastern Diaspora, where more slaves were trafficked than to the Western hemisphere. This reality is not accepted in the West, especially in the African American community. One might well ask, how could such information remains hidden. When powerful vested interests are at stake even educational curricula will exclude such dissemination. Similar interests camouflaged from international scrutiny the long war in Southern Sudan .
It is a truism that Africans in general are not informed of their history. This assertion is repeated at page 161 by Wariz.O.Alli, in his contribution to the book ‘ Africa and the African Diaspora'. He states that one of the major problems confronting African policy makers is their low level of appreciation of the African Diaspora. Many African leaders are not aware of the many possibilities of the African Diaspora. This raises the issue of curriculum development. Today the question increasingly should be, what can and should Africa do for the African Diasporas ?
Evidence and cultural implications need to be researched, of the early, changing and continuing African presence in the now largely Arabised and Islamic north African lands (Morocco to Egypt and Mauritania to the Sudan) and in those lands immediately north-east of Africa (Palestine/Israel, Lebanon, Syria/Jordan in the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq and Iran). Ancient, pre-Islamic and continuing Saharan desiccation and consequent African long-term out-migrations, south and north-wards should be exposed. The rise of Islam: modalities of its spread across northern Africa and gradual penetration of the Sahel and other parts of Africa south of the Sahara need to be taught to the youth. The crucial institution of Arab/Islamic/Muslim slavery in Africa; its scale and persistence; its long-term interactions with the European, Christian Atlantic chattel slavery; its demographic and cultural impact in selected territories that were recipients of enslaved Africans; evidence of African resistance in these lands; the nature and effects of ‘traditional' Africa's encounter with this military and cultural-cum-religious complex, including the Islamic verses Ethiopic Christian encounter in Ethiopia, are all of importance for African youth. Some recent/current problem sites to be studied are the Sudan and Mauritania , for their implications for and impact upon the cultural and political unity of Africa .
Hunwick and Powell at page xii of ‘The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam', refer to the relative absence of Black conscientiousness in north Africa, amongst Black communities there. This is in part due to a reluctance to admit a past of slavery. In the Muslim world a past of ‘unbelief' (Kufr), that one's antecedents were pagans, is a heavy burden to bear. Also in the Mediterranean lands the Black voice may also be silent due to the number of clearly identifiable descendants of slaves, as well as their depressed social status and lack of education. According to Hunwick, as at 2007, only one scholarly study of Blacks in north Africa existed and this was of an isolated agricultural community in southern Tunisia . In general Black north Africans tend to live in interior towns and oases, not in cities, near economic life. Finally the issue of slavery of Africans in Muslim countries has not been of interest to American and European scholars. This area of interest falls between African and Middle Eastern studies. Hunwick is clear that Black Africans in the Islamic Mediterranean world, including Turkey , Arabia and the Gulf, are part of the African Diaspora. According to Islam and Sharia law slavery is sanctioned by God. African slaves being Black had inferior status to White slaves. Blackness of skin in Arabia was and still is considered synonymous with the word slave. In Arabic the word for African is Abeed, meaning slave. From Mauritania to the Sudan , to the Gulf States , the legacy of slavery lives on. The long war in south Sudan saw a return of slave raids by the north against south Sudan .
Muslih. T. Yahya, Associate Professor of Arabic Literature, Department of Religious Studies, University of Jos, Jos, Plateau State, Nigeria, in the 1999 publication entitled ‘Africa and the African Diaspora', published by Mazlink, Jos at page 35 defines persons of African descent living in the Middle East, as members of the African Diaspora and goes on to include northern Africa as part of the Middle East. He distinguishes between Africa north and south of the Sahara . Trade routes linked the two areas. Movement between them became more noticeable with the advent of Islam.
Few Black Africans in Africa 's Arab Eastern Diaspora achieved celebrity. The best known in Islamic history was Bilal Ibn Rabaah, the Muezzin of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). The Black Eastern Diaspora grew also due to trade and scholarship between Africa and the Middle East , with many Nigerians settling in places such as Saudi Arabia and Sudan , along the Haj route to Mecca .
The Zanj Rebellion of 870-883 in Iraq , in the Abbasid era, in Islamic history, was similar to the slave rebellions in the Caribbean and Americas , in this case of Africans, originating from East Africa , who worked the saltpeter mines of the lower Euphrates . There are today people of African descent in places such as Basra in Iraq . These, like those living within Arabia including north Africa, have been Islamised, Arabised and denationalised as Africans and remain marginalised in Iraqi society. Indeed Blacks in Arabia remain at the lowest levels of Arab society.
On the issue of ‘Africanism' in the Eastern Diaspora, due to the power of Islam many in Arabia trace their genealogy to Islamic historical figures of Arabia , who were Arabs. This holds true for Blacks who have lived for generations in Arabia . There is the Islamic principle of ‘God's land is wide'. One knows where one is born but cannot know where one will die and be buried. So ‘home' is where one is able to practice Islam and feel settled. According to M.T.Yahya, the ‘movements of the Black Diaspora in the Middle East has created a kind of cultural interaction and cultural relation which has not been exploited to the fullest. These include areas of language, literature, trade, industry and politics. Researchers are presently turning attention to some of these areas'. Yahya talks of ‘The potentials of enhancing the unity and mutual understanding among African countries', when referring to the interaction between Africans at home and in the Diaspora in the Middle East , where cultural history ought to have created a symbiotic relationship.
Aims and objects of the curriculum in African communities globally
1. To assist African pupils/students to develop a clear and critical understanding of the significance of the African Diasporas in their fullness, embracing the pre-historic, ancient and modern eras.
2. To assist African pupils/students establish a clear and critical understanding of the idea of Pan-African history.
3. To assist African pupils/students towards a clear and critical understanding of their place and duties within a meaningful and wholly purposeful African historical experience in which they and other generations are involved in crucial relationships.
4. To assist African pupils/students towards a clear and critical identification of the principal anti-African forces faced, and towards an involvement in the organization and the struggle directed at defeating such forces and developing the positive forces of African creativity and self-creation, unity, freedom and prosperity.
The de-nationalisation of Africans
With Islam and slavery came the Arabisation of the African. Yusuf Fadi Hasan at page 56 of the Amman Report states:-
I could not separate Islam from Arabism. The former is the vehicle for the latter. Furthermore, Islam is the spiritual base of Arab culture.
The significance of this, which is generally on view in the Borderlands, is that Islam as an expansionist spiritual concept comes clothed in Arab culture, so much so that the two are inseparable. So that if Islamic fundamentalism has been expanding its influence in Africa over a millennium, so has Arabism. Conversely, in this process, African nationalism in general has been in retreat throughout the Borderlands. South Sudan and Darfur are exceptional and Sudan in general appears to be in some flux and in contestation currently. These apparent shifts need to be treated with a great deal of circumspection, bearing in mind past history and the observation that despite shared political destiny, the people of Sudan are of different cultures and religious orientation, whose socilisation is different, living in Africa's largest country and that past history has seen Arab hegemony consistently in expansion, such that any reversal would meet with the combined opposition of external actors, who have an interest in maintaining the status quo, including the West, China, Russia and Arabia. This is an issue that African leadership, be it at the level of the African Union, or individual states, has been unable to address, making it subservient to, Arab interests and which Africans should expose. The Arab conquest of North Africa and parts of the Nile Valley spread their influence throughout the Sahel in the seventh century, resulting in a loss of focus in the minds of Africans about their identity. This in no way diminished southern Sudanese nationalism, which never ( eg the Neur ) submitted to external domination, taking on characteristics of an inverted ultra-nationalism, which explains why the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) formed by the Late John Garang de Mabior and others after 1983, did not follow the first principle of liberation struggle of 40-50% budgetary allocation to foreign affairs, further exacerbating the existing lack of information on what was going on in southern Sudan during the war years. This lacuna, apparently continues today, with the external SPLM Liaison Offices supposedly concentrating on economic diplomacy, rather than using the current window period ( 2005-2011 ) of peace to mobilize international solidarity to ensure the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of 2005, as done effectively by the Darfuri, who have mobilized the international solidarity movement on the genocide and its causes. This apparent absence of a sense of responsibility to engage Africans and to facilitate their comprehension of the realities of the Arab project in Africa , has been noted by a number of observers. All the indications are that this approach, on the part of the Government of South Sudan (GOSS), will continue after the 2011 referendum, if the South secedes.
As Africa decolonized, as witnessed in southern Africa , African expertise, often on bilateral basis, was utilized to bolster local capacity. In Southern Sudan , despite the talk, this has been studiously avoided. Literally thousands of teachers will be needed in the South. Was this yet another manifestation of an inward looking society, consequent on the long years of war ? Yet persons from Europe , North America and Japan were found all over Southern Sudan . Relations with nationals in Southern Sudan from neighbouring Uganda , which provides most of the food imports, and Kenya , which supplies limited expertise, left much to be desired.
In the Sudan more than anywhere else, profession of Islam and speaking the Arabic language made one an Arab. Many African ethnic communities in Sudan , such as Borgo, Berti amd Maali fell victims to this deception. In the 1960s these zealous African Muslims, as well as the Darfuri, were used by Khartoum to fight the Southern Sudanese. It was only around the turn of the 21 st century, with the theoretical assistance of people such as the Late Garang, that these groups realized that they had been used by Khartoum and that they were not Arabs but Africans, who had been denationalized. The ramifications/implications of this have yet to be played out. So long as Africa is unable to show sustained indications of technological industrialization and economic growth African identity will have little room for expansion in Arabia , except in the area of culture. The relentless struggle of the Southern Sudanese against oppression, including enslavement by northerners, has impacted other marginalized and peripheral peoples in the west, centre and east of Sudan . When the first war ended in Sudan with South Sudan lead by the Anya-nya winning a measure of self-rule through the Addis Ababa Agreement of 1972, this left in the cold the Arabised Africans, who had fought on behalf of the Arab dominated northern political elite in Khartoum, in the name of national unity.
Genocide and slavery
Current developments in the Darfur region of Western Sudan, where the Khartoum government has used a tactic of ethnic cleansing and genocide by arming an Arab nomad militia, the Janjaweed, to attack African farmlands, pushing Africans off their land, continues the Arab push southwards, which is part of the Arab national expansionist project dating back centuries, coming in surges, lead by Islamic scholars/Jihadists and which has seen Africans, over a millennia, pushed southwards from the Mediterranean coast into the arid Sahara area. Arabia in general characterizes events in Darfur as ‘tribal feuds'. Concerning this Prah stated (2004) ‘ It needs to be said without fear or favour that Africans cannot accept a slow encroachment of their national areas by the Arab world'. What the international community has lost sight of in its demand that the Darfuri armed groups lay down their weapons and talk peace, is their loss of self-dignity resulting from the genocide. In such a calamitous situation, even their wives would brand them as cowards, if they did not avenge the blood of those killed. Peace without honour is not an agenda item for the Darfuri. Peace is a long way off in Darfur , bar the unusual happening.
Adwok Nyaba speaking in Durban in 2001 at the NGO Forum of the United Nations Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (Prah 2004) states that the war in the Sudan:-
‘Is also a war of resistance – African resistance in the Sudan against de-Africanization at the hands of Arabs. The war indeed is the continuation of the Afro-Arab conflict that commenced fourteen centuries ago when the Arabs set foot on the African soil'.
On the issue of reparations for Arab-led slavery in Africa, the thesis of Adwok Nyaba presented at the Conference on Arab-Led Slavery of Africans, convened on the 22 nd February 2003 in Johannesburg, by the Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS), Cape Town, South Africa and the Drammeh Institute of New York, USA, is that reparations is a political issue with a legal objective, requiring mobilization and common purpose. A Final Declaration was published by CASAS, as well as the proceedings of the Conference. Conference endorsed reparations and called for a civilization dialogue between the Arab and African nations. The World Conference Against Racism and its NGO Forum added their voices to those seeking reparations for African slavery. There are no legal rules governing the law of reparations. The study of other such initiatives indicate first extensive legal posturing creating a powerful moral climate supporting reparations, thus shaping public opinion – as the primary stage in the campaign for reparations.
The demand for economic reparations is based on slavery, genocide and the merciless systematic killing of Sudanese people in an attempt to push them off their lands, to obtain their natural resources. Such demographic engineering has been recently seen in Darfur . As Prof. Sidney Harring states in his brief ‘German Reparations to the Herero Nation: An assertion of Herero Nationhood in the path of Namibian Development':-
‘It would be both a futile and dishonorable discourse to venture into any kind of a comparative analysis of genocide ….. genocide is genocide ….. Modern international law of reparations is dominated by extensive Jewish claims for reparations against Germany and other countries, but this is not the limit of reparations claims.'
A case is pending against the Japanese for reparations for Korean ‘comfort women', forced into prostitution by the Japanese army. Other European claims, including that of the Romani people, raised by other peoples subjected to mass extermination in concentration camps, have failed. Where there have been successes, these represent important advances in human rights law.
The Ovaherero claim for reparations prepared by Sidney Harring gave careful attention to the existing international law of reparations. Such a claim is preceded by a general inquiry into the appropriateness of reparations as a political and legal remedy for the damage caused by slavery, war and internal strife, before proceeding to political mobilization, to raise consciousness. The conclusions of the Johannesburg Conference on Arab-led slavery concluded that that reparations are the appropriate remedy for the human rights abuse suffered by the people of the Sudan .
As Harring says, if situations (such as in the Sudan ) are ‘reasonably analogous to existing reparations claims, to dismiss them out of hand must turn on considerations that can only be called racist'. Harring goes on to say that if such claims are well grounded legally, then broader policy issues may be implicated and must be heard, for there exists no consistent legal basis for any of the modern reparations regimes.
The concept of reparations, is rooted in natural law, the common law and international law, for it is an equitable principle that the beneficiary of an ill–gotten gain, for instance crude petroleum, should make restitution, both out of contrition and goodwill, but also to restore the victim to some part of their previous life.
Harring states that ‘within the modern world, liberal democracies have used the language of reparations in making voluntary payments through various statutory regimes to their own indigenous or minority populations' – most often such settlements are ultimately political – done by Parliaments and Governments.
In the Sudan case it was reported by Prof. Abdel Ghaffar M. Ahmed, former Executive Secretary of the Organisation for Social Science Research in Eastern and Southern African (OSSREA), by his e-mail of the 21 st January 2003, that since May 2001, a group of Sudanese, invited by OSSREA, having discussed the issue of slavery, came up with the suggestion that an apology was at the time in order. According to Prof. Abdel Ghaffar, that position was then taken up by members of the Opposition in the Sudan . This position was reflected in a statement made by the political leader Saddiq El Mahdi in mid January 2003, as reported in Al Ahram newspaper in Cairo , Egypt .
The United Nations Conference Against Racism (WCAR) held in Durban in 2001, was part of the growing movement for reparations, for the enslavement of Africans and for colonialism in general. The Declaration of the NGO Forum of the World Conference Against Racism held in Durban dated 3 September 2001, makes specific reference to the on-going enslavement of Sudanese (e.g. trans Saharan and trans Indian Ocean) which it categorizes as ‘crimes against humanity' (para 73). The Programme of Action of the NGO Forum supports reparations as redress in such instances. The NGO Plan of Action urged Sudan , amongst others, to abolish slavery and give reparations to the victims of slavery (para 235). The Plan demanded Arab nations amongst others, which participated and benefited from slavery, establish an international compensatory mechanism for the victims of these crimes against humanity.
The Declaration of the United Nations World Conference Against Racism, of September 2001, held in Durban, calls on states concerned to prevent such practices as slavery (para 99) and in such instances, to pay reparations (para 100). States such as the Sudan were urged to set up Tribunals (para 165) in such cases and to enact relevant laws (para 166).
The Word Conference Against Racism and its NGO Forum have added to the growing demand for reparations for African slavery. Already there exists legal documentation on this issue. In 1993 in Nigeria a Pan-African meeting on reparations, chaired by Ambassador Dudley Thompson was convened. As Harring states the current discourse on African economic recovery is premised on the understanding of a quid pro-quo from the developed countries to Africa for the past super-exploitation of Africans. Also the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments to the United States Constitution provide moral and legal credibility to the case for reparations for African slavery and ‘for the devastation of colonialism, primarily involving Blacks still living on the African continent'.
The issue of quantum in the legal claim for reparations is a delicate matter, requiring more attention. Legal claims in general require the setting of damages. The ‘costs' of colonialism and slavery in the Borderlands might be described as ‘incalculable' – thus presenting a barrier to these claims. Also there exists no absolute law on the limitation of reparation claims. Harring goes on to state:-
For policy reasons, it makes no sense to limit reparations for genocide to the actual victims: they are most often dead, and that is precisely the nature of the evil of genocide and, for the same reasons, it makes no sense to require that some modern state represent the interests of a victimized people'.
On the 22 nd February 2003 in Johannesberg took place the Conference on Arab-led slavery of Africans. The Declaration emanating from this Conference explained the trajectory of the contemporary movement for reparations for Arab-led slavery. The Johannesburg Conference studied in depth the issue of Arab-led and Ottoman slavery in the northern Borderlands of the African Nation, being the area where Africa meets Arabia running from Mauritania on the Atlantic Ocean in the west through the Sahel to Sudan on the Red Sea in the east. By way of clarification, in this context, the African Nation is defined as - Africa south of the Sahara , plus the Eastern and Western Diasporas. The Johannesburg Declaration, amongst others, called for apologies for slavery and reparations from the Arabs to the Africans. It accused Arab societies of genocide particularly in the Sudan . It also accused such societies of ethnocide of African people through forced cultural Arabisation processes. The African Union was required to address the issue of the slavery of Africans in the Afro-Arab Borderlands – something it is incapable of doing, given the nature of its Afro-Arab composition.
The Aweil and Twic communities of northern Bahr El Ghazal, in the Sudan, the members of which met in Oxford, United Kingdom on 6 th July 2003, issued their Oxford Declaration on demands for investigations, prevention, prosecution and reparations for the crimes of slavery and genocide and other crimes against humanity against the Aweil and Twic of northern Bahr El Ghazal in south Sudan. The Declaration called on people in the Sudan , Africa , the African Diaspora and throughout the world to consider the Declaration for:-
Fair and appropriate investigation, prevention, prosecution and reparations for the crimes which have been or are being committed against the humanity of the peoples of Aweil and Twic of northern Bahr El Ghazal and others in war afflicted Sudan.
Afro-Arab interaction in the Borderlands
The realities of Afro-Arab interaction at the point of contact in the Borderlands is unknown to the generality of Africans at home and abroad, largely due to the fact that since self-government African leaders, such as Sekou Toure and Kwame Nkrumah looked the other way and did not inform their people about the conflict zone, as seen in South Sudan and elsewhere. During the war years the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) was the effective organ for liberation. It is now that the SPL Movement(M) is being structured for party politics. The SPLM/A was quiet as to the root causes of the war in the south Sudan . It is only since the start of the current phase of the war in Darfur , that the Darfuri factions lead an intensified international focus on the situation of the marginalized in Sudan ( eg genocide, ethnic cleansing, rape, etc). This paper does not seek to compare Arab and western exploitation of Africans. What affects one African should affect all. Gone should be the days when those living in peace in one part of the African world, are indifferent about the goings on elsewhere in that world. The sooner the leaders wake up to this reality, the better it will be for all humanity.
The truth of the matter is that such Afro-Arab solidarity that exists after the Bandung Conference of April 1955, was build on false premise that the power relations were equal. The fact is that Arabia had a preferential relationship with Europe (e.g.The Anglo-Egyptian Joint Administration of Sudan, which oppressed Black South Sudan). Egypt remains the dominant influence as far as Sudan is concerned. Whereas Egypt is interested in the free flow of the Nile , according to Reeves (2001), Egypt would prefer a vassal state in Sudan and thus had an interest in an unstable Sudan . The south of Sudan serves as a buffer between Black Africa and Arabia . According to Reeves, for Egypt the maintenance of the status quo in Sudan takes precedence over Egypt 's alliance with the United States on the Israel / Palestine issue. It was the Israeli-Palestinian issue which complicated the West's relation with Arabia . It was this issue which resulted in limited information being made available in the Western media on the long war in South Sudan , which was largely unknown amongst the generality of Africans at home and abroad. The West blanketed news on South Sudan , fearing that if it was made available, it would effect how the Israel/Arab conflict was viewed and African allegiance. Africa in third world solidarity went along with Arabia , but was relegated to the position of a junior partner, was not consulted and taken for granted. Thus the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) did not hesitate to side with Khartoum in its fight with the South.
On the future of the Borderlands in general - today despite apparent shifts, the West in general and Egypt in particular would prefer the maintenance of the status quo and the continued marginalization of Black Africans in Sudan , to an uncertain future. This has placed the interim Government of South Sudan (GOSS), under severe constraint, dependent as it is on Western, particularly United States (US), support and it has limited GOSS's ability to articulate an Africanist foreign policy. So we find Juba , capital of Southern Sudan , prohibited by its 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) with Khartoum , from seeking reparations from Khartoum arising from the humanitarian disaster it suffered during the long conflict in the South. The absence of GOSS's explanations as to what the war was all about has inhibited African solidarity from mobilizing support for the South and its implementation of the CPA. Indeed the denial of African conscientisation around the truths of Afro-Arab relations in Sudan and the causes for the war in the South and their ramifications, has been one of the heavy costs of peace for the South. The South should have drawn support from the Pan-African movement, but this had been compromised much earlier by western authorities, with the slide back to war waged by Garang's Sudan Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA), starting with the Bor, Pibor, Pachalla and Malou clashes of May 1983 , and the Ayod and Waat clashes of June and July 1983, after which Nimeiri's May Regime collapsed in 1985. Waves of ‘Lost Boys and Girls' , who had walked out of South Sudan , as immigrants flooded into North America and were pitched in social conflict with African Americans, in order to create their niche in US society. This was another heavy cost of SPLM/A alignment with the West, on the collapse of the Soviet Union . The subject of US/Sudan relations has yet to be exposed from an Africanist perspective. Sudan continues to be hotly contested. Its conflicts have been instrumentalised for the benefit of outsiders, not for its internal population. Its place in the larger African milieu continues to be carefully staged managed by outsiders, not by the marginalized Sudanese. This is done because of Sudan 's geopolitical significance in future Afro-Arab and Middle-East relations.
Concerning African nationalism/Pan-Africanism in Sudan , Sudan has long been the playground of Arab and western interests. The north, given its relations with Arabia/Arab League, could not have been oblivious to Arab implantation in the US . Turabi, when he was a major influence in Sudan politics bragged about the islamisation of north America . Information has it that later the Sudanese National Islamic Front (NIF) leader dispatched some 2000 post graduate students from the north to the US , with instructions to integrate the African American community. Many of these are now in Khartoum government service and retain their links with the US . We know that the main Islamist in the US , the African American politician, Louis Farrakan, is a close friend of President Bashir of Sudan and has received material support from him. It is clear that relations between the African American community in the US and south Sudan , and southern relations with the US have been purposefully constructed by both authorities, without popular consultation with southerners and without democratic consultation with African Americans. The picture is complex. It can be unraveled and reconstructed in a healthy format, but will take much care and attention. There exist no apparent will within the existing African international community to undertake such work. This speaks to the current strengths of practical, as distinct from theoretical Pan-Africanism, at the supra level.
The unhealthy disequilibrium in Afro-Arab relations was not assisted by most of the first crop of leaders in Africa in the 1960s, who chose to overlook Arab realities of history, which they considered of secondary or no importance, as compared with the European presence. The Nasserite period (1952-79) was exceptional. It saw Egypt , for its own reasons, place on high its support for African decolonization. Such prioritization had not happened before and since the signing of the Camp David Accords in 1979 between Isreal and Egypt . Egypt has reverted to its traditional ambiguous relationship with Black Africa. The errors of judgment of the early leaders, including Nkrumah, haunt us today, in places such as South Sudan , Darfur and Mauritania , where Arab hegemony and racism are self evident.
What the paper posits, is not the exploitation of genocide, slavery or religion to settle scores, but to advance the possibility of a civilisation dialogue for the benefit of humanity in general and Africans, at home and abroad, in particular - what Prof Nabudere calls ‘restorative justice', being an African alternative jurisprudential approach. It is in the interest of both parties to face the past and the future in honesty, without self-righteousness and the pointing of fingers. The facts are there for all to see.
Matters have proceeded a pace since the 1983 Seminar on Afro-Arab relations which took place in Amman, Jordan and its proceedings read today as an exercise in window-dressing and self-deception, at which the African voice was not heard; a monologue as in the past, which portends ill for the future, as the other voice in ‘the dialogue' was not audible or seen and was not consulted. This voice is not that of the west, east or southern Africans, but that of those Africans living in the Borderlands of the African Nation, who co-habit with Arabs and Arabised Africans, in an area where Africa meets Arabia , in places such as Darfur , Nubia and the Nuba mountains.
Conclusion
To conclude, herewith a citation from page 62 of the book the ‘Arabs and Africa', being the report of the Amman Seminar edited by Khair El-din Haseeb, which quotes from Dunstan M. Wai's ‘African-Arab relations in a universe of conflict: An African perspective' at pages 2-3 and 22-32, as follows:-
….D.M. Wai argue(s) that twelve centuries of relations between sub-Saharan Africa and Middle Eastern Arabs were not harmonious. The Arabs infiltrated Africa , enslaved its people, imposed Islam on them and educated them, but until now the Africans have not connected by infiltrating the Arab region….Wai argues that the Arabs and Africans have hardly anything in common and that their value systems stemmed from quite different social and environmental systems and are thus far apart.
Wai's observations cannot be mitigated by the brief Egyptian support for African liberation. It is true comparatively that Europeans sort first to control the man and thereafter his land. This they did via their Christian missionaries and the Bible. However whereas Euro-African relations date only from one to five centuries ago, Afro-Arab relations are millennial and their influence qualitatively and quantitatively is more significant, making them the primary issue, not a secondary footnote. By virtue of the writing of African languages in Arabic script – Ajami – Arabism penetrated the souls of those who lived in the Borderlands more profoundly than Euro-Christianity did in bible studies in, for instance, east Africa . In both instances Africans were captive to extra-African influences.
Islam has given the world outstanding examples of international fraternity among peoples. This has been a point of attraction. Some of its spiritual content is sublime to the point of transcending class, tribe and race. However it has, in north and east Africa , been unable to subsume itself to autocritique, due to Arab settlement in those areas. In those places, due to racism it overreached itself and exceeded international norms as well as conventions. Whereas Christianity has sort to adapt to modern Africa , Islam, in general, has remained feudal and inward looking. Then, in the contemporary period, the violent strain of fundamentalism is dominant in Arab global expansion, encouraging further rigidity in Africa , whereas reformism from an African cultural perspective would be more appropriate. To the westernized African urban elite Islam, fundamentalism and terror are portrayed as interconnected and a threat to world peace. This does not mean that elite will meet the challenge posed by encroaching Islamic fundamentalism. On the contrary this elite is likely to concede ‘defeat' without a fight, in the Borderlands, whilst verbally pretending to defend kith and kin. This is seen in Darfur . It is the prevalent thinking within GOSS foreign relations – that Africans failed them in their liberation struggle in the past, making Africans unreliable strategic partners for the future.
The reflections of the Amman Conference of 1983 failed to anticipate the rise of violent Islamic fundamentalism, although this has been a recurrent feature of Arab expansion globally. It is a consequence of the frustrations arising from the inconclusive Arab-Israeli conflict. African and Arab nationalism have been in conflict since time immemorial, with African nationalism in defensive posture vis-a-vis its Arab counterpart. This reality, plus the pressures of fundamentalism and Arabisation, pose a direct challenge to African leadership.
B.F. Bankie, Juba , South Sudan , September 2008
bfbankie@yahoo.com
The views presented in this paper are those of the author and do not reflect those of the Kush Institution in Juba , where the author was assigned as a researcher at the time of the writing of the paper.
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