To celebrate African Liberation Day- 25 May 2012 - Sudan in Pan-African context by B.F.Bankie

SUDAN  IN PAN-AFRICAN CONTEXT

Whereas Du Bois stated the problem of the twentieth century was the colour line; the problem for Africans in the twenty-first century is  the Afro-Arab Borderlands.

Abstract

The OAU/AU/AUC  et al is a work in progress. It was noted that Pan-Africanists in general have their own views as to how best to deconstruct neo-colonialism and create Pan-Africanism/African Nationalism. This speaks to the democratic base of the unity movement. No one can claim a monopoly of ideas. As regards pointers to the future, at the First Preparatory Meeting for the 8^th Pan-African Congress, held in Johannesburg, South Africa, 7-8 January 2010, the key issue was how to achieve the objective of Pan-Africanism ( ie non-continentalism ).

Another observed characteristic  of the Pan-African movement in these times was that being victims of inappropriate historiography, Africans in general remain in the process of learning their true place in global history. Examples being the de-legislation of Apartheid after 1994 and the admission of South Sudan into the global African  community in 2011, with the implication that in the longer term the history of Sudan and by extension, the Nile Delta, will be re-written from the perspective of the African majority of Sudan. As regards Egypt  an admission in school curricula, that Egypt was originally an African civilisation is long overdue.

These emerging truths effect the architecture of the unity movement. Indeed Sudan was opened up for inspection by the people of Sudan, by their armed struggle and by Pan-African participants such as the AU High Level Panel on Darfur. It is clear that there are others in Africa who seek to undermine African emancipation and liberation in the Afro-Arab Borderlands, witness armed struggle and genocide in Southern Sudan, Darfur, Abyei, Southern Kordofan, Northern Mali  etc.Are these struggles national or ethnic?  It was these types of questions that resulted in the composition and publication of The African Nation, a seminal work, defining scientifically, for the first time, the African national constituency.

This paper addresses the issues of slavery, Arabisation/Islamisation, the Borderlands, the African Eastern Diaspora, OAU/AU, culture and nationality.

Introduction

 The 'Purpose and objectives of the Conference', circulated in the Call for Papers for a meeting  scheduled in Southern Africa to celebrate African Liberation Day (ALD) 2012, referred  to :-

'… the formal ending of the place of colonialism and apartheid'

The convenors of the Symposium were all in southern Africa. Their choice to locate in southern  Africa 'the formal ending of the phase of colonialism and apartheid' raises questions as to what is taking place in Sudan and the Afro-Arab Borderlands today and how they define 'colonialism and apartheid'. Is not the 'Independence' of South Sudan part of a process of decolonisation and is not the system of governance in Sudan and Mauritania, for that matter, not apartheid?  Indeed Garba Diallo called Mauritania 'The other apartheid'.

As Pan-Africanists we should see our constituency as being defined by our Nation and this Nation as being inclusive of the African western Diaspora in the Americas, Carribean and Europe, as well as the African eastern Diaspora in Arabia, the Gulf States and north Africa.

As part of the adjustment, based on the truths learnt from the Borderlands, we need to ask ourselves why has the Sudan been in armed struggle for so long and why is there indifference globally about the loss of life in that part of Africa. Again, the 'Purpose and objectives of the Conference' referred  to those who '…do not have African interests and values at heart'. This would accurately describe those in the Afro-Arab Borderlands,  who pursue a policy of denationalising Africans and are wagging war against ancient African people such as the Nuba in Southern Kordofan.

The unity movement of the Africans is handed down to us through the history of those taken out of Africa  as slaves to the western  Diaspora. Previously the experience of those who underwent slavery in Arabia had been ignored by Pan-Africanists. There were those who were taken out either directly from east Africa to Arabia and points beyond, as well as those who, by forced migration, crossed the Sahara to north Africa and Arabia. Keep in mind that originally north Africa was populated by Black Africans, a point admitted by the late Libyan leader- Gadaffi. The Arab enslavement was the first forced migration out of Africa, following the voluntary migration of the original wo/man out of Africa, to populate the world.

Later the European capitalists, intent on profit via the industrialisation of Europe and north America extracted large numbers of African slaves to the western Diaspora including Europe. As Rodney  states, Africa was underdeveloped in order for  Europe to develop. It was these slave that laid the foundation for the super development of north and  now south America.

It was out of the experience of the enslavement of Africans in the western Diaspora and their exposure to crude capitalism that Pan-Africanism was born, from the political options slavery engendered.  Some choose and did return to Africa. Others remained in the western hemisphere. It was by pioneers such as Henry Sylvester Williams, Du Bois, Garvey, Robeson, Padmore and many others, that leadership was provided  to a people who found themselves exiled in a hostile environment. Born in 'Babylon' their concientisation was subject to western political theory, with African characteristics. They covered the broad spectrum of political options from capitalism to socialism. All were essentially Africanists. As  Mohammad Fayek stated, the Pan-African movement had no place in the Arab experience. From Arabia only Duse Mohamed Ali, the Sudanese Egyptian is, so far,recognised as having played a role in the Pan-African movement, with his sojourns in the UK and USA, settling ultimately in Nigeria, where he participated in the emerging African nationalism. He was at one point Head of African Affairs in Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), which had branches in the various parts of the world, except Arabia, where those of African descent are found.

Historical background

Abdelwahid in his book on Duse Mohamed Ali states at page 23 'There is no doubt that young Marcus Garvey learnt about African history, politics and Islam from Duse Mohamed Ali', whose writings provide insights on Islam and African-Americans in the early twentieth century. In Nigeria Duse had connections with nationalists such as Azikiwe and Herbert Macaulay. He died and was buried in Lagos at the age of 78 in 1945.

Before Christianity arrived south of the Sahara Islam had long been there. The scholarly manuscripts found at that centre of learning that was Timbouctou, centuries ago, were from an Arabised culture, using Arabic as the language of transmission. It is understood that amongst the Africans taken into  slavery in the western hemisphere were those who were Muslims. Arab presence in Africa predates the western penetration by many centuries and the first slavers of Africans on a large scale were Arabs. The history of unequal exploitative relations  between Africa and the outside world begins with Afro-Arab relations.

One of those Africans who sojourned in the United States and drank deeply of its political currents and who was strongly influenced by the struggle of the Africans in north America and the United Kingdom was Kwame Nkrumah. He fulfilled secretarial duties at the 5^th Pan-African Congress of 1945 in Manchester, UK. He it was who connected the Congress movement, carried forward by the likes of Du Bois, Padmore and Makonnen, back to Africa. No study of Pan-Africanism is complete without an inspection of it's historical antecedents. Whatever the current mood is in north America or the Carribean – the key link of Africa with it's Diaspora provides the historical root of the unity of the Africans not only those of west, east, south and central Africa, but also for those in north east Africa and Arabia. The strength and weakness of the 'key link'depends on the degree of the insertion of the Diasporas in civil society in America and Arabia. African nationalism as a key factor in African development will  not diminish and will remain the driving force in the destiny of Africans going forward. The Pan-African movement is deeper rooted in the global Black experience than  Black conscientism  to which it became associated in southern Africa. The Pan-African movement is a movement for the unity of the global African community – those in and those out of Africa. That is the historical base and logic of the movement. It does not limit itself to unifying, say those in southern Africa. No. It's mission is brotherhood and sisterhood between those scattered around the world, be they in Argentina or in India and those in Africa, be they Socialist or Capitalist – whatever their political persuasion; be they  Muslim,  Christian, animist or otherwise.

The African people, otherwise put, the people of Africa, due to their misuse in history, as beasts of burden, to create wealth for others, have been the systematic subjects of the falsification of their place in global history in order to justify their gross exploitation. In north east Africa both Arab and European co-operated,via slavery, in this super exploitation of what was called 'Black Ivory'. An example – in Egypt today it is not officially recognised that Egypt was originally an African civilisation until the Arabs arrived in  639/640 AD, crossing the Sinai and points further eastwards, a people described by European historians as Indo-Europeans, who populated north Africa and seek to colonize all of Africa, from Cairo to the Cape, through Jihad. In north east Africa the early African presence and contribution to world civilisation has been denied and deliberately falsified, being expunged from the history books in Arabia and elsewhere.

Having been marginalised as human beings, the 'civilising mission' was used as an explanation and justification for colonialism. Too often the death of an old man in the area means the burying of yet another chapter in African history. The history of Africa from African perspective taught in schools in Africa has yet to come. This explains the changing architecture of the organisation for statist unity, which started in 1963 as the Organisation for African Unity, becoming in 2002 the African Union (AU) and is today the African Union Commission (AUC). Until Africans research, know and write their own history the statist structure of their unity movement will continue to be a work in progress. The current AUC for the past twenty years came under the influence of a north African, from a country now leading Arabia out of Africa towards a north Atlantic alliance.

Observers have noted the many schools of thought amongst Africans about their future geopolitical direction. This is attributed to the varying levels of our understanding of history. Again Egypt is instructive. This is a country where the people are historically living in a time warp and a disconnect with their origins. Dr K Nkrumah, one of the founders of the OAU, included Egypt and north Africa in his supra unity project, even though those advising him on African Affairs, such as Du Bois, the Father of the Congress series, well  knew the origins of the movement to be a movement for Africans, not Arabs. Padmore likewise.

The OAU through to the AUC, was taken up with decolonisation. Apart from in the Borderlands, this  has been achieved, with some degree of success. Economic integration will prove a bigger challenge. Any collection of people – a society – which seeks to strengthen itself has to have a defined cultural identity at its core, be it Chinese, Indian, American or European. Arab identity  built around Islam is not African identity. Besides, historically, in the fairly recent past Africans have been subjugated-  enslaved  - by outsiders, be they Arab or European. Without a meaningful civilisation dialogue within continental Africa there is no basis for peaceful co-existence. This is what on-going events in Sudan  teach us, where the main victims are always the innocent, the poor, the illiterate – those without means of defence.

The Pan-African Conference/Congresses

As stated Pan-Africanism as an approach to African unity and development was built around a series of meetings starting in 1900, with the Pan-African Conference held in London, the UK  in 1900. Sylvester Williams, who convened this meeting sort to obtain for Africans their rightful place in the world order. This was a modest objective and his method ingratiating. It took over 100 years to realize for some Africans in the western Diaspora. In the eastern Diaspora such awakenings are yet to be experienced. In Africa a rapacious elite defined the post 'independent' agenda in collaboration with outside interests  and have yet to be persuaded that African nationalism - that is the unity of the African Nation -  can be achieved without allegiance to the existing neo- colonial states. A move away from the neo-colonial state is a basic requirement if Africans are to unite, achieve equality and cease to be  providers of raw materials to others at knock down prices. The move away from neo-colonialism should be in the direction of Pan-Africanism, not towards the consolidation or reinforcement of the existing architecture of unviable entities resultant from the Berlin  Conference of 1884.

Those who met in London in 1900, including Du Bois, represented the African elite by then. The grass root movement headed by Garvey came some 20 years later. This was a mass movement.  Both the Du Bois and Garveyist tendencies are in the movement today, at least in its statist structures, providing equilibrium between the Left and the Right,to ensure continuity. The triumph of proletarian internationalism as a hegemonic force foreseen by Dr Nkrumah, as the glue for unity, will not be realised, at least not in our lifetimes.

The Pan-African Congresses (PAC) 1-5 were driven by Dr WEB Du Bois. The period they cover  saw Francophone Africa drawn into the movement. The 3^rd Congress took place in Lisbon in 1923, bringing in Lusophone Africa. Du Bois worked painstakingly to build the movement.

In 'Sustaining the new wave.  .' your author states (at p. 224 ):-

'Some date the continental project from 1945 and note

that the three principal architects of that project after 1945

were W.E.B.Du Bois, George Padmore and Kwame Nkrumah.

In the self- governing Ghana they convened the first

Pan-African meeting of substance, the All Africa Peoples

Conference (AAPC) in Accra, Ghana in 1958.They formed

the core of the Secretariat of the 5 [Pan-African Congress] PAC'.

At the 5^th PAC Kwame Nkrumah was Rapporteur of the two sessions on 'Imperialism in North and West Africa', held October 16 and 19 in 1945. After the 1945 Congress Nkrumah was named Secretary of the Working Committee under Du Bois' presidency, to give effect to the resolutions of the Congress. This was before he left Britain to return to the Gold Coast in 1947. He was to liaise with the emerging movements for self government in the colonies. Padmore in his book 'Pan-Africanism or  Communism' published in 1956 at page 22 had opted for the 'creation of a United States of Africa'. Immediately after the Congress Nkrumah became the leader of the 'Circle', a secret revolutionary organisation dedicated to establishing a Union of African Socialist Republics. It is humbly suggested that this approach to African unity based on socialist principles provided the basis for Nkrumah's continentalist approach to African unity. It is in conformity with an idea of unity – an approach based on proletarian internationalism. However socialist solidarity in Africa, as elsewhere, has often failed close scrutiny, which in no way weakens it's validity as a political ideal. Post –Apartheid South Africa is cluttered with 'Socialists' who found it convenient to abandon the Freedom Charter once in office- a sine qua non for Africanism in South Africa and who were unable to embrace, for example, the idea of solidarity with oppressed Africans in Congo, under Mobutu, due to their class interests.

At the PACs 5-6 the tensions between Pan-Africanism and continentalism did not reach the surface. These meetings rather sort to complete the decolonisation project as a priority and failed to consider in any depth the issues arising from the Afro-Arab Borderlands. The Late John Garang in his address to the 7th Congress presented a definitive statement on the issues arising in his area of Africa, placing emphasis on the concept of the African Nation, drawn from his experience in Sudan. The 7^th was where the Sudan issues became visible. The main proponents in the war then taking place in Sudan were in Kampala for that meeting. Not only that but the Khartoum government was present and it provided, along with others, notably Libya, funds for the convening of the meeting. As an astute observer of the African scene Khartoum was interested in the meeting, which was also attended by Riak Machar, who had by then splintered from the SPLM. For the observant a qualitative shift had taken place, with Sudan moving towards centre stage in the contestation around African nationalism, it being a case study for similar struggles in the Afro-Arab Borderlands, such as Mauritania, Tchad, Mali and Niger.

Nyaba's seminal paper 'The Afro-Arab conflict in the 21^st century. A Sudanese viewpoint' brings the Sudan issues from the sidelines to the centre, where all indications are that they  will remain for the foreseeable future. To say that the issues of colonialism and apartheid in Africa are gone is disingenuous at best,  dangerous at worst. Due to  distortions and lies in the past, as history was written to serve the purpose of the powerful of those days, many Africans do not know or understand areas outside their immediate purview.

Nyaba's paper subtitled 'The racial and religious dimensions  of the Sudanese conflict and it's possible ramifications in East, Central and Southern Africa in the next millennium' is a pointer to the future of north-east Africa – an area which, apparently escaped the attention of the first generation of 'Independence' leaders in Africa, even thought the war in South Sudan, lead by the Anya-Nya had begun in 1956, one year before Ghana became 'Independent'. Nyaba explains that earlier Sudan, as a member of the Arab League, was considered an Arab , not an African issue, by Arab states within the OAU, so that the fighting in the south was not addressed by the Pan-African body.

On the Sudan issue another important factor is the apparent disinterest of African Americans in Sudan matters. Traditionally African America acted as a lobby in the United States, supportive of African interests. Sudan was to prove the exception. It was noticeable that the Darfur sensitisation campaign in north America had few African Americans in attendance. This was directly related to the deliberate implantation of Islam in North America ( Tourabi had famously stated  'we will Islamize  (black) America and Arabize Africa ').The consequence was to neutralize the interest of African Americans in the on-going Afro-Arab interchange. Of note is the fact that neither the African American community nor Africans in Africa were aware at the time of the long term implications of the implantation of Islam in Black America. We can be sure that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was not indifferent to these goings on.

An illustration of this deception is the following extract from a paper by Luwezi Kinshasa, Secretary General of the US based African Socialist International, in which he inaccurately observes :-

In Sudan, the electoral process was effectively used by US-led

imperialism to balkanise Sudan, transforming ethnic differences

 and peaceful contradictions into antagonistic contradictions

that made it easier for imperialists to further their own interests

in the region.

Your author resided in Juba, South Sudan 2006-8 and observed the Referendum on Southern Independence in Juba in January 2011. In the last year in particular, but even whilst he was still in Juba, he tried to understand Afro-American indifference to the Afro-Arab Borderlands. There is no record of African- American involvement in the area from Mauritania to Sudan on the Red Sea, in which Africans are under attack from Arab expansion. In 2009 this issue was taken up publically at an international Conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with Runoko Rashidi, the African American historian, specialist in Diaspora studies, after he had visited the author in Juba around 2007. Whilst Rashidi was in Juba your author observed at close quarters his difficulties in hiding his hostile reactions to the underdeveloped conditions in South Sudan, resultant from marginalisation and the long war. Your author has since come to believe that this hostility or lack of sympathy amongst African Americans to the Sudan reality is in part the result of Islamic  implantation in North America.

The above-mentioned article says 'the electoral process was effectively used by US-led imperialism to balkanise Sudan'. This is incorrect. Rather the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement                            ( SPLM)continues to pursue Garang's vision of a New Sudan, step by step, so that after the war is over in Southern Kordofan, Blue Nile and Darfur, as well as all the marginalised of Sudan, including South Sudan, will unite in a new federal state.

These allegations about Africans in Sudan actively chopping up Sudan into independent pieces is a lie perpetuated by certain circles in North America and other  places, who have their own interests in perpetuating the war in Sudan and who consequently give succour  to the program of ethnic cleansing of Africans in Sudan by way of Arab/Islamic expansion in the Borderlands of Africa.

Africans, internally and globally, have been, caught off-guard by the emergence in April 2012 of the state of Azawad in northern Mali and are in denial in their handling of issues arising from the  Borderlands, be they Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb and in Mali/Mauritania, Boko Haram in Nigeria, Al Shabab in Somalia or the National Islamic Front (NIF)/National Congress Party (NCP) in Sudan and it's war today  in Southern Kordofan, Blue Nile and Darfur. In Africa the middle-classes plead ignorance about the Afro-Arab borderlands. In the western Diaspora there is indifference amongst those of African descent, resulting from the miss-direction of their leaders. It is as if Africans everywhere are afraid to defend kith and kin in their struggle in the Borderlands. The NCP represents the radical wing of Pan-Arab ideology. It's interest in Africa south of the Sahara is limited to research and action  ( eg aerial bombardment – South Sudan, Darfur, Southern Kordofan ) in order to keep Black Africa on the defensive. Otherwise Khartoum socially, culturally, at economic level  and politically is aligned to Arabia, having more in common with Saudi Arabia, the heartland of Islamic fundamentalism  than, for instance, neighbouring states such as Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia.

It takes little imagination to understand that the NIF/NCP is the guardian of feudal Arab interests in north east Africa. It is the defender of antiquated perceptions of 'vital' Arab interests in Black Africa, such as the Nile waters et al. As Nyaba states the political tendency in Sudan utilises a survival strategy of fomenting conflict and instability in neighbouring countries. Using punitive measures against dissent and opposition, these fundamentalists have managed to monopolise all sectors of the national economy, pushing out  of business and the markets the traditional social bases of other parties. During the long years of war between Khartoum and the South, Khartoum was not short of allies ( including the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO))  and supplies in the Arab world, where it was seen as 'defending the line'.Arabia continues to perceive Black Africa as a 'slave', to be kept in check by excessive violence, not dialogue.International terrorists such as the late Ben Laden took up residence in Sudan, where he was protected by Tourabi. He fought physically against African nationalism, whilst based in Juba.

Nyaba writing in 1999 foresaw Khartoum as likely to generally  escalate the war in South Sudan, which is the situation  today in Sudan despite the so-called independence of South Sudan. He stated that the Sudanese Islamic fundamentalists would take  their war into East Africa in general. Nyaba notes the contempt Arabs in general  have for Africans, who they see as an inferior race deserving nothing more than enslavement. Arab thinkers and writers believe that Africans do not have a culture and that a cultural vacuum exists in Africa which must be filled with Islamic and Arab culture. In response to this some Africans demand a civilisation dialogue.

Sudan and it's implications for Africans

Africa in general and the AU in particular only became seized of the Sudan issues when the  regional organisation for East African states, The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) in Eastern Africa, brough about the Naivasha peace talks, which lead to the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005 and relative peace in South Sudan, giving way to the Independence of South Sudan in July 2011.The Head of the AU High Level Panel, President Thabo Mbeki had stated that Sudan was an African issue requiring an African solution. Prior to that Africa South of the Sahara had treated South Sudan as an Arab issue, from which they were excluded. Now with South Sudan self governing, issues originating in Southern Sudan, such as Southern Kordofan,   receive wider  international attention.

The entering of the AU into the Sudan issues, has brought a new optique into Afro-Arab relations. Previously Africa had been in denial, as witness the attitude of the Founding Fathers of the OAU/AU, as to the existence of contradictions in Afro-Arab relations, which were treated as harmonious and mutually self reinforcing, whereas any body who chose to inspect the relationship was aware that Arab and Islamic pressure had historically been pushing southwards, making the Borderlands an area of low intensity warfare for centuries. The issue was, with the ending of apartheid in South Africa, would the 'other apartheid' be addressed and by whom ? The court remains out on this one, due to vested interests, with African governments unable to take a position of support for the African national struggle in Sudan. Which explains why President Bashir travels more widely in Africa than elsewhere, despite the writ of the International Criminal Court (ICC)  pending against him.

Cognisance needs to take hold that Pan-Arabism has substantially changed from what it was in the mid-twentieth century. These days it is no longer ideologically driven by capitalism v socialism. Pan-Arabism is now firmly anchored in Islam and finds expression in the different tendencies, whether secularist or fundamentalist, within Islam. Africans should be aware that what happens in  Arabia, it's closest neighbour, impacts  and has effect south of the Sahara.

The conflict in the Afro-Arab Borderlands has been with us since time immemorial. It will not go away. It may erupt in one place at one moment and subside in another – but it has been a constant. Sooner or later it will have to be addressed. The traditional solution offered by progressive Arabs has been the civilisation dialogue. The OAU/AU has established units to undertake this work. They have made no difference, so long as the parties remain in denial. Your author is of the view that instead of the OAU/AU/AUC applying band aid solutions on crisis-basis to problems at the north/south border, for instance, that it begin openly the Afro-Arab civilisation dialogue. This interaction is taking place,  but currently it is not within an open philosophical forum. The idea is not new. Sustainable peace will only come to this area of Africa when a critical mass of Africans, understanding the issues of the area, exist within the global African community. At base the issue is one of education, or the lack of it.

Flowing from this analysis would be the thesis of Garang on the African Nation, being that the global African collective of persons of African descent, within and without Africa, is  the correct structural basis for the unity of the Africans. Concomitant with that is the recognition  that this Nation takes precedent over the neo-colonial entities created in Berlin. Haiti is a member of that Nation, as are Cuba ,Brazil  and every state  in which the majority population is of Africa descent.

Other  logical implications would be the  prioritizing of the political agenda to push forward the unity of this Nation – which Diop called 'the cultural unity of Black Africa'. Sudan is the last major obstacle we can see on this road. In fact the logic of Khartoum's aggression and violence can only be premised on it's firm opposition and hostility to meaningful African unity and it's wish to sustain the current continental arrangements.

Concerning the African eastern Diaspora, ignored in the past. The incorporation of this  constituency into the unity movement was the logical conclusion from Garang's presentation to the 7^th Pan-African Congress (PAC ) and his paper delivered on his behalf by Dr Mariel Benjamin at the 17^th All African Students Conference (AASC) held in Windhoek, Namibia, 28-29^th May 2005. Prof Kwesi Prah in his seminal work   'The African Nation: The state of the Nation', has dotted the 'I's and crossed the 't's in defining , the oft talked about ( Garvey, Blyden and others ) African Nation. It is worth pointing out that Garang and Prah shared notes, probably around 1982, in Juba.

The Darfurian freedom fighter Osman Yahya Mohamed said in Juba in 2007, that the African eastern Diaspora would only become a meaningful entity when Africa could hold its own in the community of nations. Duse Mohammed Ali is the only identified Pan-Africanist in the last century coming from north east Africa to have left a recorded contribution for humanity on political level. There must have been millions of his type, from that area of Africa, who shared his view but were unable to travel out of the area to make a contribution to the African struggle, dying in obscurity and frustration, suppressing the African side of their personalities, forced to adopt an Arab identity. We know from recent experience in Libya such Africans exist in Arabia and are subjected to marginalisation, torture and genocide.

Points for immediate action in the current situation in Sudan

Evacuation of Abyei by Khartoum

The cessation of aerial bombardments by Khartoum of civilian targets

Stop the mistreatment of Southerners in the north and the opening of corridors for them to move southwards

The return to negotiations and to peace.

B.F.Bankie, Windhoek, Namibia, May 2012

Mr Bankie, in the period 2007-2008, assisted the work of establishment of The Kush Institution, as the policy research/analysis unit in The Office of the President of the Government of Southern Sudan.

REFERENCES

Abdelwahid, M.2011. Duse Mohamed Ali 1866 – 1945 : The autobiography of a pioneer Pan African and Afro-Asian activist.Trenton,USA: The Red Sea Press, Inc.

Bankie,B.F and Mchombu,K. 2008. Pan-Africanism / African Nationalism. Trenton, USA : The Red Sea Press, Inc.

Bankie,B.F and Zimunya,V.C. 2010. Sustaining the new wave of Pan-Africanism. Windhoek, Namibia. The Polytechnic Press at the Polytechnic of Namibia.   

Diallo,G. 1993. Mauritania: The other Apartheid ? Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet.

Fayek,M. 1984. The July 23 Revolution and Africa. In: Khair el-Din Haseb (ed). The Arabs and Africa. Pp 90-91. London: Crolm Helm.

Kinshasa,L. 2012.We are Patrice Lumumba! ( extract from Uhuru News ), in The Southern Times, P 13,Sunday 11 March 2012, Windhoek: Namzim Newspapers (Pty) Ltd.

Nyaba,P.A. 2002. The Afro-Arab conflict in the 21^st century : a Sudanese viewpoint. In Tinabantu, Vol 1,No 1, P27,Cape Town: The Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS).

Prah,K.K. 2006. The African Nation : The state of the Nation. Cape Town : The Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS).

Rodney,W. 1972. How Europe underdeveloped Africa. Dar Es Salaam: Tanzania Publishing House.

Sherwood, M.1996. Kwame Nkrumah : The years abroad : 1935-1947. Legon, Ghana : Freedom Publications.

B.F.Bankie

Sudan Sensitisation Project (SSP)

www.bankie.info

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LEFT PERSPECTIVES IN AFRICAN NATIONALISM

The Left is a broad category – from centrist social welfarism to communism. The Left in government ranges from the Communist Party in China to the Tripartite Alliance in South Africa.

The Left, based on its contribution to date, has a place in African politics, just as it features in every continent in the world. Those who would wish the death of the Left in west, east, central and southern Africa have a long wait coming. It is a fact that in certain parts of the African world the Left has been marginalized, neutralized or co-opted. What will further weaken the Left in Africa south of the Sahara and its western (Americas, Caribbean, Europe etc) and eastern ( Arabia, North Africa, Gulf states and points east ) Diasporas, is if it is unable to engage in the major challenges facing us due to emasculation or out of fear of the unknown. This paper argues that the principal challenge facing the Left today is how to engage the decolonization process underway in the Afro-Arab Borderlands.

What will weaken the left is the absence of an organizational framework which unifies it’s struggle. This is beside the absence of a political agenda. The Pan-African movement can serve as the forum of the African Left, as seen in Cameroon, drawing its lifeblood from the people’s struggle for unity, democracy, social justice, equality and economic progress in different social settings in the Diasporas and on the continent south of the Sahara. The issue of organization must be tackled first.

Even as the Berlin Wall was in place voices on the African Left stated that race was a key component in social analysis. However most in government toed the line from Moscow parroting that only class was important in defining social issues. In the South African Communist Party (SACP) during the armed struggle many were expelled who insisted, with varying degrees of emphasis, that race was a key element in social analysis.

For some, when  the Soviet variant of socialism suffered internal collapse, with the withdrawal of  Russia from its frontline position in the Third World, serious challenges were thrown up. Take, for instance, the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) in Southern Sudan. Adwok Nyaba says - ‘In all honesty the SPLM/A was not  socialist or Left for that matter, although it raised socialist slogans. The Left is recognized by the manner  it organizes its means of struggle and the relationship between its leadership and the masses. The SPLM/A was militarist and that is why it is paying dearly for its political organization and the unity of its rank and file’.The SPLM/A was, in the language of those times, a progressive,  Left-leaning African liberation organization, similar to the Zimbabwe  African National Union (ZANU).

The SPLM/A had been at war with Khartoum from the eve of Sudan’s self-government in 1956, with the Soviets gone where was the SPLM to draw its support, both in terms of logistics and diplomatic promotion, to maintain its struggle with the Khartoum government? The Islamic fundamentalist government of Sudan based in Khartoum is lead not by white Arabs, but by a mixed race/coloured group, who are Arabised and Islamised, practicing genocide in Darfur, oppressing the African majority in the country, in alliance with the rest of Arabia, where they are accepted as inferior Arabs.

Sudan is strategically located, straddling  the line where Arabia meets black Africa. In Sudan, north of that line, are not white Arabs, but an Arabised and Islamised people of mixed race, living in the centre of the country, around Khartoum on the Nile River which flows from its source in Uganda, through Juba, capital of Southern Sudan, onto Khartoum, thence through southern Egypt, Cairo and into the Mediterranean Sea. These people, in the Southern African context, would be described as a ‘coloured’ people. In Sudan the light brown complexioned people living in the centre of the country around Khartoum, detaining power, historically served as a buffer between white Egypt and black southern Sudan. This is how the last colonial Anglo-Egyptian administration distributed power within Sudan society, as they left the scene in 1956. The power centre in Khartoum was to stem the tide of African nationalism coming north along the Nile, the overwhelming majority of the population of Sudan being black Africans. This explains the causes of the protracted war in south Sudan and the frantic attempt now on to alter the demographics in Darfur, so that Africans will be thrown back southwards, in what has been a historical  process of African retreat, since the time of the African civilization of Kush in north eastern Sudan, which preceded the black pharaonic civilization in Egypt, before the arrival of the Arabs in Africa. This type of ‘decolonization’ process was sanctioned in arrangements made by Europe and Arabia, to better exploit African labour and minerals. This is the challenge posed in Sudan today. The issues are similar in Mauritania, where the colonials gave power to a Moorish minority, to rule the African majority. The method of decolonization was the same in south and north Africa. Africans were to be hemmed in by Europeans in the south and by Arabs in the north, in a pincer arrangement  in which they would be bound  for ever to serve external interests in order to survive and escape genocide.

It could be said that the Left has come a long way from where it was in say, 1957, when Ghana achieved self-government under the Convention Peoples Party (CPP) lead by Nkrumah. Many now acknowledge that race is as significant as class, in any analysis of the African situation, especially when handling Pan-African issues.

African liberation action for decolonization was, in the case of Ghana, a mass not a class struggle, being lead by different strata of society, whereas in South Africa the struggle for majority rule was part of a process of decolonization, but it took the form of a mass struggle lead by the United Democratic Front (UDF) and the trade unions, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the African National Congress (ANC).

The two major areas for settler decolonization in 1957 were Southern Africa under Afrikaner/British  settler colonialism, and the Afro-Arab Borderlands, in the Sahel and the Sudan, running from Mauritania on the Atlantic eastwards to Sudan on the Red Sea. Whereas in 1957 the problems of Southern Africa were admitted by the international community, those in the Borderlands were not. Fifty years later, in the 21st century, the issues of Arab racism and hegemony in the Borderlands surface with a vengeance, why ?

Arab slavery and hegemony in the Sahelian Borderlands predated the arrival of the Heugenots in the Cape, in Southern Africa, by a millennium. In the mid-twentieth century proletarian internationalism, as co-operation between the  Left across borders was called, in an era dominated by two superpowers – the Soviet Union and the United States – was the quintessential ingredient in the decolonization of Africa. After all colonialism was administered from the Western metropoles of London, Lisbon, Paris and Brussels. It’s end was hastened by the intervention of the Soviet Union and its allies in Eastern Europe.

In Africa, the context of China until it joined the United Nations in 1971, must be put into consideration. There was no way China would have entered into the world arena before finishing its cultural revolution. It is this cultural revolution in the sixties that  consolidated the Communist in power after the defeat of the Nationalists, first in China and then displacing them in the world body. The current China stance is dictated by its economic power. This power has been acquired without eschewing its communist[ Chinese style ]ideology. It remains to be seen what will happen when China reaches the top of the world political and military order. China’s actions in Sudan, particularly in Darfur, require close inspection and monitoring, providing indications of its evolving relations with Africans. 

Those who partook in the Fifth Pan-African Congress (PAC) in Manchester in 1945, such as Du Bois and  Nkrumah, accepted the line of the Soviet Union, based on its internal need to keep in check its restive minorities, that race was not a factor in social analysis. One could say that Padmore was more circumspect in this regard. This was due to his period spent in Moscow as a member of the Comintern, where he had witnessed at close quarters how proletarian internationalism was tailored to Russian international interests, as the South African Communist Party had learnt much earlier.

Men such as Du Bois, Padmore and Makonnen, worked with Nkrumah in the implementation of his Pan-African agenda, which lead to the formation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 1964. The OAU was a tool in the hands of African leaders. For the Arabs it served to enlist African support for the Arab causes of Arab unity and the liberation of Palestine

After the Camp David Accords and the establishment of relations between certain Arab states in Africa, such as Egypt and Isreal, the OAU and its successor the African Union (AU ) became increasingly subject to Arab, as distinct from African interests. It is from this period that the divide, north and south of the Sahara, became clearly discernable and their destinies no longer reconcilable. Arab members were not interested in the integration of the African Diasporas, on equal basis with continental governments, into the statist Pan-African structure. Certain Arab states took to underwriting/buying-into the expenses  of the organization, by paying state dues in the face of the indifference of some African states regarding their financial obligations. A point was reached in late 2007 whereby Gadaffi of Libya was able to manipulate the AU by threatening to withdraw  his support for the AU  and rather turning to the West and Europe, knowing that this would cause severe financial problems, even the collapse of the organization.

Makonnen had doubts about Nasser’s intentions in Africa and favoured relations with Israel. Nasser’s Egypt and Nkrumah’s Ghana, in close socialist alliance, were the main proponents of African decolonization, assisted by the Soviets. The OAU enshrined the concept of sovereignty and the inviolability of borders, with respect for the territorial integrity of states. Many Left leaning leaders in Africa, as late as the close of the 20th century, remained steadfast in their support of Nasser’s Egypt,despite Egypt’s signing of the Camp David Accords with Isreal  and its murky involvement with Britain in the neo-colonial dispensation  for Sudan.

Whatever may have been Nasser’s intention in Africa, many have argued convincingly that he was first a Pan-Arabist and secondly a Pan-Africanist. During his period Egypt continued its interference in  Southern Sudan, Darfur, Nubia  etc  by way of their institutionalized marginalization by Khartoum. Nasser  facilitated the marriage of Nkrumah to an Egyptian, a tactic used by Arabia in the past to neutralize African nationalist leaders in south Sudan. The rule of Ghana by the Convention People’s Party (CPP) saw the establishment of Ghanaian embassies in Khartoum and Nouakchott in Mauritania. Nkrumah would have been aware of the oppression of black Africans in Sudan and Mauritania by people calling themselves Arabs or Moors. It is said that it was the 1966 Khartoum Roundtable on the future of South Sudan, at which Ghana was represented, which brought Nkrumah to the realization of the need to support Southern Sudan. His Government was overthrown shortly thereafter by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Adwok Nyaba takes the view that most African leaders did not understand the genisis of the Sudan conflict. Arab diplomacy focused on wider issues, such as Palestine, concealing Arab internal contradictions with the captive black African people in their midst. It was therefore not surprising that the continental body, often described as Pan-Africanist, left to us by Nkrumah, the Organization of African Unity (OAU), now African Union (AU), reflects the view that Arabs could be and indeed are ‘brothers’ – even as the Khartoum based government was fighting a protracted war with African nationalism in south Sudan, in a war seen by the Africans of southern Sudan, as a just war of decolonization from Arab settler colonialism.

It is probably from this period, if not earlier, that we note the Left’s failure to address the issue of Arab hegemony and racism, which attitude is still with us today. Residence in south Sudan teaches that at the point of contact in the Afro-Arab intercourse, Arabia is aggressive and expansionist, not hiding its interests. This is understood throughout the Arab world. However in areas removed from direct contact, such as the west and southern African coasts, it is a different story. There Arab, particularly Egyptian, cordial diplomacy is legendary. Yet an Egyptian diplomat could be shifted from the Consulate in Juba, to the Embassy in Lusaka, Zambia. It is this duplicity which has confounded Africans, but such protocol is rule-of-thumb in the Foreign Ministries of the Arab world, when dealing with Africa. African leaders are amenable to bribery by their Arab counterparts, at the cost of their people’s interests.

The OAU played a major role in the decolonization of Southern Africa, whilst it refused to be involved in the south Sudan issue, which was stated to be an Arab issue, the proper consideration of the Arab League. The Liberation Committee of the OAU ensured that the decolonization process in southern Africa received the maximum support of the Organization, including its Arab members. The Arab government in Khartoum,  although at war with Africans in  south Sudan, was generous in funding the anti-apartheid struggle. In mid-February 2008 the post-apartheid

Government of South Africa dealt in a cavalier fashion with a Darfurian freedom fighter seeking to enter South Africa, to explain the war going on in his country. He was locked up, his luggage confiscated and  he expelled on the next available flight, without being offered any explanation. This could best be explained as a deliberate act to deny South Africans first hand knowledge of what is going on in Darfur and Sudan.

The road to the defeat of settler colonialism in southern Africa was a long one. The African National Congress (ANC) had been formed in 1912. Later it was fused with the South African Communist Party. Shortly before South Africa attained majority government in 1994  the  South African leader Chris Hani and likely future President, was assassinated, being described as both a leading figure in the ANC and the Communist Party.

The Anti-Apartheid Movement was a powerful international tool of finance capital and played a leading role in the garnering of international support for the decolonization process in South Africa. There was no such humanitarian interest in the freedom struggle underway in Sudan by the marginalized majority. Those who followed the transfer of power from the white settler colonial Afrikaner Nationalist Party to the ANC saw how the Left in that country, worked with capital to create a new South Africa, so-called, with a mixed economy and  lots of opportunities for venture and transnational capital, so that there was never a chance that the commanding heights of that economy would shift from the pre-1994 situation. Indeed local capital quickly stepped off-shore to places like Switzerland. The Kempton Park talks leading to majority rule in South Africa, laid the ground rules for the peaceful co-existence and co-operation of the Left with organized labour and the centre-right, which rule remains in place today. In Namibia self-government saw the introduction of a mixed economy, with respect for the social contract, with assurances for public health and education, embedded in the Constitution.

It was therefore ironic that the government which emerged in South Africa, lead by the Left, experienced some discomfort in handling settler colonial issues in the Afro-Arab Borderlands, such as Darfur. This unease was felt to be a product of Soviet era relations, whereby the  ANC had forged close international socialist working alliances, which ultimately lead to the battle of Cuito Cunavale in Angola, where the progressive forces of Cuba, Angola, Namibia and South Africa defeated on the battlefield the racist minority Afrikaner regime of South Africa, which was in alliance with the international rightwing,  which included the USA, UK, the Angolan rebel group UNITA and others. From observation the ruling Tripartite Alliance in South Africa ( ANC, the Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions [COSATU] )  has not shifted  from its view that class is the main and only determinant in analyzing human relations. The Mbeki Administration did adopt aspects of Pan-Africanism in its African Renaissance agenda, taking on board the Diaspora and championing  counties such as Haiti, whose role in contemporary African history had been ignored by the Left in the past. However the Alliance was unable to  answer charges that Renaissance was more a moral fig leaf for the penetration of South African capital into Africa, through the agency of Shoprite, the Banks and the breweries etc, to be followed by the vacuuming of minerals resources.

Whereas the world today is no longer in a duo-polar situation as during the Cold War, with power controlled by the United States of America and the Soviet Union, we are now in a period of the decline of the mono-power, the United States of America. This current scenario is slowly shifting in our view to a multi-polar world, in which new conflict issues are emerging, such as decolonization in the Afro-Arab Borderlands. We have seen terrorism become a matter of global concern, as well as fundamentalism and the preoccupation with the environment.

Closer to home the Darfur conflict is bringing to the surface an old problem, which has long been buried from global view, which was apparent during the long war in South Sudan, for those who were discerning. This is the issue of Arab hegemony, slavery, racism and abuse of human rights, lead by Islamic fundamentalist governments such as that in Khartoum, which  systematically seeks to change the demography of places such as Darfur, implementing genocide against the people of the area, such as the Fur, who are being forced off their land and are being replaced by Arabised West Africans, such as the Taureg. A similar Arab project is underway in Nubia, Northern Sudan, near the Egyptian border, where African Nubians, who have been living in the area for a millennium, are being removed in plain view of the world and Egyptian Arabs being resettled on their lands. Bear in mind that the conflict in the Afro-Arab Borderlands is as old as time, and that these issues were not publicized in the past. There will be new Darfurs spreading westwards. So long as Arab hegemony continues to push Africans southward it will be meet by a stout and organized resistance.

From observation it appears that the difficulties that the Left experiences in South Africa, of openly supporting harassed Africans in the Borderlands, is the admission  that in countries such as Sudan and Mauritania there is indeed a race issue, of such dimensions that just as South Africa needed the support of the Liberation Committee of the OAU to end apartheid, so in the Borderlands African solidarity and support is necessary. Indeed from Mauritania to the Red Sea there is an issue of Arab hegemony and racism. After all Africans lived on the Mediterranean coast, as Cheikh Anta Diop  explained to us. If Africans have been pushed Southwards as far as Darfur today – the issue is – what are Africans going to do about it. There is unease when an apartheid-type figure such as El Bashir of Sudan is able, in late 2007, to undertake a state visit to South Africa, where he is accorded full honours. Would the ANC, in say the mid-1980s, have remained silent if P.W.Botha had conducted a State visit to a Frontline state?

All progressive/Left leaning forces in African society have to take on board the truths of the Sudan and struggle to put in place changes for the better. The Left, both African and international has no choice, but to get engaged, as it did in South Africa. If the Left stays on the sidelines as a spectator, it ceases to be part of the solution and becomes part of the problem. The Left needs to fight Arab hegemony and violent Islamic fundamentalism. African contradictions  with the Arab Left stems from its acquiescence to Arab hegemony. A distinction must be made  between Arab Leftist ideas which are progressive and in line with progressive humanity and the support of the Arab left for Arab hegemony. Arab hegemony is imperial, it steals land and natural resources and it enslaves people. It is in continuous expansionist mode and has the support of the Arab League. But for the gallant fighters of the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA), Sudan under Tourabi, would have overrun the South and marched on Kampala, in the name of Jihad.

Arab racism and domination is not an issue for the United States of America lead liberal alliance alone. It concerns African progressive forces too. Arab hegemony is active from Mauritania to the Red Sea. This is not new. As Chinweizu said, the Borderlands have been a war zone since the arrival of the Arab in Africa. Africans were unable to admit and face-up to this reality. The conflict is low intensity, in the main, and generalized, with key combat zones such as south Sudan, which lost 2.5 million  during its liberation struggle, and now Darfur. These conflicts did not start yesterday, as the international press would want us to believe, but have been intermittent moving southward, again since the arrival of the Arab in Africa. Such conflicts are now in the public domain as the genocide in Darfur has received front page coverage internationally.

The Heads of State of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS ) meeting in Burkina Faso in mid-January 2008 had top of their agenda, as a security matter, the issue of the Taureg. In the face of a collective Arab challenge there should be a collective African response.

Groups such as the Darfurian freedom fighters deserve the support of the Left. A factor in that support will be the orientation of the group in question. Wagging liberation struggle requires support, both material and diplomatic. Military equipment is taken from the enemy. The people of Darfur, support their  liberation movements. Amnesty International reports that the IDP camps in Darfur are flooded with weapons, with no shortage of youthful volunteers, ready to fight. In the camps a revolver can be purchased for US$25. In Sudan there will be no peace unless the claims of all the marginalized are meet. There are projections that this may take 10-50 years. The current peace process in the South is part of a longer unfolding process, which the late John Garang set in motion, towards a new Sudan. There is an ark of crisis of endangered African states, targets for Arab expansion as follows – Eritrea, Tchad, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Kenya, Central African Republic, Niger, Mali, Senegal and Uganda.

And what about the lands which were ‘lost’ in the north of the African continent, such as Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco? The indications are that once majority rule has come to Sudan, then the preoccupation of the new Sudan will by way of education on human rights and history, re-educating the people that Africa has its own culture, history and civilization. And that the African origins of civilization, currently excluded from the school curricula in North Africa, is a fact of history. The ‘lost’ lands will not be recovered by war, but those now living in those lost lands will have to address the challenges of African culture, ideas and the Afro-Arab civilizational dialogue based on equality.

Afro-Arab relations have always been conflictual, with Africans on the receiving end, since the advent of the Arab on the Africa continent. The Left needs to engage this fact directly, not remain neutral and passive. The issues in play in this area are clear. The Left should not be afraid of confronting new situations, new challenges or unfamiliar terrain. In this period the Left should be vigilant and unbending in its core principles, as well as flexible in its approach


B.F.Bankie
November 2010
bfbankie@gmail.com

The author expresses appreciation for the comments and reactions to the preparatory text of this paper, received from Dr Adwok Nyaba. 

B.F.Bankie
Sudan Sensitisation Project (SSP)
www.bankie.info

THE AFRO-ARAB BORDERLANDS – AMBIGUOUS RELATIONS IN THE SAHEL REGION OF AFRICA

BF BANKIE:

‘ There are sizeable Black African populations in south Libya, northern Chad and south Algeria – but less in the latter. I can hardly see any African-Arab Borderlands in 100-500-1000 years. The African people will be freed and taking a lead, turning the tables on the oppressors’. Garba Diallo –Mauritanian

‘Chad is a Black nation with a minority of Arabs in the northern and eastern parts of the country. Yes, southern Libya and Algeria are Black countries with millions of invisible oppressed Africans, but we do not hear their voices or see their faces’. Dr Jibril Abdelbagi - Darfuri

‘Despite the profoundness of the intercourse between Arab culture and Black, Bantu and Neolithic cultures, big or secondary, the relations between these two cultural worlds continues to be amongst the most unstable’. Prof Helmi Sharawy - Egyptian.

Those interested in African affairs would have noted the difficulties in following and understanding what goes on in the Afro-Arab Borderlands, hereinafter called the ‘Borderlands’, stretching from Mauritania on the Atlantic, through Mali, Niger and Chad, to Sudan on the Red Sea. This is not accidental but a deliberate conspiracy to conceal from Black Africa the goings-on by Arabian and western interests in this are of ambiguous relations. Fluency in Arabic give some access to the truth. Otherwise physical habitation over time opens the area up to comprehensive understanding. This is an area where African interests have historically been purchased ‘for a song’. Because of our weaknesses we now find our helplessness makes us the laughing stock of the global community as regards the on-going slaughter of Africans in Darfur. Not one African state has been able to raise a finger in defence of the Darfuri. Yet Darfur was proceeded by the 39 years of fighting in South Sudan, called ‘Africa’s longest war’, which war witnessed the same genocide, use of rape as a weapon, aerial bombardments , Mujadeen/Muraleen as witnessed today in Darfur. Africans remained silent during this tragedy. Something which Southern Sudanese will never forget or forgive. This text exposes the truths of the Borderlands. It was largely the work of the Bush Administration, Coleen Power and the white charismatic Churches in the United States which placed the world spotlight on Sudan, South Sudan and Darfur, leading to the issue of the International Criminal Court Writ (ICC) against Sudan President Bashir in March.

Along the Mali-Niger Borderlands, before colonisation, the Touaregs, were the sole masters of their region throughout the Sahara Desert. The coming of the European coloniser deprived them of their essential means of survival. Since then, and particularly after the self government of Mali and Niger, the Touaregs have continually rebelled against the regimes in the new states created by France, but with a clear objective in mind : the creation of a Touareg state, separate and independent. Between 1963 and 1990, several disputes took a tragic turn between the central government in Mali as well as in Niger, the Touaregs, and the sedentary populations. To better understand the hidden objective of these various disputes and/or rebellions, and the Touareg’s attitutude toward the newly independent states, one needs to consider several factors and to bear in mind that Touaregs are being settled today in Darfur in the villages from which the Fur, Massalit and Zaghawa have been expelled by the Khartoum government. The Touareg, a black people, are completely Arabised and Islamised, culturally, whereas the Darfuri retain their African identity. The Touareg are to all intents and purposes Arabs.

The liberation of the slaves

In 1905 the French aggravated the downfall of the Touaregs by ablolishing slavery, and formally liberating the Touareg’s slave, the Imrads and the Bellas. Subsequently, in 1909, instructions were given to the local French authorities in Gao, Mali, pertaining to the new status of the slaves and their social insertion. The instructions also demanded that both the owners and the slaves be treated equally from then on. For the Touaregs, any attempt by the local colonial authorities to implement these instructions meant the destruction of their society and they were not prepared for that. They were indeed hurt both in their wealth and in their prejudices. The French later realised that they could not free the slaves, either mentally or physically. Slavery was deeply embedded in the way of life of both parties – the masters and the slaves, as it is in Mauritania today( Poussibet 1979: 37-39 ).

In the late 1950s by the Act of Law 57-7-27 of 20th January 1957, published in its official journal, the French government attempted to create an entity to accommodate nomads called the Common Organisation of the Saharan Regions (OCRS ). The proclaimed objective of this project was to ‘ take all appropriate measures which could improve the living conditions of the populations in general, and of the Touareg in particular, and to ensure their economic and social advancement within the framework of a development, which would take their culture and traditions into account ’.The project therefore aimed to remove some administrative departments and communities from four Saharan countries all having nomad populations – Algeria, French Sudan (now Mali ), Niger and Chad – and to reorganise them into a separate nomad state. Bear in mind that in those times French west Africa encompassed most of west Africa and was administered as one entity. France was preparing to balkanise its empire, breaking it up into pieces, which would become Independent states, in effect deconstructing Pan-Africa. The territories concerned were :
Two departments of Algeria: Saoura and Oasis
Three communities of French Sudan: Goundam, Tombouctou and Gao
Two communities of Niger :Tahaua and Agades
Three communities of Chad : Ennedi, Bornou and Tibesti

Although the project itself was withdrawn for obscure reasons, it most certainly triggered in the mind of the Touaregs the idea of an independent state free of the domination of their former black slaves, namely the leaders of the Independent states of Mali, Niger, and Mauritania. In the Borderlands, unlike in Southern Africa, colour is of little or no importance. What counts is culture. A man may be dark black, as most Touaregs are, but will consider himself an Arab, due to his adherence to Islam and practice of Arab culture dating back hundreds of years. The Arab arrival in Africa predates by many hundreds of years the arrival of Europeans in Southern Africa. The Darfuri, although black and Islamised, are considered by Khartoum as insufficiently Arabised and inferiors, and are thus considered to be Africans and worthy subjects of genocide.

The use of Arabic in education, administration and state affairs.

In 1960 the notabilities and the chiefs of the Adrar took advantage of an inspection trip by the civilian Chief Administrator of Gao to explain their perceptions of and wishes for the future administration of Mali. More than anything else they insisted upon giving primacy to the teaching of Arabic over that of French, and securing equitable jobs/positions within the newly created administrative structures for community members who were literate in Arabic (Diallo 1960 ). It is obvious that the implementation of such measures meant the systematic exclusion of non-Arabic speaking ethnic groups. Thus governance and all other forms of participation in power and in the management of power in the northern regions would be the responsibility and the privilege of the Arabs, the Touaregs and the Moors of Moroccan descent.

The attitude of Libya

As soon as he came to power, Colonel Qaddafi, of Arabo-Berber descent, expressed his ambition to create a Saharan state which would include all the Sahelo-Saharan countries, especially those inhabited in their northern territories by the Kel-Tamasheq. In 1989, on the twentieth anniversary of the Libyan Revolution, it was declared that Mali, Niger and Chad were part of the Arab world. Meanwhile young nomads were receiving military training to go to fight in Israel, Lebanon and Chad. Some of them were later directed to Mali and Niger to organise themselves into liberation movements (Toure 1999 ).

In the mid-1990s, when Libya became a target of the French and the Americans, and because of the political and economic difficulties of the country, with the embargo and travel restrictions amongst others, this project was temporarily abandoned. Yet Libya encouraged the former combatants to organise themselves into a movement called the Azawad Liberation Movement.

The attitude of the French authorities in the late 1980s

The French authorities have played an important role in the pursuit of the Touareg rebellions. After the Baule Summit meeting of the Francophone Head of State in Africa in 1989, the proclaimed objective of which was ‘the democratisation’ of African states by all means possible, the French authorities found in the 1990 Touareg rebellion in Mali a unique chance to end the regime of the Second Republic in Mali. The rebels were therefore provided with humanitarian assistance, the most sophisticated communications tools and spies to convey their message throughout West Africa in general and in the Sahel in particular (Diakite 2006).

Secret meetings were held and receptions were frequently organised with the Touaregs ( Gaudio 1992: 6-7 ) and in 1994 France accused the political authorities of Mali and Niger of genocide against their Arab populations, namely the Touaregs. It is difficult to tell exactly when the different components of the larger Azawad Liberatiion Movement were formed. The following have, none the less, played a significant role in the Touareg rebellions:
The Azawad Popular Movement (MPA), based in the Kidal region and composed of all the Touareg ethnic groups, in addition to some Arabs and Moors.

The Azawad Arab Islamic Front, based in Mauritania and essentially composed of the Arabs of Timbuktu, the Kel antasser of Goundam, the Kuntas and the Cherifs, descendants of Prophet Muhammad

The Azawad Liberation Popular Front (FPLA), composed of the Shamanamas and other Touareg groups

The Azawad Revolutionary Army mainly composed of dissidents of the MPA and FPLA

The Azawad National Front

All these movements were later combined to form the Azawad Unified Front. For lack of an independent Touareg state, the leaders of these movements finally suggested that the three northern regions, Timbuktu, Kidal and Gao, which make up more than half of the total size of Mali, be granted a particular statute to facilitate their social and economic development.

Following difficult negotiations in Algiers under the mediation of Algeria, a National Pact was signed on the 11th April 1991 between the government of Mali and the representatives of the Azawad Unified Fronts and Movements. This pact was meant to put an end to all attacks and ethnic-related conflicts and facilitate the social and economic integration of the populations of the northern regions. The causes of the rebellions was the lack of consideration for Arab minority groups, social injustice towards the Touaregs, the attitude of the colonial administration before self-government and of the leaders of the first and second Republics of Mali ( 1960-68 and 1968-91 respectively ). These are often put forth by the technical and financial partners as the reasons for the development in the western Sahel and northern regions of the privileging of abusive Arabised minority groups over numerically dominant African ones. In other words, there had developed a form of reverse discrimination which might undermine all efforts made for peaceful cohabitation in the Sahelian communities.

The severe droughts of the 1970s and 1980s hardly hit the northern regions of Mali, Mauritania, Niger and even Burkina Faso, but the social and economic fabric of these countries degraded significantly. The armed conflicts which followed, commonly called the ‘Touareg rebellions’, contributed to the aggravation of an already chaotic situation. Urban centres in the north were quiet often attacked by ’armed bandits’ and tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people were killed or forced to migrate to neighbouring countries. Inter-community tensions rapidly grew among the different ethnic groups.

In its handling of the consequences of these long years of drought on the one hand, and of the rebellions of the 1980s and the 1990s on the other, the government of Mali, with the assistance of its bilateral and multilateral partners, tended to favour the Arabs and the Touaregs, to the detriment of the sedentary black communities. These communities had initially suffered from drought and the incessant attacks of the combatants of the different Azawad Liberation Movements and of the ‘armed bandits’ later on. This favouring of the Arab communities was the impression that the layman had of the food distribution organised by local government authorities with the assistance of non-governmental organisations. We should recall here that Prof Alpha Konare, former head of state of Mali, became Chairman of the Organisation of African Unity/African Union (OAU/AU). Konare had long exposure to the Afro-Arab conundrum as indicated in this research, in his home country, Mali.

The formation of the Gandakoy Movement on the 9th May 1994 is an illustration of the reaction of an black ethnic group, frustrated and frequently submitted to injustice, racial discrimination and/or exclusion. This movement represented an ethnic reaction to the suffering of the sedentary populations following the violent attacks of the Touareg rebellions. The failure of successive Malian governments to find solutions to these problems lead to the black sedentary populations taking the law into their own hands and resorting to arms. This movement obtained international media coverage. Gandakoy effected cross border communities in Mali, Mauritania and Niger.

In a news item dated 27th January 2009 headlined ‘ Conflict intensifies in northern Mali despite Algiers Accord’, it was reported that the Malian army had stepped-up its fight with the Touareg rebels in the countries northern region of Kidal. Despite Algeria’s mediation, the rebel leader Ibrahim Ag Bahanga stated that war in the ‘ only option’. Algeria has mediated for years between the warring factions inthis Borderland conflict. Nothing in this western news item indicates that, lik e the Darfur conflict in Sudan, the Touareg conflict finds its roots in the Afro-Arab interchange, which is found from Mauritania on the Atlantic through Mali, Niger and Tchad to Sudan on the Red Sea. This area of Africa has always been a low or high intensity ( hot or cold ) conflict zone. Whereas Arabia is on the offensive as seen currently in Sudan, and at the Qatar Summit, African reaction remains one of denial.

[Originally published as Special Feature
entitled ‘ New horizons for Pan-Africanism/African Nationalism ‘,
Windhoek, Namibia]

*B.F.Bankie, former Researcher, Kush Institution, Office of the President, Juba, South Sudan

Reference
Diakite.S (2006) Racial prejudices and inter-ethnic conflicts- The case of the Afro-Arab Borderlands in the Western Sahel, appearing in the book Racism in the Global African experience edited by K.K.Prah, published by CASAS, Cape Town, South Africa, text of a paper delivered at WCAR,Durban, 2001

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Inventing an uncommon conversation about being free
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THE AFRO-ARAB CIVILISATION DIALOGUE

BF BANKIE:

Due to its denigration of African culture Arabia, since it’s incursion into Africa, has seen the continent as a civilization vacuum waiting to be filled by Arab culture and Islam.

The painful fact is that it was only with the initiation of the current peace process between Khartoum, in central Sudan and Juba in south Sudan and the international focus on the genocide in Darfur, that it became apparent to the public at large, that from Mauritania on the Atlantic coast, moving eastwards to Sudan on the Red Sea, despite careful concealment, that a system of apartheid was in operation in the Afro-Arab Borderlands, where Africa meets Arabia, in places such as Mali and Niger, which border on southern Algeria and southern Libya.

The potential for fighting arising from such a situation has manifested itself already in parts of Sudan, in Niger and in the on-going conflicts in the Sahel, involving groups such as the Touaregs in Mali and Niger. Concerned persons such as Prof Helmi Sharawy of the
Arab Research Centre for Arab-African Studies and Documentation (ARAASD ) in Cairo, Egypt and Prof Kwesi Prah of the Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS) in Cape Town, as well as Prof Dani Nabudere of the Marcus Garvey Pan-African Institute (MPAI ) in Mbale in Uganda, have been working towards the creation of a security mechanism to prevent conflict, by way of dialogue. Meetings have taken place between progressive Arabs and progressive Africans to find common ground and to implement restorative justice, by way of dispute resolution strategies, in a situation of historical opposition and mistrust. The former Chairperson of the African Union (AU) Prof Alfa Konare convened such a meeting of scholars in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia towards the formulation of ‘A Strategic Geopolitical Vision of Afro-Arab Relations’ from 11-12th May 2004 at the headquarters of the AU, in order to determine the various views and to look at potential solutions, by way of a civilization dialogue. It is all too apparent that some would wish to intensify the divisions and exploit them. Such forces have had the upper hand in the past. Only protracted, laboured, internal solutions, within the area, will help in the long term.

As the deep rooted historical problems of the Borderlands receive better understanding, well meaning people of peace will be obliged to find ways and means to handle an area of Pan-African affairs, where black Africans, due to their geopolitical weaknesses, have been in denial since self government came about in Africa in the mid-1950s. Indeed these skewered relations date back a millennia, from the initial interaction between the two peoples. It was only with the Darfur issue emerging as a genocide, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, that the organization for Pan-African unity, formerly called the Organization for African Unity (OAU), now known as the African Union (AU), concerned itself with developments in the Borderlands. Formerly these were off-limits. During the long years of war in south Sudan starting in 1955, the fighting there was not a matter of concern for the Pan-African body. The south Sudan conflict was said to be an Arab issue, for decision by the Arab League only. Such a view was supported by Libya.

Paradoxically, as it may appear, it was the Republican Administration of George Bush in the USA, which championed the cause of the Darfuri against the genocide and pushed the international community to conclude the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between Khartoum and Juba. History will draw its own conclusions as to why it was Bush and not the previous Clinton Democrat Administration which opted for peace in South Sudan. The Democrats did nothing to stop the war in South Sudan or to decisively intervene in the Sudan issue. They are remembered for bombing a civilian target in Khartoum, which was a pharmaceutical factory. They failed to concern themselves with the lives of the marginalized millions living in the Borderlands and were part of the cover-up. The last Democrat Administration in the USA saw central Africa, the Great Lakes and particularly the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in flames. The Democrats were part of the problem, not part of the solution. This might have been the most murderous period in the self-government era in this area of Africa. The policies in this area of the incoming Obama Administration have yet to receive clarity.

On the 22nd February 2003 the Drammeh Institute in New York and CASAS convened the Conference on Arab-led Slavery of Africans in Johannesburg, South Africa. It was attended by scholars from around the world, especially from Sudan and Mauritania. Conference stated that after centuries of silence and non-expression, it was time to speak out on the inequities visited against Africans in their relations with Arabs. It recognized the need to overcome collective amnesia and the need for research on African interaction with Arabs, the Ottomans and the Turks, all of whom played a key role in making north Africa what it is today. Conference promoted closer relations with the eastern Diaspora in Arabia, the Gulf states and points eastwards. It censored the implementation of genocide in Sudan and charged Arab societies with the ethnocide of African people through forced cultural Arabization processes over a millennia. Finally the conference called for the institution of a civilization dialogue between the Arab and African people.

Such a dialogue needs to take place between those living in the Borderlands, such as in Mauritania and in Sudan, with those in that area who profess to be Arabs. Some might assume that, for example, Afro-Brazilians, could conduct such a dialogue with the Arabs of the area. This would not be helpful. Neither would it assist if, for example, South Africans dialogued with Arabs. Africans in general, as has been said, have been in denial on these issues, and some still are. It is those who have felt the effects of the expansionist hegemony over a millennia, not the African Union, who can best begin a process of possible reconciliation, as seen in southern Africa.

Such a dialogue will, as and when initiated in an organized fashion, be fraught with difficulties and take centuries to have effect. The current Government of National Unity
(GONU) in Khartoum, Sudan, illustrates that the attempt at cohabitation of the National Islamic Front (NIF)/National Congress Party (NCP) of Omar el Bashir in Khartoum and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) in Juba, South Sudan, has been anything but harmonious. The relationship has been characterized by deceit, lies and betrayal by Khartoum from day one.

Finally, the civilization dialogue between the African and the Arab must be conducted on a basis of strict equality and mutual respect. Such a dialogue, once its existence is formerly established, will take place in both formal and informal settings, where people meet formally and informally. It will need to be worked towards deliberately and continuously. At the moment Arab superiority to the African is a given, both in the Arab world and internationally. This explains China’s position on the Sudan issue, where due to economic interests, China is the principal defender of the Khartoum government and its main supplier of weapons. Another surprisingly vocal supporter of Bashir and Khartoum has been Tabor Mbeki.

The current international positioning for and against Khartoum, in the issue by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of the Writ against President Bashir of Sudan, needs to be carefully scrutinized and followed. These manoeuvres do not just reflect support for a despot, but relate to initial positioning on the broad issue of Afro-Arab future relations and their global implication. What happens in Sudan today has application, for example, in Mauritania and the rest of the Afro-Arab Borderlands tomorrow. The domination of Arabs in this area was in the past a ‘given ‘ in the geo-political discourse. The facts of the area were difficult to locate ( the ratio of Arab to African in Sudan is concealed by the government of Sudan – the same applies in the rest of the Borderlands, right across to Mauritania ) and the area was not subject to analysis in the international media, being ‘off-limits ‘ for discussion in the west and east, in so-called ‘traditional diplomacy’. The well being of the area was determined by the neo-colonial arrangements left by the departing external actors, who monopolized developments in the area according to their own interests. The first generation of post-colonial leaders, such as Sekou Toure and Modibo Keita abided by these rules and did not seek to interfere with the colonial dispensation in the Borderlands.

What broke the mould was the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) of South Sudan, lead by Dr John Garang de Mabior, fighting on behalf of all the marginalized people of Sudan, including the Darfuri, the Beja of the east, the Nubians in the north of the country and others. The SPLA together with the Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF) forced
Khartoum to sign the CPA. This changed the course of history and the strategic balance in the Borderlands, from the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean, creating the opportunity to open the Borderlands to public scrutiny - an area which had been shut off from view. This led to the Darfur ‘rebellion’ and the further ramifications which are underway. The significance of the CPA, which cost three millon+ lives and long years of war, should be compared with the implications of the battle of Cuito Cunavale in Angola for Southern Africa. In the instance of the CPA the military struggles took longer due to international marginalization and indifference to the loss of African lives and was undertaken by Africans. In the international relations of the period 1950s-2005 the events in South Sudan did not feature in the media. The implications of this are that the resolution of issues such as Darfur and the Borderlands in general will have to be done by African actors, not by external players. Until Africans are strong enough the area, including Somalia, will remain war prone. Indeed this lesson should have been long learnt in the Congo basin. All these mean that the Pan-African body, the AU alone, has to be up to the historical responsibilities it faces. Gone are the days of external solutions. There is no other option to peaceful co-existence, combined with a preparedness to met force with force.

B.F.Bankie, former Researcher, Kush Institution, Juba, South Sudan