Articles

Comment on Dream Deferred and Reflections on a Dream

Dear compatriots and friends

I have much to agree with Mr. Mahgoub el Tigani and would say that in addition to the ‘cult of leadership’ as the cause of African people predicament, of course

the legacy of slavery and the rape of the continent and its people that has last for more than two millennia, and which still persists to date in Sudan and Mauritania. Mr. Gamal Nkrumah might have been erroneously led himself to believe, and of course not without reason, that the ‘African union’ Gadhafi is fiddling with now represents almost half a century later the dream [his father and some of the founding fathers of Organisation for African Unity had]. It doesn’t. Gadhafi’s ‘African Union’ and that will always remain in brackets is one in the series of his ‘takaamil’ or ‘integration’ moves of the seventies and eighties. Coming out of the cold of ‘international isolation’ imposed by the US, but broken by ‘Black Africa’, Gadhafi, true to his Arab psychological superiority complex wants to whip, with his petro-dollars, the poor African into a union to cleanse his soul and the soul of the Libyans haunted by the massacre of Black Africans (including Sudanese) a year or so ago.

As a Sudanese, and somebody struggling for emancipation from the legacy of slavery perpetuated by the Arabs today, I am cynical about an African union spearheaded by an Arab like Gadhafi. I even felt humiliated, insulted, angered and offended by the presence of the Palestinian leader Yassir Arfat taking a seat in the conference hall. It reminded me of his statement in Khartoum sometimes in 1985 about sending a Palestinian detachment to fight along side the Sudanese Army against the SPLA and that made me more angry. ‘African Union’ is a farce from the start because you can’t talk of ‘African Union’ without first defining and having a clear perception of who is the African. First and foremost, the Arabs are not Africans. The concept of African can’t be separated from the history of African civilisation, enslavement and colonialism, language, culture and other peculiarities of the African people. The Black colour, in the words of Prof. Kwesi Prah, is only a bonus in the African struggle for self-rediscovery and assertion.

Modelled on ‘European Union’, ‘the African Union’ can not be oblivious to the issues of race, culture, language, racial discrimination, slavery, Arab attempts to efface Black Africa and to assimilate it into Arabo-Islamic cultural sphere as represented by the NIF ‘civilisation project’. An ‘African Union’ that ignores the plight of the Sudanese people and all other African people labouring under the weight of racial discrimination and slavery must be rejected for that and for the fact that it bought by an Arab slaver like Gadhafi.

The World Conference/ NGO forum against racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance in Durban South Africa should be an opener to many Africans, specially the Black Africans. It is time that the Arabs recognised their role in the enslavement of Black African people and accept that responsibility which entails reparation for the crime they committed. The Black Africans and the Africans in the Diaspora have always focused on the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and the role of the Europeans, notable the Portuguese, Spanish and the English (British). They have always downplayed the damage done by the Arabs and other Asians.

In the Round Table Conference for the Problem of Southern Provinces in Khartoum in February 1965, Comrade Abdel Khaliq Mahgoub addressing the conference had this introduction to his speech "…[ We] are the heirs of Zubier Pasha Rahama… and we must accept the responsibility.." That was a rare admittance. Abdel Khaliq did not live of course to witness the evolution of a democratic political culture in the Sudan, for he was murdered [assassinated] by Nimeri. But that remains the truth that the present red-skin Sudanese, a hybrid race, who call themselves Arabs must take responsibility for assisting the Turks and Egyptians in ferrying away over three million Black African from Sudan between 1800 and 1900.

The Black Africans have a case against the Arabs in the Sudan, in North Africa or Middle East. It is a case for reparation the debt of, and their acceptance of moral responsibility and apology to the Black Africans for the deeds of their great grand fathers in order to improve race relations on the continent instead of talking of ‘African Union’, purchased with few petro-dollars. I believe the Lusaka petro-dollars will become like ‘mal el Aqeed’ (colonel’s money) as it was known, and not ‘mal al karama’ ya doctor Mahgoub, which the Sudanese proudly paid back to Libya when Gadhafi had a ruffle with Nimeri. It is worth mentioning that Gadhafi on his visit to Sudan in search of ‘integration’, and excited by Sudanese hospitality voluntarily donated one-month’s salary to state employees. He is now trying to repeat the same.

Talking about ‘African Union’, I don’t believe the insinuation that because they are rich the oil producing African states did not ratify the ‘African Union’ and hence did not need ‘mal el Aqeed’. The truth is there can’t be an ‘African Union’ when countries like Sudan and the rest of Africa south of Sahara suffer from internal strife because of the colonial arbitrariness in creating what you call the state in Africa.

I will come back with more analysis.

With kind regards
Peter Adwok Nyaba