Regulars
Back to the Future by Onyekachi Wambu
Freeing ourselves from
Please spare 3 minutes of silence on 1 August for all the victims of the Arab and TransAtlantic Slavery and other new oppressions in Africa.
What does the defeat of Muammar AlGathafi (pictured below) mean to Africa? A lot, including the disunity of the African Union itself.
f th affair? domination
The end
and commemoration of the millions killed, enslaved and even c in the debris of Libya is thell Afro-Arab alliance. After his 1952 revolution, Nasser, the major North African figure, in The Philosophy of the Revolution, theorised the alliance, locating Sudan was a new kind of African war of liberation – this time not gainst European oppressors, but against African oppressors. Egypt, alongside 12 Asian countries, helped sponsor the first blood hed and hardship, will provide a fillip to other regional and ethnic struggles on the contin second class citizenship.
d de ermined insistence on freedom, as well as a look back The second important idea that seems to be disappearing astrated at the hands of f hundreds of years.
and nationalised important assets such as oil. ow African predators, going back
The successful war that produced the new cou try of South Egypt within three circles – Arab, Islamic and African – but also acted on this understanding.
Enslaved Africans were branded with hot irons by their new ‘masters’
T A
Going forward, the war’s su cessful conclusion, despite the UN resolution in September 1952 against apartheid. Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah and others, thent d aegepened the alliance, consolidating in the Organisation of African Unity. Al Gathafi, whoT imagined himself as Nasser’s heir, has in his own way and of us who consider urselv s pan-Africanists. We wan a u i ed Africa. At t e same time we understand the need for struggles The alliance has been under strain for a while – particularly ountries. We hope future regional integration – ECOWAS, SADC, EAC – will reduce the power of dominant ethnic groups, since in hese bigger units, ev ry ethnic group would effectively be a minority – needing as much protection as any other min rity.
ainst oppr ssion and
hese types of struggles present difficult challenges to those for his own ambitions, been the most vocal supporter in the North, of that unity and the Afro-Arab alliance.
that could lead to the balkanisation of existing Berlin Treat c in the Afro-Arab Sahelian borderlands. South Sudan and Darfur put the alliance under immense pressure. The sidelining of the AU on Libya, and t the Arab League’s decisive role suggests a fatal rupture.
not careful, even the legitimacy of many of the anti-colonial and nationalist actors who brought independence. ricans who died as a result of be
of suffering must have been unbearable – families traumatise a independence.
peoples broken for forever.
00pm is the key moment when 3 minutes of silence will be h instance, between 1922-28, the Italians are said by Arab his- torians to have been responsible for the death of over 80,000 v ctims who remained in Africa itself.
for the African victims in the Western world;
one minute for the victims in th Eas ; and one minute for the Libyans in Cyrenaica, a third of the population, following an uprising against them.
After focusing for many years on those who were enslaved The nationalists not only secured independence, but Africa, with a South Sudan theme. It is both a celebration of the ndependence of a new African country, won through courage
106 | July 2011 | New African 98 | October 2011 | New African
Beginning w Aitfh Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt ing July 1952, Africans led by some incredible men, north and south of the Sahara, began w uinning the long fight which had been gathering speed for at least half a century against the European colonial powers to return political freedoms, land, African dignity and nd torn asunder, community bonds shattered. Trust between Lest we forget, some of these campaigns involved murder- ous3
r.esponses from the departing colonialists. In Libya, for eld – one minut
the millions of enslaved
or who were caught up in the violence and chaos nleashed as their communities suff red destruc- tion during the raids by laving gangs. The weight
he defeat of Muammar Al Gathafi’s army in Libya is the ending of several important ideas and alliances that have shaped the African geo- strategic architecture in the post independence period. The first is the seeming collapse in credibility and, maybe in the long run if we are ugust 1st s African Remembrance Day (ARD) in the UK, a day to commemorat
Of the other countries of the North, Morocco is no longer a member of the AU and is more focused on its relationship with Europe; ditto r Tunisia, which is now also preoccupied by its internal problems a. Egypt, which is also internally preoccupied, has over the yearrs been minimising its African engagement, and seems really only interested in protecting its lifeline – the these antagonisms in the first place. We won’t get to he heart the ssue until we truly examine our attitudes to human and power relations in Africa, and par icularly the issue of slavery. Jamaican sociologist and slavery expert Orlando Patterson once described the condition of slavery as “social death”. The slave, a pris ner of war or ubservient person, rather than accept honour in death, accepts being captured and living, and Both voted at the UN for the “no-fly zone” Resolution 1973 his life – he is alive, but is to all intents and purposes socially dead – with diminished human rights, not able to intermarry, eat with, or sometimes even look his new “master” in the eye. Such a situation describes many of the relationships we see tinen between dominant groups and the groups they
The belief by pan-African optimists t at egional integration wil dissolve many of the ntagonisms between diff
ent groups that cur- ently exist within the Berlin Treaty boundaries
still do sn’t allow us to examine what is at the root of many of River Nile. Only Algeria remains, frozen in time and still run by o itfs nationalist anti-colonial generation. For how long? The third important geo-strategic idea that has spectacu- larly unr velled over the Libya debacle and perhaps the most dangerous – is the disunity of the AU itself, and especially between the two great powers of Africa, south of the Sahara – Nigeria and South Africa.
in so doing forfeits his rights as an equal with those who spare and t is important to say that without heir vote, the resolution would no have been passed. Since then however, he South Africans have been in the forefront of pressing for an African resolution and power- haring. Nigeria as recognised Libya’s Transitional National Council, outside of this framework. On two occasions in the last year – Côte d’Ivoire and Libya
on our c
conquered or look down on, sometimes with the same contempt – Nigeria has sided with western powers over the solution of an African probl m, and South Africa has not. This divisi n between hundreds and hundreds
we accuse Europeans of.
a d which as been rationalised and sancti ned by religious i principles are obviousl ty at stake – each government needs to outline them clearly. We need to debate them and then both akes
But how else can we describe what has been going on for the two great powers of the South is not healthy for African unity and the defence of our homeland. Important values and deology. In my travel
years be ween North and South Sud hroughout Africa I see its awful legacy:
in the West, this year ARD has decided to focus on the victims in had in many cases, like Muammar Al G thafi, supported i other continental liberation struggles, expelled foreign bases
the people who live in remote hilltop refuges or in the middle of l need to get behind the position that best defends our continent and empowers its people in the coming storm.
escape predators; those in Zanzibar who call themselves Arabs or Persians, because to admit to being African, would make We staked out a position and united, during the nationalist ence on August 1st for all these victims on our continent.
them the descendents of slaves, etc. Please spare 3 minutes of sitlruggles. And we won.
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