From: UGANDA DISCUSSION LIST
A Letter to the African Patriot
I do not intent to start a war (flame or smoke) here. This letter
is addressed to the African Patriot, Europeans and other foreigners
are welcome to read it, what they think of it, however, is their
business. I shall take no notice of it.
My intention here is to start a dialogue with other Africans, to
see what we, individually, can do to help our motherland. Instead
of wasting our energies and our breath assailing unreformed (un-
reformable) white-supremacists, let's channel use our energies to
better things. This is my humble contribution. As you shall soon
find out, I have more questions than answers, I believe, however,
that, together we can find our own answers to our own problems.
I need not remind any of you that we are the most trampled-upon
people on earth. We are easily the most despised. Historically,
Africa gave so much to the world. How did we started so high and
ended up so low? That is the soul-searching we all need to do.
Since the idea is to get an honest dialogue going, I should stress
that in all our communications, we should be truthful and sincere.
Occasionally, egos might get in the way, but the higher purpose,
for which we all hope to come together, should be enough to set us
straight. At the latest count there are over 80,000 European 'aid-
workers' trampling around Africa, purporting to be developing us.
Europe continue ship her unemployable people to us labeled as
'consultants,' and 'miracle-workers.'
These busy-bodies are doing their utmost to perform the miracles of
turning Africa into Europe. They are busy lecturing us on how to
make failed European ideas work in our land. Take what they call
democracy for instance, the more apathetic Europeans become about
their splendid democracy, the more energetic the Europeans scholars
become in drumming it into our ears, as the panacea to our
problems.
In the meantime, thousands, if not millions, of us are contributing
to societies which didn't pay for our education. How can we remedy
this? I do not know if any society in history had been developed by
foreigners, however benevolent. Will Africa be different? I have my
doubt.
An African Patriot, to attempt a definition, is an African who is
loyal to Africa. Please, anyone of you is welcome to submit a
better definition.
What I write hereunder should in no way be misconstrued as a
romantic nonsense from an avowed Pan-Africanist - the usual charges
from European 'dis-passionate analysts.' Anyone with even a crude
knowledge of African history would know that the people who are now
artificially divided into nation-sates are really one people. Cheik
Anta Diop's 'The Cultural Unity of Africa' is an excellent book to
consider by those who would like to know more about this.
Also, as Baaba Maal eloquently put it:
"The agouyadji* is sounding
Able bodied men rise up
In to-day's world, honor is becoming rare
So let us examine our consciences
And seek to refine our race
Our language is not the least important factor
In our dignity
So let us learn it
And let us teach it
That will pay
>From here to the Fouta, Poular is spoken
>From Somalia to Mali
>From Benin to Guinea
>From Cameroon to Gambia
>From Egypt to Ethiopia
>From Nigeria to Niger, they speak Poular
If all these peoples came together
They'd know we have the same mother
Whatever the differences in our dialect
We have the same father
I called Coumba
And Coumba replied
I called Samba, Samba replied likewise
I used to believe
Those of us who speak Halpulaar
Were inferior
But I realized I was wrong."
* Agouyadji = is a gong used by the Peuls to call a meeting.
Baaba Maal - from the album 'BAAYO' (The Orphan)
Let me give some specific examples: The Fulanis came from the Futa
Jallon area of Senegal. They are found all over West Africa. Should
Nigerians continue to regard the Senegalese as 'foreigners', when
their kin constituted a large group in what we call our country?
The Ewe people found in Ghana and Togo are originally from Oyo, In
Nigeria. Anyone who have listen to them speak will know how closely
related the Yoruba and the Ewe languages are. Should Nigerians
continue to regard them as 'aliens?' More specifics are given
towards the end of this article.
Greater minds than mine have already reasoned that lack of unity is
the greatest obstacle to our social, economic and political
development. For Africa, I will say that disunity is like a cancer
eating away our cells; it will slowly kill us. That is the
analysis. What can we all and, individually, do to solve this
centuries-old problem?
Since most of the men we call leaders, are more interested in their
bank accounts than in their people, how do we, as concerned
patriots, create the structures and the institutions to unite
Africa, that will by-pass the colonial and neo-colonial entities
dotting our land? I have no answers. I am neither a legal expert
nor a political guru; computers are my department. But I am willing
to share ideas with like-minded persons.
This idea may not be as formidable as it sounds.
The 'ordinary folks' are already doing it. Custom barriers and
passports are no hindrance to them, in their pursuit of their
activities. How could we, as intellectuals, climb down from our
ivory towers and learn from our own people? You can already see that I
have more question than answers, please indulge me.
My own idea is that since continental unity will look rather
daunting at this present moment, I suggest that we begin with sub-
regional organizations and institutions. The West-Africa sub-region
is already making good stride in this direction with ECOWAS; it is
not perfect yet, but I think that it is good beginning. East and
Southern Africa should also revive their own regional
organizations. I think the North Africans have the Mahgreb
organization, this can also be built upon. The benefits of these
regional institutions far outweigh any drawback - bigger market,
free movement of people and goods could only result in more
understanding. These regional institutions will also find it easier
to come to agreement than fifty or so states haggling.
I personally believe that there is simply no alternative to a
continental unity. The reasons I say this are numerous. The
problems we face internationally are no longer 'NATIONAL' in
character, but 'CONTINENTAL' or 'BLOCs'. The treaties African
countries signed with Holland, Belgium or France decade ago, count
for nothing today, when these nations are taking foreign-policy
decisions JOINTLY with their colleagues at the European Union
headquarters in Brussels. The EU, which started life as an economic
community of three nations has graduated into
political\social\economic UNION of twelve states, and more European
nations are still signing on.
What all these means is that today, the Portuguese can go to
England, France or Italy and take up residence. He is permitted to
vote and he is entitled to all the rights of the citizens of those
countries. In fact, all citizens of the EU now carry what they call
European passport!
Africa does not faced more problem than Europe in terms of
diversity, and we should remember that fifty years ago some of the
member-nations of the EU were killing each other with Biblical fury
during WWII.
The United States Congress has just ratified the treaty tying the
U.S.A., Canada and Mexico in an Economic Union. In the same week
that the treaty was ratified, American President Clinton called a
meeting of Pacific leaders at Seattle, on the agenda was how to
create an Asian-Pacific Economic Community (APEC) between the US
and the fast-growing economies in Asia.
Whither thou Africa! West Africans can stay in one another's
country for ninety days, why not permanently?
As Gabriel d'Arboussier (President of the Grand Conseil of a French
West Africa) declared in 1958, "The time of small and jealous
nationalism is past and done with. Africa history has often been
the history of large units. All the great African states of the
past were large or very large, and included many peoples. This was
true of Mali as of Songhai, or of others elsewhere on our
continent. But what the organizers of those feudal states did by
conquest, we in our day will do by federalism and by free consent."
(quoted in 'Which Way Africa', by Basil Davidson p.132)
Why do I believe that the Union of African states is such a
desirable thing? Enough had been written by great Pan-Africanists
like Marcus Garvey, WEB DuBois, Nkrumahs and Azikwe that I do not think
that I should belabor it here.
I can only illustrate with my experience during my travels through
West Africa in December 1992 through February 1993.
Crossing from Nigeria to the republic of Niger, there was no
noticeable difference from either the landscape or the people. The
people were interacting with each other as one people. They eat the
same type of food, speak the same language and share the same
jokes. Aside from the Nigeriene police, there was no way one could
know for certain that one was in a foreign land.
Between the Niger\Burkina Faso border was a small border town,
where we had to stop for some hours for what they called customs
inspection. We trooped to the food-kiosks for victuals. To my
amazement, the women were speaking Yoruba, my language!
"What are you people doing here?" I asked their leader.
She beamed a smile in my direction, revealing a set of even,
well-maintained dental-work. The smile illuminated not only her
pretty face, but also the whole of the Sahel region. Wiping sweat
from her brow, she replied in Yoruba, "Omo mi, ibi aye ba gbe ni
de, ni a npe ni Aiyede."
Roughly translated it means, 'My son, it is where the world led
you, that we called 'Aiyede' - 'Here the world led.'
That sums up her, and her colleagues philosophy. It was simple as
well as eloquent. Such was the beauty of the Yoruba language, that
a lot of complicated things can be summarized in a short sentence.
I had a good meal with them and, shaken my head at the astonishment
of it all, left them.
That I believe sums up the Africans view of the world. It also
reminds me of Kwame Nkrumah's observation about Africans, "... Yet
in spite of this I am convinced that the forces making for unity
far outweigh those which divide us. In meeting fellow Africans from
all parts of the continent I am constantly impressed by how much we
have in common. It is not just our colonial past, or the fact that
we have aims in common, it is something which goes far deeper. I
can best describe it as a sense of one-ness in that we are
Africans." Kwame Nkrumah, 'Africa Must Unite,' p.132.
Historically, a migratory group, Africans are always on the move,
and they would settle wherever the conditions permitted their
staying. This was the trend until Europeans came and made a
forcible stop to this natural movement of peoples and ideas. These
rapacious aliens forcibly, in order to steal the wealth, carved up
the continent, and things have never being the same ever since. To
keep the people perpetually divided, their theorists and
anthropologists started propounding the myths of the differences
between the Africans. So successful were these specialists in
violence and division that the Akans, forgetting that nationalism
was a colonial import, are prepared to eliminate one another in the
name of Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire.
As Chancellor Williams puts it, "White Africanists writers always
concentrate on the Ethnic differences among Africans, the tribal
antagonism, the hopeless language barriers, the cultural varieties,
etc. They even make a separate Ethnic group of their own mulatto
offsprings from black women by classifying them as White in some
areas and Colored in others. Hence, system of thought and practices
was developed and superimposed on an already divided race to keep
it permanently divided. No one can deny that in this effort, too,
the white have been most successful." - Dr. Chancellor Williams,
The Destruction of Black Civilization.' p.21)
In the Grand Marche (Big Market) in Ougadougou, many of the
market-women were also speaking Yoruba. I also got to ask them what
they were doing in Burkina Faso, they replied in almost exactly the
same way the women at the border-town replied me. The same scene
was re-enacted at Koudougou, a Burkinabe town, about three-hundred
kilometers from Ougadougou.
In the Northern Ghana town of Bolga Tanga, the provision store in
front of the motor park belongs to a Yoruba woman. I asked her what
her name was, and she replied, 'Alhaja,' and introduced herself.
She's from Ogbomoso, a town in Oyo-State of Nigeria. She enquired
where I learned my Yoruba since, according to her, I didn't look
like one. After establishing my bona-fidelity, she allowed me to
take her pictures. I promised to send them back to her, a promise
I kept. The Alhaja's daughter was the owner of the tailoring shop
next to her mother's provision store. They mingled and interacted
with their Ghanaian counterparts easily. To my European companion,
there was absolutely no difference between the Nigerians and the
Ghanaians. They wondered how a people with so much similarity could
continue to think of themselves as strangers. I told them that it
was all thanks to colonialism. At the big Accra motor park, Igbo
motor spare-parts dealers own shops alongside their Ghanaian
counterparts. They were bantering and pulling each others legs,
while Senegalese music were blasting away on the huge ghetto-
blasters. I was the one they all considered a 'foreigner.'
In no part of the countries I travelled did I feel any sense of
alienation. In Ougadougou, Tamale, Kumasi, Koudougou, Niamey, I
drank thee on the side streets the same way I did in Kano, Nigeria.
I ate EBA in Cotonou, just as I did in Ibadan.
Africans are one people. That much could be ascertained by anyone
who has taken the trouble to travel through these so-called
countries. The expulsion of Nigerians from Ghana in the 60s, and of
Ghanaians from Nigeria by Shagari in the 80s are retrogressive,
unconscionable actions that should be condemned. Neither country
gained anything from the short-sighted actions of their governments
- too corrupt and too inept, to seriously tackle the problems
facing their countries.
I also believe that regional language will help to smooth things.
I do not believe that it is too late to introduce regional
languages. West Africans could try and learn Hausa; which is
already the most widely spoken language and is quite easy to learn
- I am not fluent in it myself, but I'll learn it, definitely. East
Africans could easily adopt Swahili, since most of them already
speak it. Southern and North Africa are a bit problematic for me,
but whatever languages the groups choose should be acceptable to
the others. I know that these suggestions will upset a lot of
people, but since these are mere ideas and suggestions, I hope that
they will be criticized intellectually, not emotionally.
When I said that nationalism in Africa was the creation of
colonialism, I speak with the authority of history, to borrow
Malcolm X's phrase.
When the colonialists and empire-builders sat in Berlin 1884-1885
to draw the fine geometric lines we see on the maps of Africa
today, no consideration was given to the people whose lives and
fates were been discussed and destroyed. There was no African
present at the conference at which Africa was partitioned.
Europeans then, as now, thought they knew best what is good for
'under-developed' inhabitants of the vast continent.
The founding fathers of the Organization of African Unity thought
best to respect this artificially-created borders to forestall the
dis-integration of their states. Anyone who had taken a trip around
these 'geographic-expressions' called countries, would know that
these borders are recognized only by the bureaucrats and
International jurist. The ordinary Africans continue to live the
way their fore-fathers did; with utter disregard for these
artificial boundaries which split their cultural, political and
socio-economic interests.
Below is an insightful analysis of the problems wrought by the
Partition:
"The other side of the African perspective relates to the attitude
in particular African culture areas or ethnic groups which were
more immediately affected by the political surgery by being split
into two or more colonies and, later, independent African
successor-states...: the Somali whose essentially continuous
culture area was severed into the separate colonies of British
Somaliland, French Somaliland, Italian Somaliland, the Northern
Frontier District of Kenya and the Ogaaden province of Imperial
Ethiopia; the Masai, cut nearly in half by the Kenya-Tanzania
border; the Bakongo across the Gabon-Congo, Congo-Zaire and
Zaire-Angola boundaries; the Lunda astride the Zaire-Angola and
Zaire-Zambia frontiers; the Zande or the Azande cut by boundaries
into different parts in the Sudan, Chad, the Central African
Republic and Zaire; the Yoruba and the Aja, each divided between
Nigeria, Benin (formerly Dahomey) and Togo; the Gourma truncated
into parts located in Upper Volta, Togo and Benin; the Wolof and
the Serers of Senegal and the Gambia; the Sounike and the Tukulor
across the Senegal-Mauritania boundary; the Tubu mutilated by the
Libyan-Chad and Chad-Niger borders; the Nubians across the
Egypt-Sudan boundary; the Tswana on both sides of the
Botswana-South Africa boundary and the cattle-keeping Ova Herero as
well as the game-seeking Khoisan Basarwa (the so-called 'Bushmen')
astride the Botswana-Namibia border.
In these specifically divided African culture areas, the boundaries
have been drawn across well-established lines of communication
including, in every case, a dormant or active sense of community
based on traditions concerning common ancestry, usually very strong
kinship ties, shared socio-political institutions and economic
resources, common customs and practices, and sometimes acceptance
of a common political control. In many instances, such as the
Uganda-Sudan frontier through the Kakwa territory, the boundaries
have separated communities of worshippers from age-old sacred
groves and shrines. In other instances, well exemplified by the
Somali, the water resources in a predominantly pastoral and nomadic
culture area were located in one state while the pastures were in
another.
Apart from the division which arises routinely from the mere
location of boundaries, partitioned groups were further pulled
apart in consequence of the opposing integrative processes set in
motion by the different states. Such processes have tended to make
the divided groups look in different political, economic and social
directions. This has generally been the effect on the partitioned
culture areas of the distinct policies which the various states
pursue in matters of trade and currency, transport and
communication, politics and administration, ideology and education.
Different symbols of formal status, above all citizenship, are
imposed on the same people.
At the local levels, a manifestation of the effort to emphasize
separatism has been the systematic application of different
cover-names for the same people to distinguish between those on
different sides of particular inter-state boundaries. This
phenomenon often dates back to the establishment of boundaries
themselves. It is especially manifest in regions like West Africa
where the two sides of a boundary might fall respectively under the
control of different colonial powers, each imposing its own
metropolitan culture and particularly its language and orthographic
tradition.
Thus for the people who were called Yoruba in British Nigeria, the
name in French Dahomey (now Benin) is 'Nago', which sometimes
assumes the characteristic masculine and feminine forms of 'Nagots'
and 'Nagottes'. Other examples, again in relation to Nigeria, are
the Gude, the Higis and the Matakam who on the Cameroonian side of
the common border in the area of the ancient state of Mandara came
to be called respectively the 'Djimi', the 'Kapsiki' and the
'Wula'. Other examples include Kpelle and the Loma in Liberia,
referred to respectively as the 'Guerze' and the 'Toma' in French
Guinea; the Baydyaranke in French Guinea or Guinea-Conakry, called
the 'Bambaraca' in Portuguese Guinea or Guinea-Bissau; the Fulani
in the former British colonies of Nigeria and Sierra Leone, whose
kinsmen in the adjacent former French colonies of Niger, Mali and
Guinea are often referred to as the 'Peuls'; and the Tubu in French
Niger, called the 'Goranes' in Chad.
Despite all these divisive influences, partitioned Africans have
nevertheless tended in their normal activities to ignore the
boundaries as dividing lines and to carry on social relations
across them more or less as in the days before the partition. The
studies of cross-border trade and migrations, which have been
undertaken especially in the West African sub-region, show that
these activities are on a considerable scale. Judged, therefore,
from the viewpoint of border society life in many parts of Africa,
the Partition can hardly be said to have taken place.
(PARTITIONED AFRICANS, edited by A.I. Asiwaju, University of Lagos
Press, 1985. pp2-3)
I have said so in most of my posting that only the ignorant
Africans are awed by things European. The most potent weapon in the
hand of the oppressor, Steve Biko said, is the mind of the
oppressed. A lot of us have our minds polluted by the junks
Europeans are touting as scholarship. Some of us adored the
glorifications we received from these master-flatterers, when we
parrot the lies they tell us. Taking pride in their estimation of
us, we strive tenaciously to get BAs, MA,s and PhDs, so that we can
call ourselves educated. While we can quote from Western writers,
we learnt nothing from ourselves. We learn nothing from what I
believe is the most important: OUR HISTORY. Again, how could we
change this? How could we begin to teach our own history, not the
'Mungo Park discovered the Niger, Livingstone discovered this and
that type of trash?'
I believe that we will start to have more respect for ourselves
once we know more about our history. Our forebears bequeathed to us
a rich legacy which colonialism all but wiped out. There are still
salvageable things we could adapt in place of the expensive
abstractions we are borrowing from Europe. Take political
institutions for example, Nigerians wasted a large chunk of their
income to organized elections that almost tore the country apart.
Is there nothing they could learn from the Igbo, the Yoruba, the
Kikuyu traditional system of governments? can we not get rid of
the military dictators by adapting some of the old traditional systems?
As a guideline, I urge that we all read the 'Destruction of Black
Civilization.' There are excellent suggestions in that book on how we
could proceed to rebuild our land. If you also have titles which might
help in our education, kindly pass it along.
Thank you for your time. I sincerely hope that there will be more
ideas and suggestions.
Please kindly pass this along to your friends (and foes), let
everyone participate in the deliberations. I wish you all a careful
reflection.
brotherly greetings,
Femi Akomolafe.
