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In
Search of Africans
By
Kwesi Kwaa Prah
When he comes to
the issue of who is an African, [Mahmood]
Mamdani shifts into post-modernist over-drive
and writes that,
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‘Africa’, in this context, was a subaltern
identity that also had the potential of
being either exclusive or inclusive. The two
meanings were not only contradictory but
came from the experience of two different
insurgencies.
The inclusive
meaning was more political than racial or even cultural
(linguistic), in the sense that an ‘African’ was anyone
determined to make a future within Africa. It was
pioneered by John Garang, the leader of the Sudan
People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in the south, as a way
of holding together the New Sudan he hoped to see. In
contrast, its exclusive meaning came in two versions,
one hard (racial) and the other soft
(linguistic)—‘African’ as Bantu and ‘African’ as the
identity of anyone who spoke a language indigenous to
Africa.
The racial meaning
came to take a strong hold in both the
counter-insurgency and the insurgency in Darfur. The
Save Darfur campaign’s characterization of the violence
was not one-sided and the contest over the meaning of
‘Arab’ and ‘African’: a contest that was critical
precisely because it was ultimately about who belonged
and who did not in the political community called Sudan.
The depoliticization, naturalization and, ultimately,
demonization of the notion ‘Arab’, as against ‘African’,
has been the deadliest effect, whether intended or not,
of the Save Darfur campaign.
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Mamdami must not
underestimate the power and relevance of language as an
identification reference point. Language is a central
feature of most cultures. Arguably, it is the most
crucial feature and at the same time, one of the
principal distinguishing features of homo sapiens
as a culture creating animal. It is through language
that we relate societally, through language we transact
our social lives.
I personally knew
John Garang, for many years. Indeed, I spoke to him on
the phone, long distance, about a month before his very
strange death. Nowhere does he define who an African is,
in the political terms Mamdani writes about. Garang was
always a proud Dinka from Bor.
Mamdani’s so-called
inclusive definition of an African as “anyone determined
to make a future within Africa” is most perplexing. When
I read this definition to an intern in the Centre for
Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS), Cape Town,
Nana Kofi Appiah, his immediate and hilarious response
was that this is an invitation for the pillagers of
Africa.
Does this sort of
idea apply to other people in other parts of the world?
Does a similar formulation apply to Chinese, Indians,
Arabs or Europeans? If I arrive in China or India with a
wish to make a future in these places, do I, on the
basis of my wishes, become Chinese or Indian? Cecil
Rhoses, Verwoerd, Ian Smith were are all people who were
“determined to make a future within Africa,” were they
Africans? I dare say they never even wished to be so
regarded. Mamdani’s understanding of the so-called
inclusive definition of an Africa makes Africaness very
cheap. I say, ‘if everybody is an African, then nobody
is an African.”
We all know that, by appearance and looks you cannot
tell a Sunni from a Shia, Northern Irish Protestant from
a Catholic, a Palestinian from and Israeli, a Pakistani
from an Indian, or numerous such examples. Black, in
Darfur, does not really help us to identify an Arab from
an African. The difference is more subtle and decisive.
Africans are attached to more eclectic varieties of
Islam than Arabs, they are more likely to be cultivators
than pastoralists, and they identify themselves as
Africans and speak more African languages. They form the
overwhelming majority of the population.
For an American audience, black as understood in African
American parlance does not help us to understand the
nationality dynamics of Darfur. Africans are first and
foremost a historical and cultural group. They identify
themselves as such. Most are black, but there are blacks
who are not African. From South India through Sri Lanka
to Melanesia many such groups are to be found.
Years ago, I argued elsewhere that; “The racial
definition of an African is flawed. It is unscientific
and hence untenable. No serious mind today would use
the race concept in any way except as an instrument for
poetic imagery. What I am saying is that no group of
people has been ‘pure’ from time immemorial. Notions of
purity belong to the language of fascists and the
rubbish-bin of science. But before my observations are
misunderstood let me take the argument in another
direction. Most Africans are black, but not all Africans
are black, and not all blacks have African cultural and
historical roots.”
Additionally, one must not forget that Arabization and
Arabism for Africans represent instruments of thraldom
in a tradition, which precedes Western colonialism by a
millennium.
Source:
Kwesi Kwaa Prah. "The
Politics of Apologetics; Genocide Denial, Darfur
Version." CASAS, Capetown.
Pambazuka.
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posted 31 March 2008 |
