New Sudan

Franz Fanon, the Algerian revolutionary of African descent stated, ‘ Each generation must out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it’. The challenge confronting African researchers, arising from the information from the Afro-Arab Borderlands, is the determination of what should be done to resolve the historical denial, inaccuracies and inactivity in the processing of this information. This paper critically reviews the falsification of history through the ages, the events in Sudan and the Borderlands in general, the work of the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, as well as the Organization of African Unity and the African Union, drawing conclusions on the way forward.

Some 150.000 years ago beings morphologically identified as human , were living in the region of the Great Lakes at the source of the Nile and nowhere else (Diop 1990 ). This lead to the conclusion that the earliest men were Negroid, who left the area via either the Sahara or the Nile Valley. The Nile Valley civilization was black African. Diop’s melanin dosage test determined the skin color of the ancients from their mummies. It was at the Symposium on the Peopling of Ancient Egypt, which took place on the 28-31 January 1974 and at the Symposium on The deciphering of the Meroitic Script, which took place 1-3 February 1974, both in Cairo, that Diop presented his detailed thesis.

Sudan originally extended from the Red Sea to the Atlantic. It’s location on the Nile meant that it impacted the first advanced civilization with western outreach of homo sapiens sapiens, which was Egypt, which drew its culture and ideas from the African hinterland (Chami 2006 ). Sudan had its black African advanced cultures, predating Egypt, such as Kush and Naphata, which bequeathed us their Pyramids, which remain visible in the sands of north-east Sudan today. Chancellor Williams (Williams 1976) identifies some nine periods in the history of north-east Africa, where the earliest civilizations centered around the capital cities of Naphata and Meroe in present day Sudan, their cultures spreading northwards to the Nile delta, when north-east Africa was peopled by black Africans, with people he refers to as white Asians entering later, occupying Lower Egypt and north eastern Ethiopia. This, in his view, marks the date of the beginning of the falsification, by writers, of the contribution of black Africa to civilization.

One of the consequences of the arrival of the Asians in north Africa was to push, more and more, the black people away from the coast into the interior. The traffic of black women in slavery northwards, gave rise to a new type of Afro-Asian, who due to their estrangement with their African Mothers came to be called Egyptians, Arabs and Moors, depending on where they lived in north Africa. This lead to the enslavement of Africans deeper into black Africa, which falls into William’s third period of the black history of Egypt, beginning in the Seventh Dynasty 2181 (BC), which lead to the Arab invasion and the destruction of black civilization. Nyaba ( Nyaba 2002 ) dates the Arab conquest of Egypt at 640AD.

Williams says ( Williams 1976, 49 ) that whereas students have dwelt on the Egyptian penetration of Africa, they ignored:-

‘… the most damaging developments from the Arab impact before the general European take over in the last quarter of the nineteenth century ’.

He goes on to state :-

‘From the earliest times the elimination of these ( black African) states as independent African sovereignties has been an Asian objective, stepped up by Muslim onslaughts after the seventh century AD’.

Prior to the arrival of the Europeans, the Africans, according to Williams, at the point of contact between the two nations, were harassed, hunted as animals or enslaved, leading to permanent migration and wondering, descending into a state of semi-barbarism. When the Europeans arrived to impose their rule over both the Africans and the Asians, the re-established black states were still being conquered and Islamized. Thereafter the history was deliberately falsified.

What transpired in Egypt was reproduced in Sudan to a greater extent. Egypt transformed from black, to brown and then white, whereas Sudan in the northern part, in general, transformed from black to brown, with some black pockets, such as the Nubians, who remain encircled by brown. The process underway currently in Darfur, which was preceded by South Sudan, where war broke out in 1955, bears striking conformity to the ancient historical process of demographic engineering, using genocide and rape as a weapon, and in the modern circumstance, precision aerial bombing of civilian targets. Williams goes on to state that these events have been the subject of an international conspiracy of falsification and denial of history. It is this that has rendered Africans ignorant of some of the key components of their patrimony and an understanding of their place in world history.

It was the long running war in the south of Sudan, which came to a negotiated cease-fire by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of 2005, which created an awareness amongst the marginalized of the periphery in Sudan in particular, and the Afro-Arab Borderlands in general ( herein after referred to as the ‘Borderlands’ ), of the possibility for change in Sudan. At the point of convergence of the two nations, Arab and African, there had long existed unequal relations based on a complex mix of ethnic, religious, linguistic and cultural historical factors. In his address delivered at the 1965 Round Table Conference, convened in Khartoum, Aggrey Jardan, the Southern Sudanese nationalist stated ( The Sudan Mirror of 10th September 2007, 21 ):-

‘There are in fact two Sudans and the most important thing is that there can never be a basis of unity between the two’.

He went on to say :-

‘… above all, the Sudan has failed to compose a single community. The northern Sudanese claim for unity is based on historical accident and imposed political domination over southern Sudan’.

Looked at from the Borderlands perspective it is Barnal ( Barnal 1987, 241 ) who sheds light on Arab attitudes to Africans. According to him the Egyptian problem was :-

‘ First to deny that the Ancient Egyptians were black; the second was to deny that the Ancient Egyptians had created a ‘true’ civilisation; the third was to make doubly sure by denying both…’

Barnal asserts that the Ancient Egyptian civilisation was black African. He notes that Arabia in general has refused to accept this. Therein lies the core of the unease between the two Nations and the reason why the residual tension in the relations between the two nations makes the African Union (AU) an ineffective instrument in Borderland conflict resolution in states such as Somalia and Sudan. Added to which is the aversion by Arabia to the African western Diaspora, although Ghaddafi’s statement in July 2009 in Sirte, inviting the Caribbean to the AU appears as a new departure, perhaps related to an African-American being elected President of the United States of America late in 2008. The admission of the African Diaspora as equal partner with the continent, as the Sixth Region of Africa by the AU has not been realised and based on historical research was a non-starter, due to the Arab ruling principle of dividing Africa permanently from its Diaspora.

Bernal refers to the ‘national renaissance’ of modern Egypt lead by Mohamed Ali, the Albanian, such that by 1830, Egypt was second only to England in its modern industrial capacity. Yet this renaissance failed to affect western scholars racial stereotypes of the ancient Egyptians. He states ( Bernal 1987 246 ) :-

‘ The failure of the Egyptian renaissance to affect scholars racial stereotypes of the ancient Egyptians tells us something very significant about them.’

According to Bernal it was in the period 1831 to 1860 that the Egyptian view of Ancient history was destroyed and replaced by the European view, as expounded in western scholarship today. Egypt today remains the centre point of Arab culture. Hunwick and Powell ( 2007 ) note the belated attention of the Arab world about those of African descent in their midst and their enslavement. In the past Muslim scholars refused to refer to Arab slavery of Africans. Beckerleg ( 2003 ) in her research on Palestinians of African descent notes that despite its proximity to Egypt and Africa, Egypt is viewed by Palestinians as a fellow Arab country. Many black Palestinians profess no awareness of their African origins, such is the extent of their denationalisation. She states ( Beckerleg 2003, 15 ) :-

‘In this part of the Middle East being Arab and African are considered mutually exclusive categories by the Palestinians’. Hunwick states that the reason for the neglect of African issues in Arabia was that there was no identified constituency in those societies pressing for investigation and research into the conditions of the Africans. Those of African descent in north Africa had no defenders. A number of north African countries have sizable ‘hidden’ oppressed African populations, who do not feature in their national affairs. Such marginalization was one of the root causes for war in South Sudan. In Libya and Algeria, for example, Abdelbagi states ( Southern Times, Windhoek, 7th June 2009, A4 ) :-

‘…southern Libya and Algeria are black countries with millions of invisible oppressed Africans, but we do not hear their voices or see their faces’. Hunwick explains that the Algerian of Arab descent, for example, would not perceive of himself as an African, is not conscious of living in Africa and that this would only happen when the blacks become essential to him. In Algeria, amongst those of African descent, there is a reluctance to acknowledge a past of slavery, because in the Muslim world a past of slavery indicates ‘unbelief’ ( Kufr ) – that one’s ancestors were pagans. Also in Arabia, African Muslims, like any other Muslims, like to trace their linage to Islamic antecedents, cutting themselves off from their African roots in the process. Factors such as these have lead to a dearth of information on the trans-Sahara slave trade. Turning to academic responsibilities and the lack of published work on these matters, I am reminded of a Southern civil servant, who asked in Juba, around 2007, how come Kush civilization does not feature in the Pan-African narrative. I responded that it is the responsibility of Sudanese to write their own history. Western academia regimented area studies into categories, such as African Studies and Middle Eastern Studies, whereas those of African descent in north Africa do not fit into such compartmentalization. Sudan and Mauritania fell into this limbo. The Sahara has been a no-go area in western scholarship, not accommodated in such area studies. This neglect, institutionalized in the colonial era, haunts African knowledge systems today, making certain places and people ‘out of bounds’ in the media, foreign policy, school curricula and so forth.

Who’s interests do such classifications serve ? Hunwick is of the view that the study of black Africans in the Mediterranean world, including the northern Ottoman area, belongs to both African Studies and Middle Eastern Studies and that these studies belong to larger study areas such as global history, comparative slavery and African Diaspora studies. Powell affirms the findings of Hunwick (Hunwick and Powell 2007, xxv ) referring to:-

‘…racial differentiation in the Arab world that trace back to the early medieval period, which imbued black Africans with certain unalterable characteristics that rendered them ‘suitable’ to enslavement’.

Such views persist in the Arab world today. The Abolitionist Movement was not well received in the Islamic world and was seen as an intrusion into Arab cultural affairs, especially in the volatile climate of the Arabo-Israel confrontation. Powell goes on to state that from Mauritania to Sudan to the Gulf states, the legacy of slavery lives and many cases of slavery continue to be documented. Such national characteristics do not meet with the aspirations of Africans for genuinely civil societies, based on mutual respect and peaceful cohabitation.

The institution of slavery is another instance where information is either suppressed or not available, with both Arabs and Africans seemingly reluctant, unwilling or unable to bring the facts to the common knowledge of the two people, by way of curriculum reform. The approach has been ( Laya 2005) not to raise questions of legitimacy of the state, and in the name of ‘national unity’, it is prohibited to refer to slavery. Laya goes on to affirm that in the spirit of African renaissance it would be best not to ignore the unhappy period of slavery. In his view, historically, there was a close relationship between the trans-Atlantic and the trans-Saharian slave trades.

In the same publication Simonse, then of the NGO Pax Christi, in a paper on the impasse of post-colonial relations, refers to the legacy of Afro-Arab slavery distorting the relations between two major nationalities in our world, the African and the Arab. This, he explains, is because the descendants of the slavers have never in public admitted the abuses of the past to the descendants of those who were abducted and whose lands were raided and have never condemned those abuses. This is a major factor why slavery continues today. Despite the Arab League adopting its Arab Charter on Human Rights of the Council of the League of the Arab States in September 1994, slavery abides. The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in December 2005 adopted a Ten Year Program of Action promoting issues such as tolerance, moderation and human rights. This has not affected the lives of the people living in Islamic states such as Sudan and Mauritania. The issue of slavery cannot be divorced from that of reparations and restitution, as stated in the Declaration of the Conference on Arab-Led slavery of Africans held Johannesburg 22nd February 2003 (CASAS Book Series no 35, Cape Town).

Looking at the socio-cultural structure of Sudanese society Hashim ( unpublished paper ) refers to a new ideological consciousness of race coming into being as Sudan Arabised. Color came to distinguish racial differentiation. So that in the Sudanese context a light brown person was an Arab. A black African was seen as a slave. The stigma of slavery and blackness meant marginalization and the prestigma represented the non-black, the Arabs who were at the centre. Yet the Arabs of Sudan have little or no respect for Caucasians. This type of alienation has been in place in Sudan for the last five centuries, up to present. In the Middle-East the Sudanese Arab is considered too dark and thus second class. The blacks of Sudan, who have completely assimilated Islamo Arab culture and religion, such as the Darfuri, are discriminated against by the Arabs of the centre of Sudan and are seen as slaves, worthy to be dehumanised by genocide.

It was during the Egyptian –Turkish colonial rule of Sudan that mass slavery took place. The slave trade was made state policy. Slavery became a cash commodity when the Europeans started making incursions to procure slaves. In the western reference and Sudanese context ,mulatto means white. The Jallaba, of mixed race from the north of Sudan were the procurers conducting raiding squads, with formidable armies. As Egyptian rule faltered the Jallaba hoped to inherit the rule of Sudan. The Late Dr John Garang de Mabior refers ( Garang 2008 ) to the Jallaba as Afrabians, being a social group which developed since the 15th century, a hybrid of different races and nationalities including black Africans, immigrant Arabs, Turks, Greeks and Armenians, who choose to identify themselves as Arabs, although many of them are black. Hashim states that the political Right has ruled Sudan since self government in 1955.

Sudan, being the first African country, not Ghana, in the twentieth century to achieve self-rule, might have been expected to join Africa; rather it chose to join Arabia as a second class member. The Right was installed in power in Khartoum by the departing Anglo-Egyptian Condominium. As far as the Right was concerned Sudan consisted of the noble Arabs of the centre north area, the Muslim Africans, with possible Arab blood, of the periphery, who are to undergo rapid Arabisation and the slaves, being blacks with no authority to rule.

In Sudan the root cause of Arab indifference to African suffering through practices such as slavery, is due to racism, arising out of the failure of northern leaders in Sudan to accept African culture, in places such as the south, as being representative of a civilization of its own, distinct from their Arab culture.

President Omar Hassan Al Bashir, President of Sudan, in his address to the IOC in Abuja, Nigeria 24-28 November 1989, declared that the destiny of Islam in Africa is to win. Such a statement represents a direct challenge to African sovereignty and a calculated threat of interference in the internal affairs of all the states of Africa. In 1998 he introduced an Islamic Constitution into Sudan making Sudan a de jure Islamic Republic. Sharia Islamic codes became applicable against non-Muslims, using Islam to Arabise all the people of Sudan. Al Bashir stands indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur, in western Sudan, a region of some seven million people. The conflict subsisting in Darfur has left some 200,000-450,000 black Africans dead and over 2.5 million displaced. The resolution of the Darfur conflict, like that in South Sudan, which preceded it and which took its lessons from South Sudan, represents a challenge not only to Africans, but to humanity in general.

The ascension, career and fate of persons such as Musa Hilal and Haruna, Sudanese indicted by the ICC, provides a graphic illustration of the nature of northern/Khartoum society and its distorted racism and interpretations of Islam. On closer inspection we find that similar societal problems are manifest right across the Borderlands, with greater or lesser emphasis, from Port Sudan on the Red Sea, between the Beja and Khartoum. They reflect through Tchad, Niger and Mali, to Mauritania. The latter, has a caste system dating back centuries, which successive governments since self government have been unable to uproot; whereby families are inherited as slaves from one generation to another.

A classic example of the volatility of the Borderlands is found in the northern areas of Mali and Niger, an area inhabited across borders by the Touareg, a black Negroid people who were Arabised and who enslaved their nieghbours. They had been given reason to hope, in the scramble to decolonize, that they would be accorded their own state. Rather, they were divided up between the new states which were created, finding themselves administered by African political leaders, some of whom were the descendants of their former slaves. Libya funded several armed Touareg groups dedicated to fight the governments of the new states. Together in the 1960s they called themselves the Azawad United Front ( Diakite 2006). The Touareg have been found in recent years settled in the villages abandoned by the Fur, Massalit and Zaghawa in Darfur. Their rebellion, mediated by Algeria, continues to this day. The Arab League has not been able to end this long running Borderland conflict, which receives little coverage in the western media.

Those from outside who have researched, on the ground, what is in fact going on in the Afro-Arab Borderlands , have concluded that events there are not a product of chance, but are the calculated results of forces from within and without the region, which see it as off-limits from public scrutiny, with few attendant risks of exposure, which can be utilized for aggrandizement, human trafficking and smuggling, the testing of new weapons systems, including nuclear, and other practices in complete disregard of the inhabitants. Of late, the place is an area for international hostage taking by groups, one of which goes by the name of Al-Qaeda, a product of the Salifista armed rebellion from Algeria.

At the 7th Pan-African Congress (PAC) held in Kampala, Uganda in 1994, without doubt the heavy northern Sudanese attendance, which included Sudan’s current Ambassador at the United Nations in New York, Abdulmahmuud Abdulhalim, was explained, not by any affection for Pan-Africanism/African nationalism, but by the unique opportunity it provided to update understandings of the trends and concerns of the Africanist movement ( Bankie 1995 ). Northern Sudanese owe their loyalty first to their Arab identity and the Arab League. This conclusion and its implications fits into what has been defined as Afrocentric social and human sciences, seeking to reposition African people in the new world:-

‘… to reclaim African heritage that had long been denied, stolen and plundered’(Nabudere 2007, 8 ).

Nabudere goes on to spell out that the production of knowledge in the African context, in the past, was done for purposes of control, which had been the overall historic aim of European scholarship in Africa. Colonial scholarship needs to be archived and replaced by knowledge based on sound research done by Africans in the context of African realities.

The Sudanese political situation resembles apartheid in South Africa and Namibia and qualifies as a case of ‘internal colonialism’. As South Africa had, so Sudan has its ‘black spots’. The Nubians are a case in point. The situation of the Nubian Sudanese near the Egyptian border of Sudan is a matter of concern due to the implementation, by Khartoum, of policies aimed at the marginalization of the Nubians, an African people of Sudan, by firstly driving them from their historical homelands by impoverishing their region (Hashim 2007). Secondly, by resettling Arab groups in the lands the Nubians left behind and thirdly by pushing the Nubians into Arabisation through biased educational curricula, at the expense of their own languages and cultures; and fourthly by nursing a culture of complicity among the Nubian intellectuals so as to help facilitate these policies .Based on the utterances of Khartoum officials, the scale of demographic engineering in Sudanese Nubia is to run into hundreds of thousands of Egyptians being settled in the area.

In a situation of increasing and potential generalized conflict, with the possible break up of the neo-colonial entity known as Sudan, the largest country in Africa, matched with the inability of the organization of first resort, the Arab League, to resolve the multiple potential conflicts in Sudan or head-off the potential armed confrontation, what is to be done ?

We are told (Nyaba 2002 ) that the progress of the war in Sudan was regularly put on the political agenda of the Arab League, at a time when it had never been raised in or placed on the agenda of the Organization for African unity ( OAU). The Arabs led by Egypt tenaciously resisted the discussion of the southern conflict in the various OAU summits and ministerial meetings, on account of it being an ‘internal matter’. Even considering it’s weariness in handling the issue of sovereignty, the Arab League failed to influence the end of the conflict in the south. This was due to it’s support for Arab interests in the area. It has been noted that conflicts in the Borderlands go on without limit.

Where peace does persist in Borderland conflicts, which is rare, it is as a result of intervention of force brought to bear from outside the Afro-Arab world, never from within. Nyaba states that the Africans in Sudan have awoken to the reality of their collective oppression and are now engaged in a process for their total liberation and emancipation.

The Egyptian government first promoted the idea of a League of Arab States in 1943. Egypt and some other Arab states wanted closer co-operation without the loss of self-rule that would result from total union. The original charter of the Arab League created a regional organization of sovereign states, that was neither a union nor a federation. Amongst the objectives of the League was the winning of Independence for all Arabs still under alien rule and to prevent the Jewish minority in Palestine ( then governed by the British ) from creating a Jewish state. The members eventually formed a joint defense council, an economic council and a permanent military command.

As at now, the League has many Councils and Commissions, and some fifteen specialized agencies, from other related organizations, as well as seventeen offices around the world. In Africa it has offices in Addis Ababa, Nairobi and Dakar with its headquarters in Cairo, two offices in Asia and an office in Russia. All member states have Arabic as their official language and Islam as their religion. This unity around one language and one religion is in striking contrast to the Organization of African Unity(OAU)/African Union (AU), which is multi-ethnic and multi-cultural in its composition.

The Arab League is a voluntary association of independent countries. Its stated purpose is to strengthen ties amongst members, coordinate their policies and promote their common interests. It has launched several programs to promote politics, the economy, culture and social safety in the Arab world. It has structured academic curricula in schools in Arab countries, as well as preserving Arab manuscripts.

The Arab League has twenty two members. Chad is not a member, although Arabic is both the official and vernacular used language. In September 2006 Venezuela was accepted as an Observer. In 2007 India was also given Observer Status. The Charter of the Arab League endorses the principle of the Arab Homeland, thus recognizing the Arab Nation with its own specificity. Within this dimension, South Sudan was always referred to, within the League, as the bread basket of the Arab world. Despite its foundation on cultural basis, rather than on geographic location and despite its longevity, the Arab League has not achieved a significant degree of regional integration, probably due to the unwillingness of its members to surrender sovereignty and submit themselves to real Pan-Arab unity. Its principles espouse a united Arab nationalism and a common Arab interest.

The Pact establishing the League of Arab States was signed in March 1945 and its Cultural Treaty in November 1946, whereby all members have cultural organizations, especially co-operating in matters of education, so that educational syllabi and certificates are harmonized.

The Arab Charter of Human Rights came into being in September 1994. The Charter states at Part 1, Article 1 (b) :-

‘Given the Arab nation’s belief in human dignity since God honored it by making the Arab world the cradle of religions and the birthplace of civilization which confirmed its right to a life of dignity…’

It’s commitment to the individuals ‘… enjoyment of freedom, justice and equality of opportunity…’ is far from realisation in its member state Sudan.

The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is the second largest inter- governmental organization after the United Nations, with a membership of fifty seven states spread over four continents. The first meeting of the Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers was held in Jeddah in 1970, establishing a permanent Secretariat in Jeddah. Since the nineteenth century, Muslims aspired to unite the Ummah, leading to the formation of the OIC at a time when Muslims lost the Holy sites in Jerusalem. In August 1990 the Foreign Ministers of the OIC adopted the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, to guide members on the compatibility of human rights with Sharia and Quranic Law.

Writing in ‘Philosophy of the revolution’ in 1954, the Egyptian leader Gamal Abdul Nasser, pledged his support for the decolonization of the rest of Africa, whilst pursuing a vigorous Pan-Arabist agenda. He worked well with the Ghanaian leader Nkrumah, supporting the immediate unity of Africa. Mansfield ( Mansfield 1965 ) refers to the doubts of those times as to whether Pan-Arabism and Pan-Africanism were fully compatible in the Egyptian case. Nasser’s support for African nationalism was reversed by his successor Anwar Sadat, when he signed the Camp David Accords with Israel. Joshua Nkomo the African nationalist ( Nkomo 2001 ) at some stage sojourned in Nasser’s Egypt. He states that Sadat, then head of the Arab Socialist Union , Egypt’s main political party, tried to obstruct his access to Nasser, saying of Sadat ( Nkomo 1984, 67 ):-

‘He was not remotely interested in Africa – indeed he gave the impression that he wished Egypt, were part of Europe, so strong was his indifference to African problems’.

The OAU came about through a long historical process, which sort the realization of Pan-Africanism/African Nationalism, starting with the abduction of African slaves from Africa to the western hemisphere, where the incubation of Africans, in the ‘new world’, was built on the elimination of its indigenous people and the harnessing of black labour for development, which lead to a conscientization around common experiences of enslavement, racism and exploitation (Sabelo 2008), leading to the Garveyist ‘back to Africa movement’ and the Pan African Congress series of Du Bois. This in some measure replicates the experience of Africans, especially women and children, who were victims of the trans-Saharian slave trade and those taken into Arab bondage.

The substantial difference was that the Europeans, apart from attempting conversion to Christianity, did not succeed in denationalizing those taken to the western Diaspora, whether to the Caribbean, north/south America or Europe. In contrast, as seen in Sudan today and graphically illustrated in Darfur, where the conscientization around African identity is recent and its future uncertain, Africans in the eastern Diaspora ceased to be Africans and became Arabs. It is the loss of identity under the Arab system, which renders reconnection with the African eastern Diaspora in the Gulf, Arabia etc, a major cultural challenge with deep psychological implications.

Within Pan-Africanism, it is Esedebe who noted that after the 1945 Fifth Pan-African Congress there was a shift. He states ( Esedebe 1994, 229 ) :-

‘ Up till then, the Pan African movement concerned itself with the problems of Africans and their descendants in different parts of the globe. But despite the adjective Pan-African, the movement driving this period was not truly Pan-African in membership. For every practical purpose Arab north Africa remained outside the pale of Pan-Africanism’.

Largely through the influence of Nkrumah, who was Secretary General of the 5th Pan-African Congress (PAC), the Pan-African movement turned 180 degrees to become ‘continentalist’ lead by Ghana, under his leadership, with north Africa being admitted into the movement, without a quid pro quo of black Africa south of the Sahara being admitted, on any basis, into the Arab League. His emissaries attended the Roundtable Conference in Khartoum in March 1965, on peace in South Sudan. At Sirte at the 4th Extraordinary Summit of the OAU in September 1999, Colonel Muammar Ghaddafi, Head of State of Libya, presented a draft charter proposing the establishment of the United States of Africa with one government, one leader, a single army, one currency, one central bank and one parliament making the laws for the whole continent, which would be borderless, to be in place by 2000. What was adopted was a compromise outside the Libyan leader’s hopes.

One of the major problems of the OAU/AU was the non-payment by member states of their dues. To keep the organization afloat, some paid more than others. The failure by member states to pay was due to an absence of a commitment to African nationalism/Pan-Africanism, to which the organization owed it’s creation, which shortcoming explains why the structure failed to have significance in the lives of the people of the member states. The OAU/AU failed to invigorate Pan-Africanism/ African Nationalism, it being a neo-colonial entity. It failed to meet the aspirations of Africans at grass root level at home and abroad, for strong unity, international status, respect and auto-development. It was a side show with the real decisions being made elsewhere.

The premise of this paper, for the creation of an African League, is axed on the inability of the Arab League to resolve issues within its membership in north Africa and that the OAU/AU is not able to resolve these issues either, so that the logical progression, given this set of circumstances, is the creation of an African League, with updated authority, being a culturally based organization first and foremost, to act in tandem, where the need arises, with the Arab League, to realize at some future point the unity of the Arab and African Nations, on a basis of mutual respect. It is proposed that the AU subsist as a forum for the Afro-Arab civilization dialogue, which has barely started, on the basis of mutual respect, without rancor or racism.

The failure of the Arab League to resolve issues, arising in the Borderlands, requires a solution. At present, as South Sudan and Darfur are witness, Africans in their millions are exposed to Arab racism, of the extreme type, for example, genocide, without remedy by way of official solutions from the OAU/AU, to the age old problems of marginalization, slavery and their consequence, which have persisted for over a millennium. Presently the AU finds itself unable to guarantee the safety and security of its African constituency, as distinct from its Arab members in north Africa. Arab north Africans do not depend on the AU for protection, as they resort under the Arab League. Sudan is an illustration of a situation which is glaringly inequitable for it’s marginalized African population, who are dependent on the largesse of Khartoum.

What is required is new thinking around these matters, by those who are concerned , so that African nationals are catered for. Nobody defends the African youth in flight in their thousands from Africa to Europe. There has been little fresh thinking on how best to achieve the unity of all Africans, both within and without Africa in these times. What reflections there have been tend to critique the existing solutions and seek to innovate same. What rather is required is new ‘thinking outside the box’, not grasping at old straws and soft options. A critical area to be addressed for the first time, from the African point of view, are the Borderlands. The realities on the ground in the area, such as the war in South Sudan which began in 1955, were not addressed by the Founding Fathers of the OAU. In rethinking that situation through, new dynamism should come into play.

For sure, the days of the ostrich-in-the-sand approach, to goings on in the Borderlands are over. Too many lives were lost, to permit the area to ‘go back to sleep’. Some wish to impose the old approach, that the area be ‘off limits’ and must not be discussed. On the ground, the unleashed social dynamics cannot be reversed, with the area having developed its own momentum.

There is lots of information available in situ about what happened in south Sudan. Darfur developments can be tracked daily, as can those in other parts of Sudan, such as Nubia. The answer as to why so few know what has been going on since time immemorial in this area of Africa, is due to the distortion of history through the ages. Due to that, Africans chose, and as a matter of convenience, and still do, not to interest themselves in such problems.

The paper has explained why the African presence in north Africa and the Borderlands was a blind area, especially in western scholarship. This does not explain why today the area continues to be the subject of conspiracy theories, on- going rumors of slavery, genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. This void in information leaves the African people in general ignorant about a part of their patrimony, in terms of education and knowledge systems, to an extent as to seriously weaken their ability to make informed decisions as regards their destiny .

This is changing. Few of African descent, from the Borderlands, due to the effects of the denationalization system, have spoken out or written about Arab racism, presumably because they believed that the situation there was preordained and irrevocable. There are notable exceptions such as Garba Diallo, Jibril Abdelbagi, Jalal Muhammed Hashim and Adwok Nyaba, who have opened up their world to African field researchers. Southern Sudanese have born the brunt of Arab expansion southwards into east Africa and the Horn. Few of them have taken their experience to the global African community.

Article 2.9 of the CPA puts the articulation of foreign policy both for Khartoum and Juba in the hands of the Government of National Unity (GONU) in Khartoum. This left the Government of South Sudan (GOSS) International Liason Offices around the world inaudible and inactive. These Offices are silent about the realities of South Sudan and the other marginalised in Sudan, leaving the responsibility to disseminate the facts, particularly to Africans and globally, to Pan-Africanists. From inquiry, it appears that GOSS has little appetite or has been dissuaded, from Africanism. It has little confidence in Africans in general and cannot be counted on to accept the responsibility for the international articulation of the problems of the Borderlands after the referendum in 2011, if that point is reached.

To those outside the area, these peculiarities of the Borderland experience are difficult to understand. In part they are explained by what is well known in western post-slavery societies as ‘post traumatic stress disorder syndrome’, in southern society.

From the government side, Al Turabi, the spiritual mentor of Omar Bashir, in the early years of Bashir’s administration is oft quoted as saying:-

‘We want to Islamise America and Arabise Africa’ (Nyaba 2002 )

Sudan has been active in the affairs of its neighbours, such that its sincerity about the pursuit of peace must be questioned. It’s policies are based on de-stabilising its neighbours. Nyaba states ( Tinabantu Vol 1 No 1 of 2002, 47 ) :-

‘… that the Arab ‘threat’ to Black Africa is real. It’s potential increases as you move up the African map from the south’.

The extent of Khartoum’s duplicity is exposed in Mareike Schomerus (2007 ) study of the Lords Resistance Army (LRA). The LRA was invited by Khartoum to become one of Sudan’s pro-government armed groups. It’s first sightings were in Eastern Equitoria in 1991, when the first killings of civilians and abductions of children took place. It’s presence in Eastern Equitoria had been preceded in the 1980s by the forces of Alice Lakwena’s Holy Spirit Movement, precursor of the LRA. It was the SPLM/A-United, who facilitated the first contacts between the LRA and Khartoum.

The LRA obtains supplies and assistance from Khartoum in return for the overthrow of Museveni’s Government in Kampala, the attacking of the Ugandan Army, the UPDF and the SPLA, as well as destabilizing the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is part of a softening-up exercise prior to the Arabisation and Islamisation of Congo. From 1994 LRA Commander Kony and his deputy Otti, were regular visitors to Khartoum and had an official residence in Juba. In attack it was noted that the LRA fighters lead the way, followed by a second wave of the Sudan Armed Forces ( SAF ). During the long war years many factions and groups were fighting in the South Sudan bush, many lead by warlords supported by Khartoum.

From what records are available to us on the founding of the OAU in 1963-4, it appears that the Founding Fathers did nor understand the realities of the Borderlands and the war, which started in South Sudan in 1955. Although the inviolability of sovereignty was a hallowed tenet in the early days of the OAU, it was only after the Darfur conflict escalated in 2003 with massive loss of life, that the AU put boots on the ground in Darfur. The Arab League had never shown such inclinations. Due to history, racism and prejudice, conflicts in the Borderlands never earned military intervention by way of pacification from the Arab world.

New initiatives such as renaissance theory and Afrocentric social and human sciences ( Nabudere 2007 ) are to reposition the African people in the world, to reclaim their African heritage that has been denied, stolen and plundered in order to arrive at the African Rennaissance. Seen from such perspective a thorough exposure of the various strands which constitute the Sudan picture, needs to be done and analyzed to find out what lessons can be learnt. Van Sertima, in explaining the rejection of Diop’s Doctoral thesis ( in Nabudere 2007, 10 ) stated that this was because it ran :-

‘… counter to all that had been taught in Europe for two centuries about the origin of civilization’.

Where previous African understandings had been based on borrowings from European scholarship, new approaches and challenges need to be vigorously pursued.

The existence of the Arab League grew from the aspirations, which were frustrated by the British and the French, amongst the Arabs, for unity after World War I (Geiss 1974 ). Cultural solidarity stressed the concept of a single Arab Nation. This Nation looked back to the ancient Arab empires of the Umayyads and the Abbasids, noting that Arabs had ‘civilized’ Europe in the Middle Ages. When it was established, the Arab League re-affirmed the principles of sovereignty and non-interference, with decisions to be taken by a majority.

Such a cultural collective for Africa south of the Sahara was promoted by Cheik Anta Diop in his work on the cultural unity of Black Africa. Indeed it is astonishing that little serious effort has been made to research the establishment of a culturally based African League/Nation, given the respect accorded to Diop and the long standing conclusions he arrived at.

The Late John Garang de Mabior ( Garang 2008 ), based on his understandings of Sudan opted for a ‘New Sudan’ with its place in Africa and the world, coming out strongly for a unity of Africans south of the Sahara. His African Nation concept was to be an ideological weapon to arm the African youth. He stated (Bankie and Mchombu 2007, 214 ) :-

‘ Are all parts of continental Africa parts of this African Nation ? Arabia has its own Nation incorporated in the Arab League. Do we want in our African Nation people belonging to another nation ? The time has come for the African youth to determine who will lead the national movement’. Prah in his discursive reflection on nationalism in a substantial work about what he terms The African Nation, defines this as ( Prah 2006, 230 ) :-

‘ I speak of and mean nationalism, based on the unit of Africans as a whole – Pan Africanism’.

Prah is of the view that the states in Africa are still born and will never be viable. He refers to the work of the Egyptian, Samir Amin, towards the achievement of the Arab Nation, which organizational framework is represented by the Arab League. Prah opts for a unity of the Africans based on the African Diaspora plus sub-Saharan Africa. This paper promotes the African Nation based on the black cultural foundation of Africa south of the Sahara plus the African Diaspora in the east ( Gulf States, Arabia etc) and the African Diaspora in the west ( America, Caribbean, Europe etc).

B.F.Bankie, Pretoria, South Africa November,2009

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Labels: African Eastern diapora, New paradigm, The Arabisation project in Africa, Unity of Africans