The Government of Eritrea has sent one of its most seasoned diplomats, Ambassador Girma Asmerom, to Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa as a representative to the African Union. Although Girma was sent to Addis Ababa because it is the seat of African Union’s Headquarters, the news has caused a {www:rumor}, fueled by Woyanne cadres, that it is among the first steps for normalization of relations between the regimes of Meles Zenawi and Isaias Afwerki.
Eritrea Reopens African Union Mission
By Peter Heinlein
Eritrea has reopened its mission to the African Union, ending years of self-imposed exile from the continental organization. But diplomats say the move does not signal a thaw in relations between Eritrea and its archrival, the African Union host Ethiopia.
Eritrea’s ambassador to the African Union Girma Asmerom Tesfay presented credentials this week to AU Commission Chairman Jean Ping. An AU statement said Ping expressed delight at seeing Eritrea return to the 53-member organization after several years’ absence.
Eritrea recalled its previous ambassador in an angry protest at what it called the African Union’s ‘failure’ to condemn Ethiopia’s alleged violations of a peace agreement that ended a 1998-2000 border war. The continental body was one of the main brokers of the agreement.
Eritrea broke away from Ethiopia and declared independence in 1993 after a 30-year struggle. But a border {www:dispute} sent the neighbors back to war five years later, and relations have been frozen since.
At Ethiopia’s urging, the AU took the unprecedented step in 2009 of asking the United Nations to penalize Eritrea for providing aid to Islamic fighters in Somalia. Despite Eritrea’s strong denial, the UN Security Council imposed tough sanctions on the Asmara government, including an arms embargo, asset freezes and travel bans.
AU Chairman Ping last year rejected Eritrean allegations that Ethiopia was using its position as AU host to block Eritrea from reopening its mission in Addis Ababa. Diplomats say Ping has worked tirelessly to bring the estranged member back into the fold.
Ethiopia’s foreign ministry has strongly denied any attempt to block Eritrea’s return. But in a telephone interview, ministry spokesman Dina Mufti said the re-establishment of Asmara’s AU mission will have no effect on the frozen bilateral relationship.
“It has nothing to do with the situation. We are the host country of the African Union,” said Mufti. “We are under obligation to facilitate anything for the African Union. That has nothing to do with the status quo.”
The Ethiopian spokesman rejected a suggestion that the arrival of an Eritrean government representative in Addis Ababa might be a sign of a thaw. He said there has been no change in the status quo.
Eritrea sent a high-level {www:observer} delegation to the most recent AU summit in Kampala last July as a sign of its renewed interest in continental affairs. There was no immediate word on who might represent the Asmara government at the next continental summit beginning later this month in Addis Ababa.
In the days since the overthrow of Tunisia’s dictator, looters have ransacked a whitewashed villa in an upscale suburban neighborhood of Tunis called La Marsa. The house belonged to businessman Moaz Trabelsi, one of the 10 brothers of the ousted president’s wife, Leila Trabelsi. And it’s a scene that is playing out across the country at homes owned by relatives of president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
Tunisians say they want a complete break with their former ruler, They say the president, and in particular his wife and her family, abused power and enriched themselves at the expense of the country’s people.
On Tuesday, Tunisia’s new interim government was on shaky ground. Four Cabinet ministers resigned and others threatened to do so in protest over the continued presence in the government of Ben Ali’s allies.
Portrait Of Excessive Decadence
After days of looting in that suburban villa, there’s nothing more to take away. But still, hundreds of people still come every day to visit the wrecked shell.
One of this day’s visitors is Mounir Khelifa, an English professor at the University of Tunis. He points to a burned-out Porsche Cayenne and calls the mansion a “thief’s” or “robber’s” house.
The swimming pool has a mattress floating in it. Broken furniture and women’s magazines litter the yard. Families are walking through the villa’s empty, trash-strewn rooms as if it were a real estate open house.
Khelifa says Tunisians despise the president they deposed, but they hate his wife even more. The 55-year-old former hairdresser is 74-year-old Ben Ali’s second wife.
Like the tentacles of an octopus, the Trabelsi clan wrapped itself around almost every sector of the country’s economy, their critics say. They controlled the car dealerships, the banks, the airlines, the media and the major retailers.
Amel Jertila, a 37-year-old who started her own company, says doing business in Tunisia was hell.
“It was terrible. And you are scared all the time. What if I cross them one day in my life, what will happen to me? After years of work, we are scared of phantoms that are called Trabelsi and Ben Ali,” she says.
Cables from the U.S. ambassador in Tunisia that surfaced in WikiLeaks paint a picture of a family that lived in excessive decadence, while many Tunisians lived below the poverty level. Invited to dinner at the villa of Ben Ali’s favorite son-in-law, the ambassador described ice cream imported from St. Tropez on a private jet and a pet tiger in a cage on the compound.
‘Giants With Clay Feet’
Just three days before the final wave of protests that brought Ben Ali down, writer Abdelaziz Belkhodja took the risk of distributing documents showing the extent of what he calls the mafioso activity of the president, his wife and her family.
“It reached unimaginable proportions. These people wanted to take over the country. That’s why they took the banks and the media. She appointed the ministers, because after his death, she wanted to keep control of the country,” Belkhodja says.
He estimates that in their two decades in power, Ben Ali and his extended family stole about $20 billion — twice Tunisia’s national budget.
Another magnificent villa — this one on a hillside — is the home of a simple primary school teacher whose name happens to be Adel Trabelsi.
Inside the house, Tunisians are ripping out wiring and trying to detach some electric blinds from the windows. Everyone is smiling. Khelifa, the English professor, says no one in their wildest dreams would have imagined such a sudden and ignominious collapse of the Ben Ali-Trabelsi family.
“We suspected that tyrannical power is weak. But to this extent, this kind of weakness is just amazing,” Khelifa says. “I think if there is one lesson to be learned, it’s precisely that dictatorships, they’re giants with feet of clay.”
If a system is malfunctioning, says Tony Blair in his new book, Tony Blair A Journey (2010: 249), it does need to change, whether that change be gradual or abrupt. There is a regime that is oppressive and dictatorial, but may decide to go into the right direction of reform despite it is slow; but there is also a regime whose very nature lies in its oppression. This regime will not change, not by evolution, not by the exercise of its own will- because that will is directed towards oppression- and for a long time, at least, it will not change by the will of the people who, because they are oppressed, lack the means to overthrow the regime.
Tunisia had a malfunctioning system, a system whose very nature lies in its oppression. It had a system that failed to address the will of the people, which is freedom- the freedom from fear, the freedom from persecution, the freedom from hunger and death and the freedom from “I now for you” mentality. Ben Ali’s regime had stifled those freedoms for the last 20 plus years, but couldn’t sustain that oppression for long. The younger generation, the globalised generation, couldn’t accept a 19th c system, a system that makes God’s children slaves and sub humans. The Tunisian boys and girls decided to dismantle that archaic system, and did they succeed. President Ben Ali was disgracefully overthrown and fled to Saudi Arabia to join another dictator there. However, the journey of Tunisia is not yet finished; the daunting task is still ahead. But, they have repossessed the “ball of choice”. They have now a choice- a choice to choose freedom or a choice to choose slavery. That is not the case in Ethiopia and in most parts of Africa.
Zenawi’s regime is a carbon copy of Ben Ali’s regime except that the former is also a racist. Like Ben Ali’s regime, Zenawi’s regime depends on oppression, killing and persecution of Ethiopians; but unlike the former, the later encourages people to fight and kill each other with its divide and conquer policy. That is the difference between the two regimes. Both are dangerous, but Zenawi’s is evil.
I have no doubt that the fire that started in Tunisia will expand to Ethiopia and devour Zenawi’s regime in a short period of time. Given the existing economic turmoil and political repression, we will witness a revolution of a huge magnitude sooner than later. The question is not when that revolution will exactly occur , but what consequence will it have and who is to lead it responsibly when that revolution occurs. Will the fire stop after destroying Zenawi’s archaic regime or will it expand to devour his ethnic group ?
The experience of 2005 election tells that there will be more bloodshed before Zenawi quits power. It could be more than what we have witnessed in June and November 2005; thousands could be maimed and hundreds of buildings destroyed. There could be ethnic cleansing as witnessed in Rwanda. Tigreans could face the fate of the Tutsis. The 2005 election proved that the people of Ethiopia have a huge grudge against the Tigreans who gave unequivocal support to the regime. It doesn’t seem that the Tigreans are repenting from their sins, they are still ardent supporters of the regime. There are pockets of Tigreans who don’t support the evil machination of zenawi’s regime, but I am sure when the time comes no one will have time to sift the chaff from the grain. That is why the Tigreans are time and again advised to alienate themselves from Zenawi’s regime before the night falls, which is fast approaching.
We have seen the beginning of the end in the 2005 election. Some Tigreans were truly Targeted. Most of them were gathering in meeting halls for fear of persecution. Zenawi could have used the story for its own evil ends, but the fact did occur that some Tigreans were hiding in bunkers. What worries me is the fate of the innocent Tigreans. I am sorry for them, and I wish God protect them. That is why I shiver when I think of Tunisia. I am smelling Rwanda is in the making in Ethiopia. We are not as luckily as the Tunisians, whose government didn’t choose to play with a race card.
I think of whether we have a political party that can shape the direction of the upcoming revolution. Wild revolutions are dangerous for a nation, they have to be tamed on time otherwise they will devour all dry leaves. When I think of political parties in Ethiopia, I don’t think that they have the capability and resource to lead a revolution. The only hope I have is for Ginbot 7. But the question still remains whether the G7 leadership will return back to Ethiopia to lead the revolution when the clouds begin to appear. That is the question I forward to the G7 leadership. They have to now that a revolution without a driver is doomed to fail. My hope is also on ESAT. I don’t expect ESAT to be radio mil coline of Rwanda. It has a huge responsibility to incite the people to stand up for a revolution, but at the same time inform the people not to turn the revolution into an ethnic revolution ( revolution with an ethnic element) . It should be a politico- economic revolution that is devoid of targeting Tigreans. ESAT has to inform the people that Zenawi couldn’t represent Tigreans. If that is the case, our revolution will be fruitful and bloodless. A good combination of G7 and ESAT may work. There rests my hope!
The successful launch of the historic Ethiopian Satellite Television (ESAT) service to Ethiopia on April 21, 2010 represents a giant step in the direction of freedom of information for all Ethiopians. ESAT is the result of the collective efforts of a small group of Ethiopians who are deeply committed to the principles of democracy, human rights and the rule of law. The time, energy and efforts that have gone into this historic effort are simply immeasurable.
During the past year, ESAT has delivered and is still delivering quality programming to Ethiopians at home and in the Diaspora. The ESAT production team has been overwhelmed and gratified by the thousands of telephone calls and e-mail messages it has received from viewers and supporters expressing good will and encouragement. According to many eyewitness accounts from Ethiopia, ESAT has dramatically impacted the lives of its viewers in Ethiopia by enabling citizens to freely express their opinion and by serving as the only independent source of information.
ESAT owes much of its success and popularity to a core group of selfless, dedicated staff and volunteers who work very hard to help ESAT fulfil its mission. However, the current broadcast, the ambitious plan of increasing the programming quality of ESAT and expanding its service to viewers around the world cannot and must not be the responsibility of few individuals. It takes the efforts of many people and enormous financial resources to support a satellite television service of ESAT’s magnitude. The dream of ESAT’s management team is not just to continue the current level of programming but also to increase ESAT’s quality, its capacity and its availability to Ethiopians around the globe.
Therefore, to add more programming, to cover very expensive satellite costs and to put ESAT on a strong financial foundation, ESAT’s governing Board has launched a two-month global campaign to raise $1 million, that will last from January 15 to March 20, 2011. The money raised from the campaign will cover 12 months of our current broadcasting cost and finance ESAT’s expansion plan outlined below. The three-stage implementation of the plan is highly dependent on the amount of funds raised on this campaign.
Stage I
* 50% of the fund ($500,000) secured will be used to pay for:
1. C-Band Satellite Service to Ethiopia, the rest of Africa, Australia, Asia & the Middle East.
2. Studio costs in Amsterdam, Washington D.C and London
3. Reporter’s salary in different Continents
Stage II
* 20% of the fund ($200,000) will be allocated for additional KU-Band Satellite Service purchase to Ethiopia
Stage III
* 30% of the money ($300,000) will be used to cover the cost of additional Satellite Service for North America & Europe
Ethiopia is mired in socioeconomic crisis stemming from the rule of dictatorship. The lack of free and independent media is one of the major reasons that we Ethiopians find ourselves in a cycle of dictatorship.
ESAT was established with the primary objective of breaking this detrimental cycle by imparting reliable and factual information. In fact, many Ethiopians and friends of Ethiopia have already applauded ESAT’s impartiality and its strong determination to lay the foundation of free media in Ethiopia. We believe that any disruption or discontinuity of ESAT’s broadcasting due to financial problems simply puts Ethiopians back in the dark, and most importantly, it puts a break on our collective effort to overcome tyranny.
We extend our call to all Ethiopians to take the pride of breaking the media monopoly in Ethiopia by participating in every facet of ESAT’s fund raising campaign. We believe there will be no better way of empowering people than giving them credible information to make their own decisions. Information is central to democracy and it is a necessary condition for development; therefore, helping the free flow of information fulfils our two goals of democracy and development.
The Horn Institute of Peace and Social Justice has reported today that President of the Somali Region in Ethiopia, Abdi Mohamud Omar, is due to arrive in the United States on January 18, 2011.
Abdi Mohamud Omar is a puppet of Meles Zenawi in the Ogaden region — which was renamed Somali Region by Meles when he came to power. Omar is responsible for carrying out genocidal war against the people of Ogaden. Some of his crimes include mass executions, public hanging of women and elders, gang rape of women by this troops, and food blockade to local population.
The Horn Institute of Peace and Social Justice has issued the following statement regarding Omar’s visit to the US.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Minneapolis, MN – Horn Institute of Peace & Social Justice is concerned that the Somali Regional President of Ethiopia, Mr. Abdi Mohamud Omar is expected to depart from Ethiopia on January 18, 2011 and arrive in Minnesota. We are vehemently protesting the decision to allow Mr. Omar to enter the United States. Mr. Omar and two accompanying members of his delegation, Mr. Abdifitah Sheik Abdullahi and Abdirahman Sheikh Mohamed are known human rights violators who have earned a despicable record in their part for the suffering of the Ogaden Somali civilians in Ethiopia. Mr. Omar, who leads the delegation, is the man who has established and single handedly maintained the brutal paramilitary force called Liyuu Police whose mission is copied from the Janjaweed of Sudan who caused the Darfur genocide.
Mr. Omar had created the Liyuu Police for the sole purpose of terrorizing the population to submit to him and the Ethiopian government. The Liyuu Police are unleashed on the population to commit crimes against humanity. The magnitude of their oppression is indescribable and had gone unabated for far too long. They are committing daily atrocities which are documented in the Human Rights Watch’s reports and confirmed by U.S Department of State –Bureau of Human Rights. Mr. Omar’s forces perpetuate arbitrary arrests, open executions, torture, imprisonment without fair trail, and rape as a weapon to suppress women who are defenseless against armed men. Mr. Omar has forcefully recruited underage men from the Ogaden cities, and goes after those in refugee camps located in neighboring country of Kenya who fled from him to join Liyuu Police in order to carry out Ethiopian government’s hidden atrocities against the Ogaden Somali civilians. Mr. Omar was the former Chief of security who led the Liyuu Police before becoming the President of the Somali region of Ethiopia.
Mr. Omar’s victims are scattered all over the United States and are saddened if their tormentor is freely allowed to enter the country without any repercussions for his crimes. Mr. Omar’s victims are currently receiving legal advice to bring him and his two high ranking members to Justice. Mr.Abdifatah Sheikh Abdullahi, the current Minister of Labor and Social Affairs in the Federal Government of Ethiopia, and Abdirahman Sheikh Mohamed, Ethiopia’s Minister of Trade are both accused of serious human rights violations. We feel if these men are allowed to enter the country and conduct their business, it will give the recognition and privilege they so desire to legitimize their abuse back home.
Horn Institute of Peace & Social Justice believes that we must never be silent about grave human rights abuses committed by these men on behalf of the Ethiopian government they work for. We feel that the United States must remain on the side of the Ogaden Somali victims and heed their sincere calls to block Mr. Omar and his delegation from entering the country. The present Obama administration had promised to make human rights its top priority, and in this case it should make good on its promise and join us in our quest to get justice for Mr. Omar’s victims residing both in Ogaden and in the United States. We take this opportunity to thank our Congressional Representatives from Minnesota, and other organizations who expressed their support by writing letters to the U.S government.
Horn Institute of Peace & Social Justice
Dept of Public Relations & International Affairs
P.O BOX 240781
St.Paul, MN 55124
Email: [email protected]
It is the best of times in the Sudan. It is the worst of times in the Sudan. It is the happiest day in the Sudan. It is the saddest day in the Sudan. It is referendum for the Sudan. It is requiem for Africa.
South Sudan just finished voting in a referendum, part of a deal made in 2005 to end a civil war that dates back over one-half century. The Southern Sudan Referendum Commission (SSRC) says the final results will be announced on February 14; but no one really believes there will be one united Sudan by July 2011. By then, South Sudan will be Africa’s newest state.
In a recent speech at Khartoum University, Thabo Mbeki, former South African president and Chairperson of the African Union High-level Implementation Panel on Sudan, alluded to the causes of the current breakup of the Sudan: “As all of us know, a year ahead of your independence, in 1955, a rebellion broke out in Southern Sudan. The essential reason for the rebellion was that your compatriots in the South saw the impending independence as a threat to them, which they elected to oppose by resorting to the weapons of war.” There is a lot more to the South Sudanese “rebellion” than a delayed rendezvous with the legacy of British colonialism. In some ways it could be argued that the “imperfect” decolonization of the Sudan, which did not necessarily follow the boundaries of ethnic and linguistic group settlement, led to decades of conflict and civil wars and the current breakup.
Many of the problems leading to the referendum are also rooted in post-independence Sudanese history — irreconcilable religious differences, economic exploitation and discrimination. The central Sudanese government’s imposition of “Arabism” and “Islamism” (sharia law) on the South Sudanese and rampant discrimination against them are said to be a sustaining cause of the civil war. South Sudan is believed to hold much of the potential wealth of the Sudan including oil. Yet the majority of South Sudanese people languished in abject poverty for decades, while their northern compatriots benefitted disproportionately.
Whether the people of South Sudan will secede and form their own state is a question only they can decide. They certainly have the legal right under international law to self-determination, a principle enshrined in the U.N. Charter. Their vote will be the final word on the issue. The focus now is on what is likely to happen after South Sudan becomes independent. Those who seem to be in the know sound optimistic. Mbeki says, “Both the Government of Sudan and the SPLM have made the solemn and vitally important commitment that should the people of South Sudan vote for secession, they will work to ensure the emergence and peaceful coexistence of two viable states.” The tea leaves readers and pundits are predicting doom and gloom. They say the Sudan will be transformed into a hardline theocratic state ruled under sharia law. There will be renewed violence in Darfur, South Kurdofan and Eastern Sudan. There will be endless civil wars that will cause more deaths and destruction according to the modern day seers.
To some extent, the pessimism over Sudan’s future may have some merit. Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir’s told the New York Times recently about his post-secession plans: “We’ll change the Constitution. Shariah and Islam will be the main source for the Constitution, Islam the official religion and Arabic the official language.” Bashir’s plan goes beyond establishing a theocratic state. There will be no tolerance of diversity of any kind in Bashir’s “new Sudan”. He says, “If South Sudan secedes, we will change the Constitution, and at that time there will be no time to speak of diversity of culture and ethnicity.” Bashir’s warning is not only shocking but deeply troubling. The message undoubtedly will cause great alarm among secularists, Southern Sudanese living in the north who voted for unity and Sudanese of different faiths, viewpoints, beliefs and ideologies. In post-secession Sudan, diversity, tolerance, compromise and reconciliation will be crimes against the state. It is all eerily reminiscent of the ideas of another guy who 70 years ago talked about “organic unity” and the “common welfare of the Volk”. Sudanese opposition leaders are issuing their own ultimata. Sadiq al-Mahdi, leader of the Umma Party, issued a demand for a new constitution and elections; in the alternative, he promised to work for the overthrow of Bashir’s regime. Other opposition leaders seem to be following along the same line. There is a rocky road ahead for the Sudan, both south and north.
From Pan-Africanism to Afro-Fascism?
The outcome of the South Sudanese referendum is not in doubt, but where Africa is headed in the second decade of the 21st Century is very much in doubt. Last week, Tunisian dictator Ben Ali packed up and left after 23 years of corrupt dictatorial rule. President Obama “applauded the courage and dignity of the Tunisian people” in driving out the dictator. Ivory Coast’s Laurent Gbagbo is still holed up in Abidjan taunting U.N. peacekeepers and playing round-robin with various African leaders. Over in the Horn of Africa, Meles Zenawi is carting off businessmen and merchants to jail for allegedly price-gouging the public and economic sabotage. What in the world is happening to Africa?
When African countries cast off the yoke of colonialism, their future seemed bright and limitless. Independence leaders thought in terms of Pan-Africanism and the political and economic unification of native Africans and those of African heritage into a “global African community”. Pan-Africanism represented a return to African values and traditions in the struggle against neo-colonialism, imperialism, racism and the rest of it. Its core value was the unity of all African peoples.
The founding fathers of post-independence Africa all believed in the dream of African unity. Ethiopia’s H.I.M. Haile Selassie, Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta, Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere, Guinea’s Ahmed Sékou Touré, Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda and Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser were all declared Pan-Africanists. On the occasion of the establishment of the permanent headquarters of the Organization for African Unity (OAU) in Addis Ababa on May 25, 1963, H.I.M. Haile Selassie made the most compelling case for African unity:
We look to the vision of an Africa not merely free but united. In facing this new challenge, we can take comfort and encouragement from the lessons of the past. We know that there are differences among us. Africans enjoy different cultures, distinctive values, special attributes. But we also know that unity can be and has been attained among men of the most disparate origins, that differences of race, of religion, of culture, of tradition, are no insuperable obstacle to the coming together of peoples. History teaches us that unity is strength, and cautions us to submerge and overcome our differences in the quest for common goals, to strive, with all our combined strength, for the path to true African brotherhood and unity…. Our efforts as free men must be to establish new relationships, devoid of any resentment and hostility, restored to our belief and faith in ourselves as individuals, dealing on a basis of equality with other equally free peoples.
Pan-Africanism is dead. A new ideology today is sweeping over Africa. Africa’s home grown dictators are furiously beating the drums of “tribal nationalism” all over the continent to cling to power. In many parts of Africa today ideologies of “ethnic identity”, “ethnic purity,” “ethnic homelands”, ethnic cleansing and tribal chauvinism have become fashionable. In Ivory Coast, an ideological war has been waged over ‘Ivoirité (‘Ivorian-ness’) since the 1990s. Proponents of this perverted ideology argue that the country’s problems are rooted in the contamination of genuine Ivorian identity by outsiders who have been allowed to freely immigrate into the country. Immigrants, even those who have been there for generations, and refugees from the neighboring countries including Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea and Liberia are singled out and blamed for the country’s problems and persecuted. Professor Gbagbo even tried to tar and feather the winner of the recent election Alassane Ouattara (whose father is allegedly Burkinabe) as a not having true Ivorian identity. Gbagbo has used religion to divide Ivorians regionally into north and south.
In Ethiopia, tribal politics has been repackaged in a fancy wrapper called “ethnic federalism.” Zenawi has segregated the Ethiopian people by ethno-tribal classification like cattle in grotesque regional political units called “kilils” (reservations) or glorified apartheid-style Bantustans or tribal homelands. This sinister perversion of the concept of federalism has enabled a few cunning dictators to oppress, divide and rule some 80 million people for nearly two decades.[1] South of the border in Kenya, in the aftermath of the 2007 elections, over 600 thousand Kenyans were displaced as a result of ethnic motivated hatred and violence. Over 1,500 were massacred. Kenya continues to arrest and detain untold numbers of Ethiopian refugees that have fled the dictatorship of Meles Zenawi. What more can be said about Rwanda that has not already been said.
It is not only the worst-governed African countries that are having problems with “Africanity”. South Africa has been skating on the slippery slope of xenophobia. Immigrants from Mozambique, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia have been attacked by mobs. According to a study by the Southern African Migration Project (SAMP): “The ANC government – in its attempts to overcome the divides of the past and build new forms of social cohesion… embarked on an aggressive and inclusive nation-building project. One unanticipated by-product of this project has been a growth in intolerance towards outsiders… Violence against foreign citizens and African refugees has become increasingly common and communities are divided by hostility and suspicion.” Among the member countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), South Africans expressed the harshest and most punitive anti-foreigner sentiments in the study. How ironic for a country that was under apartheid less than two decades ago.
Whether it is the “kilil” ideology practiced in Ethiopia or the “Ivorite” of Ivory Coast, the central aim of these weird ideologies is to enable power hungry and bloodthirsty African dictators to cling to power by dividing Africans along ethnic, linguistic, tribal, racial and religious lines. Fellow Africans are foreigners to be arrested, jailed, displaced, deported and blamed for whatever goes wrong under the watch of the dictators. The old Pan-African ideas of common African history, suffering, struggle, heritage and legacy are gone. There is no unifying sense African brotherhood or sisterhood. Africa’s contemporary leaders, or more appropriately, hyenas in designer suits and uniforms, have made Africans strangers to each other and rendered Africa a “dog-eat-dog” continent.
In 2009, in Accra, Ghana, President Obama blasted identity politics as a canker in the African body politics:
We all have many identities – of tribe and ethnicity; of religion and nationality. But defining oneself in opposition to someone who belongs to a different tribe, or who worships a different prophet, has no place in the 21st century…. In my father’s life, it was partly tribalism and patronage in an independent Kenya that for a long stretch derailed his career, and we know that this kind of corruption is a daily fact of life for far too many.
For what little it is worth, for the last few years I have preached from my cyber soapbox against those in Africa who have used the politics of ethnicity to cling to power. I firmly believe that our humanity is more important than our ethnicity, nationality, sovereignty or even Africanity! As an unreformed Pan-Africanist, I also believe that Africans are not prisoners to be kept behind tribal walls, ethnic enclaves, Ivorite, kilils, Bantustans, apartheid or whatever divisive and repressive ideology is manufactured by dictators, but free men and women who are captains of their destines in one un-walled Africa that belongs to all equally. “Tear down the walls of tribalism and ethnicity in Africa,” I say.
It is necessary to come up with a counter-ideology to withstand the rising tide of Afro-Fascism. Perhaps we can learn from Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s ideas of “Ubuntu”, the essence of being human. Tutu explained: “A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.” I believe “Ubuntu” provides a sound philosophical basis for the development of a human rights culture for the African continent based on a common African belief of “belonging to a greater whole.” To this end, Tutu taught, “Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.” More specifically, Africa.
“Afri-Cans” and “Afri-Cannots”
As for South Sudan, the future holds many dangers and opportunities. Africans have fought their way out of colonialism and become independent. Some have seceded from the post-independence states, but it is questionable if they have succeeded. How many African countries are better off today than they were prior to independence? Before secession? As the old saying goes: “Be careful what you wish for. You may receive it.” We wish the people of South and North Sudan a future of hope, peace, prosperity and reconciliation.
I am no longer sure if Afri-Cans are able to “unite for the benefit of their people”, as Bob Marley pleaded. But I am sure that Afri-Cannot continue to have tribal wars, ethnic domination, corruption, inflation and repression as Fela Kuti warned, and expect to be viable in the second decade of the Twenty-First Century. In 1963, H.I.M. Haile Selassie reminded his colleagues:
Today, Africa has emerged from this dark passage [of colonialism]. Our Armageddon is past. Africa has been reborn as a free continent and Africans have been reborn as free men…. Those men who refused to accept the judgment passed upon them by the colonisers, who held unswervingly through the darkest hours to a vision of an Africa emancipated from political, economic, and spiritual domination, will be remembered and revered wherever Africans meet…. Their deeds are written in history.
It is said that those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it. I am afraid Africa’s Armageddon is yet to come. Africa has been re-enslaved by home grown dictators, and Africans have become prisoners of thugs, criminals, gangsters, fugitives and outlaws who have seized and cling to power like parasitic ticks on a milk cow. Cry for the beloved continent!
