A pan-Africanist reflection: Point and counterpoint

Without doubt, the appearance of the 400th issue of Pambazuka News deserves to be handsomely congratulated. Firoze Manji and his team have over the years done sterling work to get this exciting milestone behind them. They have literally established an institution of major and unrivalled proportions on the African publishing scene. Pambazuka provides an excellent platform for debate, the elucidation of ideas and the exegesis of issues concerning Africa and the world. More grist to their mill!

The appearance of the 400th issue came with a feature titled Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS), one of our important findings has been that on close examination, the so-called identities designated on the basis of linguistic and ethno-linguistic criteria reveal that a great number of these identities are actually sub-identities of different degrees, and in no way constitute distinct or autonomous ethnicities. For example, if you take the Bari-speaking people of East Africa, they are divided between three borders, these being the Sudan, the DRC and Uganda. They include the Nyangbara, Fajelu, Kakwa, Kuku, Mondari and Bari. All these groups are found in the Sudan, but the Kuku and Kakwa are also respectively in Uganda and the DRC. In any strict sense of the word they should be regarded as sub-groups of a larger ethno-linguistic group which for lack of a better term we can classify as Bari. The Madi/Moru group also in East Africa, divide into the same three borders. They include the Avukaya, the Logo, the Madi, the Moru, the Kaliko, the Lugbara and Olu’bo. The Madi, Lugbara, Olu’bo, Avukaya, Moru and Kaliko are in the Sudan; Uganda has Madi, Lugbara and Logo, whereas the DRC has Logo, Avukaya, Kaliko and Lugbara. All these people in fact speak dialectal variants of the same ‘core language.’ In other words, they are better seen as sub-units of one large community rather than separate ‘tribes’, as Western colonialism elevated them to. Many more examples can be given to illustrate this point.

They are no different from sub-units of the English like the Yorkshireman, Geordie, Scouse, Cockney, the Devonshireman or any other linguistically-based identity reflecting dialectal variance among the English. If we identified these latter as separate tribes then every European country would have scores of different ‘tribes.’ What is also interesting is the fact that, in the African case, all these large clusters of mutually intelligible ethno-linguistic groups are divided by so-called international borders arbitrarily drawn by European colonialists. Luo-speaking people in East Africa who are demographically one of the biggest groups in the whole of Africa are split between six countries where they are always minorities. Fulful/Pulaar speakers are in 13 countries, always as minorities. People-to-people interaction would heal the wounds of such African communities and histories. pan-Africanism would permit us to retrieve our histories in more compacted and holistic terms. A pan-African umbrella structure for all of us will permit a situation to emerge where no one group, or groups, can represent a threat, whatever way conceived, to others. What is also important for our argument here is that these ethno-linguistic characteristics of communities on the ground in Africa with recognisable and definable modes of livelihood, ritual, customs, values and usages exist, I repeat exist. It is futile to deny this or pretend that they are all inventions of the colonialists.

In anthropological usage, ethnicity and culture tend to be coterminous. Both are trans-class solidarities like language, religious confession, kinship, ritual, customary usages, values and other institutions which run vertically through society. In other words, these solidarities run from rich to poor, highly placed to lowly placed, privileged and underprivileged. Such attributes are historically created and socially evolved, and provide cultural bearings to both individuals and groups. Indeed, this is culture. In wider usage culture includes all tangibles and intangibles created by humanity or human groups and which provide them with a collective environment in which they transact their everyday lives. The tangibles include all elements of material culture or, if you prefer, the material products of human fabrication which we use in our everyday lives. The intangibles include customs, values, usages, beliefs, attitudes and other non-material societal features which we collectively share in groups and which operate both at the individual and collective levels of social life. It is not possible to conceive of any individual without a culture. Mutatis mutandis all human groups defined by varying composites of these vertical solidarities can be defined as cultural groups and cannot be seen as cultural products outside the features which culturally define them. What this also means is that while humans create culture but dialectically, humans are also shaped and formed by culture.

Needless to say, culture is dynamic and ceaselessly changing. To see African culture as ‘ossified custom or tradition’ as we read in Shivji’s piece is not only an intellectual corruption but also in the context, woefully misleading. ‘Ossified custom or tradition’ belongs to the museum, not to the daily and everyday lives of living African people.

Another point, I would like to make is with reference to Shivji’s comment regarding the ‘rekindling the Arab-African cultural divide.’ There is a cultural divide between Africans and Arabs, and Chinese and Indians, and Europeans and Japanese, and so on. Humanity consists of very many different cultural groups. There is little to be gained by denying cultural diversity within our common human community. What is important is that no specific cultural group should impose on or dominate any other. All of us need to be able to share this planet as equals, allowing the free movement of people across cultural divides, as and when they wish, without any constraint whatsoever. But, we must acknowledge cultural differences. The problem with the African and Arab cultural divide is that historically it has been marked amongst many other things by domination, slavery and oppression of Africans by Arabs. Till today in the Afro-Arab borderlands Arabs enslave Africans. We must not pretend that this is not the case.

Furthermore, equally candidly, we know that Arabs want to achieve, rightfully, Arab unity (el watan el arabi). I have always argued that for as long as this objective is reached democratically all freedom-loving people should support it. But equally, Africans will not accept Arabisation. We have no wish to become Arabs. Africans want African unity and, in equal fashion, for as long as that is achieved democratically we would want all freedom-loving people to support it. There are implications to these two aspirations. Because we are direct and immediate neighbours on this continent, when either one of the two or both projects of unification are achieved there would be a border between the united Arab world and the united African world. There is no harm in this, so long as minorities on both sides of the border are treated as full citizens with respect for their political, cultural and human rights on both sides of the border. If and when Africans unite most of the geographical expanse of Africa will unite. But it is not geographical unity that we in the first instance want, or need. It is the unity of Africans.

The real challenge is to find a democratic dispensation which recognizes diversity and difference and which creates a viable framework for the peaceful co-existence of diversity. Nothing is to be gained from denying their existence and pretending that they are all ‘inventions and re-inventions.’

THE LIMITS OF COLOUR

A few years ago, at the opening of the Marcus Garvey Pan-Afrikan Institute in Mbale, Uganda, I had in my keynote address explained that it was useful to indicate that physical attributes would be in no sense the key to understanding identities as objective factors in societies. Another way of saying the same thing is that it is not biology but culture that defines and identifies people; it is not nature but nurture that separates or unites the tastes, values, behaviour and customary usages of people. I have often remarked that the racial definition of African is wrong and misplaced. Most Africans, I assert, are black, but not all blacks are Africans and not all Africans are black. Indian Dravidians, Melanesians and Native Australians are black, but they are not Africans. What I mean is that colour is no basis for defining an African in much the same way as colour cannot define Arabs, who range from blonde to black, or Jews who range from blonde to black, or Hindus who range from near white to black. In fact, in the Sudan, for example, it is not possible to always differentiate between Arab and African on the basis of colour. The obsession with colour, particularly noticeable with Africans in the diaspora arises on account of the age-long racism and oppression Africans in the western diaspora have endured at the hands of white westerners. But when that has been said, I must add that the overwhelming majority of Africans are black and in the absence of unifying cultural attributes like a literacy-based religion or a common language, colour has been a fortunate reference point for people of African-descent both on the continent and in the diaspora. We can literally invariably recognise each other from afar.(3)

CULTURAL UNITIES

I need also to point out that there are certain attributes that culturally unite and define Africans. Firstly, our religious systems and rituals are fairly homogenous. These extend into the diaspora as Candomblé, Santería, Voodoo, Obeah and other institutions in South America, in Brazil in particular, the West Indies and North America. The central character of these religious systems is ancestor veneration and a fairly common structure of religious symbolism. All these systems are underpinned by expressive visual art forms, dance and recognisable rhythms. Secondly, our systems of kinship and marriage are also fairly ubiquitous. These kinship systems in their specific and general character often cross state borders. Thirdly, the pre-colonial political systems that linger into present political order were and have been interlocking and largely similar. Fourthly, there is a sense in which the commonalities of our customs and history make our aspirations similar. Fifthly, and very importantly, our languages are broadly related and the degree of similarity among them is much greater than meets either the eye or the ear. Territorial contiguity characterises the habitat of the majority of Africans. This is the African continent.(4) The cultural attributes are not in all respects unique to Africa either individually or collectively, but the mix and history of these cultural affinities are sufficiently shared as typifying characteristics among Africans.(5)

If cultural attributes constitute the predominant feature in the definition of an African identity, it is language that lies at the heart and is the principal pillar carrying culture. It is in language that cultures are registered and transferred as legacies. Apart from these cultural convergences, Africans generally display a recognition and acknowledgement of other Africans as Africans. This extends invariably into the diaspora. This recognition exists in spite of considerable localism and the frequent promotion of ethnicism by dominant elites.(6)

It needs also to be said that being African is an inclusive notion. It is possible for people who are not African today to become African in due course of time. But this is not achieved by opportunistic claims based on expediency and formulae like ‘commitment to Africa.’ I have elsewhere argued that Verwoerd, Henry Morton Stanley, or Ian Smith were all committed in their own ways to Africa, but can we say they were Africans? If I arrive tomorrow in China and declare my commitment to China, does that make me Chinese? Becoming African involves immersion into African society and requires a certain degree of acculturation into African society. At least it would require the adoption and sharing of the values of African society. It is possible therefore to creolise into Africa, but that involves also the blurring of the cultural boundaries between the creolising community and the wider African community. It has nothing to do with colour, but all to do, to varying degrees, with cultural integration. In other words, it is not possible to be African while one rejects African culture and rejects the self-designation of being African. It is not possible to be African, whilst one looks down on Africans, maintains caste-like relations with Africans and refuses to mix with Africans. As another English aphorism declares, ‘you cannot have your cake and eat it.’

Finally, indeed with regards to the African diaspora, the interlocking character of the history and sentiments attached to this history and its subjective reference points have filtered into the social and political histories of Africans on the continent and in the diaspora, particularly in the last hundred and fifty years. Africans on the continent feel profound fraternal bonds and intense sentiments of attachment to the Africans in the diaspora. It is worthwhile restating that, indeed, it is not possible to understand pan-Africanism outside of the context of the diaspora. Much of the theoretical foundations of pan-Africanism as political philosophy were created and actively shaped by the diaspora.

(1) Basil Davidson. The Black Man’s Burden. Africa and the Curse of the Nation-State. James Currey. London 1992. p.162.
(2) Cover story, Africa Agenda.Vol.3. No.4.2000.
(3) African Knowledge Production, Language and Identity. Keynote Address; Opening of the Marcus-Garvey Pan Afrikan Institute, Mbale, Uganda, 9.6.2005
(4) Ibid.
(5) Ibid.
(6) Ibid.

* Kwesi Kwaa Prah is the director of the Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS) based in Cape Town, South Africa.
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