Last summer I joined the chorus of those heralding the birth of South Sudan as a new nation in Africa – fathered not by colonial masters but by Africans themselves. But I felt constrained to sound this cautionary note in a commentary presaging its independence day:
What looms, however, may cause the southerners’ Independence Day, which they will mark on July 9, to turn into a pyrrhic celebration…
I just hope and pray these southerners – who are composed of all kinds of Black tribes – can avoid the kind of tribal conflicts that continue to beset so many other countries in Africa.
(“South Sudan Secedes,” The iPINIONS Journal, February 9, 2011)
Sadly, less than six months later, I was obliged to comment on South Sudanese cannibalizing each other:
‘Two weeks of fighting have left at least 1,000 dead and split the oil-producing country barely two years after it won independence from Sudan. It has also raised fears of an all-out civil war between the main Dinka and Nuer ethnic groups which could destabilize fragile East Africa.’
I should note that South Sudanese President Salva Kiir, with his government troops comprised mostly of Dinka tribesmen, and sacked deputy president Riek Machar, with his rebel forces comprised mostly of Nuer tribesman, have dispatched delegations to peace talks in Ethiopia. But nothing indicates how fated those talks are to fail quite like both men also deploying more troops to escalate their civil conflict…
(“South Sudan Descending into Heart of Darkness,” The iPINIONS Journal, December 30, 2013)
Now comes this:
The massacre in Bentiu, South Sudan [on April 15], has shaken even hardened humanitarian workers… Civilians were killed in the town’s main hospital, in a Catholic church and in the Kali-Ballee mosque…
The rebels, who are largely from the Nuer ethnic group, allegedly killed non-Nuers, and Nuers who they believed did not support them.
(London Guardian, April 23, 2014)
Clearly I have no cause to despair for Africans more than they despair for themselves. Yet I cannot help but look on with forlorn hope as chronic poverty and tribal/ethnic/religious conflict all over Africa make it seem like colonialism was the best thing that ever happened to that Dark Continent.
Indeed, even though it might be too politically incorrect for many to concede, I suspect that the vast majority of us in the Caribbean look at the life of the average African — whose ancestors were not “harmed” by the European slave trade — and thank God that we are here, and not there.
(“CARICOM Demand for Reparations Smacks of Extortion,” The iPINIONS Journal, November 4, 2013)
Hell, even South Africa, the putative diamond in the rough, is becoming a political laughing stock and economic basket case under the leadership of Jacob Zuma. And simmering disillusionment and resentment are such that poor Blacks seem poised to do to rich Whites there what poor Blacks did to rich Whites in Zimbabwe.
More to the point, Hutus and Tutsis (of Rwandan genocide infamy) proved that the barbarism Idi Amin personified was not the exception. Sadly, that barbarism seems to be rule given the number of genocidal rebel groups now menacing so much of Africa, including the National Liberation Forces in Burundi, Congolese Revolutionary Movement in DR Congo, Al-Shabbab in Mali, Boko Haram in Nigeria (who made news last week by raiding a school and kidnapping over 200 girls), West Side Boys in Sierra Leon, pirates in Somali, and Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda (who, despite the famous “#stopkony2012” crusade, remains as active as ever), to name just a few.
But nothing crystallizes chronic African despair quite like the Black non-Muslim Sudanese who fled religious/ethnic persecution by Arab militiamen in Darfur being among those who were slaughtered in tribal conflict by Black non-Muslim rebels in Bentiu. How’s that for cruel irony.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Black non-Muslim Mauritanians are choosing to remain displaced in a disbanded UN refugee camp in Senegal than return home because they fear Arab militiamen ethnically cleansing them the way Arab militiamen ethnically cleansed Black non-Muslim Darfurians in Sudan. Without UN protection and care, however, I fear it’s only a matter of time before the Senegalese, who are 95 percent Muslim, begin treating these Black non-Muslim Mauritanians like a cancer to be excised from their territory. And so goes the cycle of African despair.
This is why I’d bet my life savings that, under sodium pentothal, every Black person born in America or the Caribbean would thank our lucky stars that neither Abraham Lincoln nor Marcus Garvey succeeded in “repatriating” Blacks to Africa. That a Black American is now the most powerful man in the world is a poignant personification of this fact.
That said, it might be helpful to know that I was constrained yesterday to disabuse an American friend of the presumption that the barbarism on display in South Sudan’s civil war is uniquely African.
I could have done so simply enough by citing the barbarism that attended everything from the Wars of the Roses to World War II (with its infamous Holocaust).
But I sufficed to remind him of the barbarism America displayed by not only codifying slavery in its Constitution, but also fighting a bloody civil war because half of the country presumed a God-given right to enslave Blacks in perpetuity. I mean, what could be more barbaric than that.
Related commentaries:
South Sudan descending…
CARICOM demand…
Tweeting Kony to death…
Legacy Note: With over 5,600 posts spanning 20 years, I am easily the most prolific blogger on the most eclectic array of topics on the web. That makes The iPINIONS Journal an unparalleled archive of informed political and cultural commentary. Visit the ARCHIVES section in the sidebar or search by topic. You won’t find a more consistent, independent voice on world affairs.