Some 3000 nations, speaking some 1200 languages, make their home in the 30 million square kilometres of the continent “Africa”.
Like all human beings, individually as well as socially, they could be a “universe”, i.e. a unity in diversity as the very term indicates.
That they are a long way from achieving this desideratum, needs no proof. That there must be causes hindering an African Universe is also obvious, but the nature of such causes is not obvious at all, and needs proof.
It is what this article will try to provide. Let's start with the name “Africa”
Read the following passage:
It is related of this Ophren, that he made war against Libya, and took it, and that his grandchildren, when they inhabited it, called it (from his name) Africa. … Alexander Polyhistor … speaks thus: "Cleodemus the prophet, who … wrote a History of the Jews… relates that there were many sons born to Abraham by Keturah: nay, he names three of them, Apher, and Surim, and Japhran. … from … Apher and Japhran) the country of Africa took its name. (Antiquities of the Jews 1, 15)
According to Iosephus, the 1st century Jewish historian author of the passage, Africa’s eponym was either a son or a grandson of Abraham by his third wife Keturah (Gen. 25:1 ff). The origin of the name is therefore biblical. I see no reason to doubt Iosephus, despite scholarly ignorance (deliberate or not is not up to me to say), of the passage just quoted.
Corroborating the thesis are the significant number of African nations practicing Judaism, from the Maghreb to South Africa, as the equally significant number of Jewish customs in many African nations, from circumcision to the Levirate law and others.
There is vast room for debate, but not here. The point I am trying to make is that a common name strongly suggesting a common origin is a good starting point on which to stake the quest for a unity of sorts for those 3000 nations, 42 of which populate Kenya.
Muse Bihi Abdi, of Somaliland and Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of DP World, attend the signing ceremony of expansion project of Berbera port in Hargeysa, in northern Somalia's semi-autonomous Somaliland region: Somaliland is a thriving economy although it has not been recognised internationally. [Reuters]
Present-day political panorama
I use the term “nation” and not “tribe”, because this term comes from the Latin tributum, a tax imposed by Servus Tullius sixth king of Rome on the City, divided into four tributary districts for the purpose. Its fiscal connotation has nothing to do with ethnicity, but somehow or other it has corrupted the language, obscuring the understanding of the issue.
Which is that most African countries are de facto multinational states, whatever the official names adopted. Many are multiethnic, i.e. they harbour people belonging to stocks as different as Bantu, Nilotic, Kushite, Khoisan, etc.
Multi-ethnic states have never enjoyed lasting peace, in Africa as anywhere else. Technically, a multinational state is an empire, whose unity can only be achieved with a charismatic emperor accepted, or better loved, by the people of the component units.
Jean-Bedel Bokassa (1921-1996) understood this, but failed to implement it for paying too much attention to pageantry and too little to substance.
Muammar Gaddafi of Libya (1942-2011) fared better, if one pays no attention to the vitriol still poured on him by mainstream media.
He brokered peace among the many clans by convening regular meetings to hammer out differences and potential hostilities.
And he brought prosperity by conveying the rent of land, central banking profits and 35 per cent of oil revenue to the public treasury, thus avoiding taxes and providing such social benefits as free electricity, education, health, land, initial livestock and seed to would-be farmers, interest-free loans to newlyweds, and free water from the phreatic depths of Kufra by the Great Man Made River, a 6000-kilometer, 4-metre diameter pipeline built in 25 years (1986-2011), all debt free.
The Somali are an African nation non-state. The clan is still their basic political unit, with no trappings of statehood such as presidency, parliament, political parties, opposition, elections etc.
The phantasm called “international community” has been trying for decades to impose a “modern” Somalia, but in vain: there is a Somali Embassy in Rome where no one is ever seen going in or out.
Outside the colonial-imposed borders, 2.3 million Somalis live in Kenya and eight or so in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia.
Somaliland (ex-British Somaliland) has set itself up as a State, but lacks international recognition. It is solvent and self-sufficient: cattle traded across the Red Sea produces abundant foreign exchange; gold can be bought and sold in the streets; the Somali world-wide diaspora guarantees a most efficient money-transfer system; and they are unequalled as long-distance transporters.
The Somali can be deemed to be a truly independent nation (not State which they are not), thumbing their nose at fancy Western political mantras.
Despite the boycott, Somaliland enjoys peace and prosperity. What they do not have is a Gaddafi counterpart, but such men have always been rare.
Three African nations managed to escape multinationalism, not without a struggle: Lesotho, Swaziland (in 2018 renamed Eswazi) and Botswana. The first two are kingdoms, the third a republic. Only one nation lives within the borders of each stable and peaceful state.
The African situation is the offshoot of the unanimous, but unfortunate decision to keep in place the colonial borders instead of returning each nation (or voluntary group thereof) to its pre-colonial political order.
Ivorian author Henri Bourgoyn (L’Afrique Malade du Management, Paris 1984), describes four political systems in force in pre-colonial Africa: three monarchical and one clan-oriented.
Colonial policy abolished the lot, promoting the same “representative democracy” that had produced in Europe, and still does, conflict and social disorder.
European nation-states such as Slovenia, Czech Republic, Croatia etc., enjoy today the peace and stability denied them by their being cobbled into artificial states such as Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia etc.
What colonialism brought to Africa, therefore, was not the benefits of any civilization, but troubled waters in which multinationals, dubious NGOs, UN agencies and financial opportunists still fish, only widening the well-known gap between the elite and the people.
Were any such meddlers to face a determined monarch backed by a united nobility and people, they would not find it easy to peddle their wares, whatever the size of the national territory.
But it did not happen. The Barotse of western Zambia are still being frustrated in their attempts at recovering the pre-colonial autonomy they still enjoyed under the British.
The overwhelming problem African states face is, therefore, unity, without which no other endeavour is sustainable. It will be tackled in a coming article.
silvano.borruso@gmail.com
