It was in all probability this congress, which was attended by Kenyatta, WEB Du Bois, George Padmore, Kwame Nkrumah, among others, that set the wheels of decolonialisation of Africa and the British West Indies in motion. There was a determination of purpose and single-mindedness of who an African was within the context of Pan-Africanism. Progenitors of colonialisation and their descendants were never seen or imagined as African. They themselves did not imagine themselves as African. Marcus Garvey famously agitated the conscience of the African diaspora when he advocated for the return of Africans to Africa. Garvey was not inviting the mass exodus of Europeans to Africa. Each understood that by African, Garvey was making an impassioned plea to black people to return home to Africa and rebuild it into what it should be for themselves. Ironically, Du Bois was one of those Africans in the diaspora who opposed Garvey’s plan for the return of all Africans to Africa; but in his old-age he relocated to Ghana on the invitation of Nkrumah, were he died. Our historical revisionists who want to be reclassified as Africans and no longer as Europeans or white, tend to look north at Arab countries and claim, in their state of bewilderment, that Arabs are Africans, therefore, they too have the right to proclaim themselves African. Perhaps it is the lack of historical knowledge that leads some to conclude that Arabs are Africans. The term “Arab” denote the racial identity of people from the Arabian Peninsula who conquered Egypt (then part of the Byzantine Empire) and Libya in the AD 600s and ended up controlling much of the northern part of Africa, including Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. Therefore, Arabs are not Africans. The historical revisionism by whites becomes even more troubled given the recent archaeological evidence that appear to challenge long-held view that Africa is the cradle of mankind. Palaeontologists have recently unearthed the oldest human fossil in China, which is said to be 60 000 years older than the next oldest Homo Sapiens remains. According to these palaeontologists, their discovery suggests that anatomically modern humans had arrived in China long before the species began acting human. Popular theory among whites has been that their ancient ancestors came from Africa. However, palaeontologists after an analysis of more than 5 000 ancient teeth, concluded that first Europeans were from Asia, not Africa. This discovery reconciles with the discovery of the oldest human fossil in China, that whites have no direct ancestral lineage to Africa. Even when we disregard the pattern of migration of hominids from Africa to Europe and Asia; we can conclude that there was no species of mankind that evolved in Africa from hominids into whites, who then migrated and settled in Europe. The true origin of whites according to archaeology was elsewhere, not in Africa. Given this history, it would make much more sense for whites to want to be reclassified as Chinese. While ancient and recent history confirms that whites are not Africans; the notion that they are persists, primarily born from the lack of distinction between racial and national identity. Europeans who migrated and settled Africa through naturalisation assumed the national identity of countries in which they adopted as their own. Their descendants in later generations through birth assumed the national identity of those countries, not the racial identity as Africans. They remained whites or Europeans, as oppressors of Africans saw themselves. No white person can either through birth or naturalisation assume an identity of African. African is not and has never been a national identity. Nowhere does a country called Africa exist. Whites who had lived in South Africa for countless generations, now after many years of considering themselves Europeans during the apartheid years, proclaim themselves Africans. When white Afrikaner supremacists had signs saying “Europeans” and “Non-Europeans” to enforce segregation between Africans and Europeans, there was never any ambiguity around the term “European”. Almost all whites understood themselves to be Europeans, other than the few who stood on the side of Africans to fight for the abolishment of segregation laws and emancipation of the oppressed people. It is puzzling that whites readily accept African languages to be exclusively those commonly known as black languages; yet they cannot accept that the description “African” exclusively refers to Black people. The notion that Afrikaans is an African language is as ridiculous as any claim to Africanism by the progeny of European settlers. Afrikaans by its origin is bastardised Dutch and as some say, “another form of Fanagalo”. It is not an African language in the same manner that Arabic-dialect in Egypt is not an African language. If this historical revisionism is to continue, soon whites would find the racial identity as African not enough, and proclaim themselves “black” and accuse those who refuse to recognise them as such to be racist and intolerant. Hopefully sense will prevail with regard to the contested description of African and we would never reach such point of racial absurdity. I have generally understood whites in South Africa to be opposed to name-changes. They have lambasted the ANC when it embarked on a name- changing adventure. It seems a bit hypocritical of them that they want to change their racial description and assume a new identity. This quest for blackness can be readily achieved through simple process of sun-tanning; though perfect results cannot be guaranteed. There is an increased risk of turning orange than black, as Debora Patta has learned. The need for belonging is well understood and appreciated. Africans embrace other races as their fellow countrymen, whether white, Indian or Chinese; in the hope for unity under one flag, for the betterment of the country we all live in and embrace as our own. Africa is for all who live in it, African, Indian, Chinese, Arab, etc. Perhaps Africans should embark on a countrywide hug-giving exercise to reassure their white compatriots that they too belong in Africa, in any colour but black.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Mar 2014 08:22:01 +0000
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