RE: UNITED STATES OF AFRICA- A PIPE DREAM
I am a keen reader of Mr. Philip Ochieng’s pieces and I have read most if not all of his writings since the "Kenyatta Succession". His pieces tantalise the mind and are highly informative. He is a literary celebrity and a societal icon.
His article in the Sunday Nation of 8th July 2007, on the visionary United States of Africa however left me more perplexed than informed. His hypothesis linking the Afar people with the USA (sorry, African) dream is based on presumptive propositions rather than historical facts. First, the Afar are not Hamitic but Cushitic. Their cousins the Issa and to an extent the Gurgura are Cushites too. Their other cousins the Oromo and the Saho also fall under the Afro- Asiatic nomenclature of the Cushitic people.
Available history and anthropology does not seem to suggest any linkage between the Afar and the Ancient Ghana. The Afar occupy the farthest corner of the Horn of Africa and the Danakil depression (desert) which is possibly the harshest human habitat in Africa . To suppose that they are part of the Sudan belt is to stretch our imagination too far, beyond the bounds of reality and history. What links the Cushitic Afar with the Nilo- Hamitic occupants of the Sudan belt?
The swathe of land separating the Afar homeland and the Sudan belt is the historical homeland of the Afro- Asiatic Semitic group comprising of the proto-type Geez speakers represented by the Amhara and Tigray of Ethiopia and the Tigre-Tigrinya and the Tigre- Bin Amer of Eritrea. The Tigre- Bin Amer are also found in the present-day Sudan and speak a dialect with the closest linkage to the original Geez. The neighbouring stretch is the homeland of the Nilo-Saharan people who are truly the Western Ethiopians (Hesperias Aethiopas) and the sojourners of the ancient civilisations in Ghana , Mali and Songhai . In the documented history of the Sudan and Abyssinia , the Afar do not feature at all. Their supposed contribution, if any, to the expansion of the ancient kingdoms of Ghana is not accounted for. The Afar are not related to the Tuareg Berbers of the Sahel too, not in terms of ethnic morphology or language. Although both are part of the Afro-Asiatic family the Tuaregs are Berbers whereas the Afar are Cushitic.
The Afar cannot be a nucleus for the “African Dream”. My experience as a humanitarian worker in the greater horn taught me a few things. Our Cushite “brothers” (neighbours is more appropriate) will frown and abhor any inference or description which classifies them as “Africans”. Any person who visits the Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps can witness it for themselves. In the Geda-a- Shariff refugee camp, in Eastern Sudan the separation lines between the Afro- Asiatic groups and the “True Africans” are very clear. Probably the Afar have an answer, to this question, why is it so hard for the Cushites to accept the description of “African” even in trauma? I have always found Mr. Ochieng’s propositions plausible, but I beg to submit and respectfully so, that on this one, Mr. Ochieng lost me.
Colonel Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi may have a dream, one for Africa. His Tuareg- Berbers forerunners had one too. A dream of conquest and plunder. Edged on by the invading Arab slave masters they attacked Sahel, leading to the demographic implosion of the ancient Ghana, Mali and Songhai. The ancient Egypt, Sudan and the Congo belt were not spared the forced migration either and hence the perpetual claims of linkage to mythical homelands by many peoples, nations and nationalities in sub-Saharan Africa. The Arabs have rejected Col. Gaddafi, the Tuareg and his overtures for a larger “Arabiya”. He is wounded and feels slighted and hence the request to his African “brothers” to forget history, lick their wounds and get on with the dream. Isn’t history repeating itself here?
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