Libya and Black Africa - what's next after Gaddafi?
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
I have never lived in Libya, though I've been to Tripoli. I did live for a brief time in neighboring Algeria...long enough to experience first hand racism towards those of darker hue. It was a situation that was complex - and to be perfectly honest I still can't take one specific position on the tangled web of the history and legacy of slavery, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, pan-Africanism and global economic agendas that have torn the continent of Africa apart for so many centuries...nor make sense of where Libya and North Africa are headed in the near future, and what that means for black Africans.
The black left here in the U.S. and black African leaders, activists and scholars also have divided opinions and a wide range of positions regarding Gaddafi, and where Libya, and the rest of North Africa is headed, as a nation-state, and as part of the greater African continent.
The issues on the continent surrounding "race", ethnicity (ethnic identity - aka tribal identity) and religion (Islam, Christianity and African Traditional religion) make the matter far more complicated than any one diary or opinion piece can begin to explicate.
I tend to fall back on Dr. Ali Mazuri's attempt to define the complexity of the problems and issues in his seminal series The Africans: A Triple Heritage produced in 1986 for PBS - but still worthwhile viewing today.
He, and two other scholars addressed the Libya situation recently at a forim at SUNY Binghamton:
Educators address unrest in Libya
Many Arab countries today have colonial foundations, the legacy of which has affected the stability of regimes formed after independence. In 1969, there was a military coup in Libya, resulting in Gaddafi gaining power, Mazrui said. Mazrui said he believes that Gaddafi’s current state of mind is “he thinks people love him. “If he doesn’t step down peacefully there are two other alternatives,” Mazrui said. “Either they will kill him, or he is in such denial that when he finds the truth he may kill himself, though that is unlikely to happen.”Bouanani’s focus was an analysis of an emerging consciousness of Libyans to be recognized as citizens.“If the French revolution was about the French and food, then the Tunisian revolution was also about livelihood,” he said. “The systems there were so rotten that the majority of people your age [the audience] were desperate. They had no future, and in Egypt it was the same thing. These uprisings were for freedom.”
Gaddafi is seen as being a champion for the rights of Africans, more so than the rights of Arab-Africans. Bouanani’s voice took on a more personal tone as he described his own witnessing of Gaddafi’s influence in his native country, Morocco. “He has done much harm to the country where I come from,” Bouanani said. “He has financed a separatist movement in southern Morocco, which has caused Morocco a lot of harm, and has pushed back its democracy.” Bouanani also commented on what he sees as a misconception that Gaddafi has about his power. “Gaddafi considers himself a leader and not a president, which is a reason for his clinging to power,” Bouanani said. “When he took power, the Libyans were scattered everywhere. They were just coming out of World War II, so the population was not really aware of what was going on. Now that they are gaining consciousness of their identity, they know if they are a citizen, and that they should be treated like a citizen.”
Disagreeing with Bouanani, Badran said the reasoning behind the uprisings in Libya goes beyond a mere call for freedom.Badran attributed the lack of support Arab rulers are experiencing to a resistance to change, which they interpret as a cause of instability.To many Americans, the movements for change in the Arab world look like the beginnings of a larger call for democratization. Badran suggested that this is not the case.“These uprisings are not for democracy, they are for change. Saying that they are for freedom is misleading. They don’t have the democratic institutions in place yet,” Badran said. Last to take the floor was Muhammed. As an expert in African history, Muhammed implored the members of ASO and the other students there to not forget the colonial history of Libya, beginning with the Ottomans.“The Ottomans intermarried with the Libyans,” Mohammed said, “This intermarriage gave some people a feeling of superiority over others.”Although Ottoman rule brought ethnic conflict to Libya, Mohammed reminded the audience that Libya had its own ethnic problems before the Ottomans arrived. Ethnic conflict is a problem that afflicts many African countries, which has escalated into full-scale 20th- and 21st-century ethnic genocide in countries such as Rwanda and Darfur.“In Libya these ethnic groups do not really see each other as brothers. They have a problem of unity,” Muhammed said.
A black leftist position in support of Gaddafi, that has been expressed recently is from Black Agenda Report's Gerald A. Perreira
Libya, Getting it Right: A Revolutionary Pan-African Perspective
in which Gaddafi is viewed as a major Pan-Africanist leader and hero - likened to Kwame Nkrumah.
A Battle for Africa
The battle that is being waged in Libya is fundamentally a battle between Pan-African forces on the one hand, who are dedicated to the realization of Qaddafi's vision of a united Africa, and reactionary racist Libyan Arab forces who reject Qaddafi's vision of Libya as part of a united Africa and want to ally themselves instead with the EU and look toward Europe and the Arab World for Libya's future. One of Muammar Qaddafi's most controversial and difficult moves in the eyes of many Libyans was his championing of Africa and his determined drive to unite Africa with one currency, one army and a shared vision regarding the true independence and liberation of the entire continent. He has contributed large amounts of his time and energy and large sums of money to this project and like Kwame Nkrumah, he has paid a high price.
Many of the Libyan people did not approve of this move. They wanted their leader to look towards Europe. Of course, Libya has extensive investments and commercial ties with Europe but the Libyans know that Qaddafi’s heart is in Africa.
Many years ago, Qaddafi told a large gathering, which included Libyans and revolutionaries from many parts of the world, that the Black Africans were the true owners of Libya long before the Arab incursion into North Africa, and that Libyans need to acknowledge and pay tribute to their ancient African roots. He ended by saying, as is proclaimed in his Green Book, that “the Black race shall prevail throughout the world.” This is not what many Libyans wanted to hear. As with all fair skinned Arabs, prejudice against Black Africans is endemic.
(UPI - Libyan protestor)
Black Agenda Reports editor Glen Ford however, focuses on racism in Libya:
Race and Arab Nationalism in Libya
What has become apparent from reports filtering out of the country is that many of the 1.5 million black African migrant workers trapped in Libya feel themselves under racial siege, hunted by what Black Americans would immediately recognize as lynch mobs – “pogrom” is another word that springs to mind – especially in the rebel-held areas.
The testimony of black African victims is most disturbing. "We were being attacked by local people who said that we were mercenaries killing people. Let me say that they did not want to see black people," 60-year-old Julius Kiluu, an African building supervisor, told Reuters. Even in Tripoli, where the regime is not in full control of neighborhoods, Somalis told journalists they were “being hunted on suspicion of being mercenaries” and “feel trapped and frightened to go out.” Ethiopians told of being “dragged from their apartments, beaten up and showed to the world as mercenaries.” Ethiopian News and Opinions reported that “Muammar Gadhafi haters are taking revenge on black Africans for money Gadhafi threw for many African dictators. The mob attacked and killed many Africans including Ethiopians for being only black.”
he concludes:
The Arab re-awakening, as I recently remarked, “will be plagued by fits and starts and disappointments and tragedies – but it cannot be rolled back.” In the turmoil, what is also re-awakened – or never really dormant – is a “problematic” form of anti-black racism that appears, at least in some parts of the North African Maghreb, endemic and woven into the fabric of Arab nationalism.
The (re)emergence of Arab nationalism nevertheless represents a catastrophe for U.S. imperialism, which abhors all nationalisms except its own as it seeks to bend every national aspiration to the will of capital and its war machinery. However, the racism that is clearly manifest in Libya’s current dynamic is also a huge impediment to pan-African solidarity, inviting new waves of imperial mischief on the continent. On that score, we should have no illusions.
Diarist Clay Claiborne painted a harsher perspective here recently in Helter Skelter: Qaddafi's African Adventure, stating:
Mummar Qaddafi represents that most virulent type of racist that combines parentalism with false adulation and then schemes to used racism and the fear of blacks by lighter skinned people to further his own plans.
He makes some very valid points , though I find his analogies to Charles Manson far-fetched.
A UN watch report last year highlighted racism in Libya:
Libya Must End Racism Against Black African Migrants and Others
Agenda item 9:
Racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related forms
of intolerance, follow-up and implementation of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action UN Watch Written Statement, UN Human Rights Council 13th Session
16 February 2010
and asserted:
Libya must end its practices of racial discrimination against black Africans, particularly its racial persecution of two million black African migrant workers. There is substantial evidence of Libya’s pattern and practice of racial discrimination against migrant workers. In 1998, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) expressed concern about Libya’s alleged “acts of discrimination against migrant workers on the basis of their national or ethnic origin.”
In 2000, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions issued a condemnation of “racist attacks on migrant workers” in Libya.2 Migrant workers from Ghana, Cameroon, Sudan, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad and Nigeria were the victims of attacks by Libyans targeting black migrants, following a government-ordered crackdown on foreign employment, and state-sponsored news reports portraying African migrants as being involved in drug-trafficking or dealing in alcohol.
and in March 2011 allfrica.com reported
Uprising Revives Entrenched Racism Towards Black Africans
Beirut — Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi's use of African mercenaries to quell the uprising against his autocratic regime has revived a deep-rooted racism between Arabs and black Africans. Though most will deny its existence, in Libya discrimination is common not only against migrant Black Africans, but also against darker-skinned Libyans, especially from the south of the country. "Against this background, one needs to be a little wary of the accusations of 'African mercenaries' or even 'Black African mercenaries' that have been bandied around. Certainly, Gaddafi has used, in the past, mercenaries from other parts of Africa, and our information is that some of these are likely involved in the current situation on Gaddafi's side," Na'eem Jeenah, executive director of the Afro-Middle East Centre in Johannesburg, South Africa told IPS. "Mercenaries, of course, are extremely useful because the regular army forces include conscripts -- who can easily leave their posts and join the uprising. Mercenaries work for money and have no compunction about whom they kill."About one and a half million Sub-Saharan African migrants and refugees, out of a population of nearly two to two and a half million migrants, work as cheap labour in Libya's oil industry, agriculture, construction and other service sectors.
However, this is not the first time Libya's most vulnerable immigrant population has fallen victim to racist attacks. In 2000, dozens of migrant workers from Ghana, Cameroon, Sudan, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad and Nigeria were targeted during street killings in the wake of government officials blaming them for rising crime, disease and drug trafficking.
...
Experts argue that though a taboo subject, racism is not confined to Libya; it is found throughout the Arab world, and stems from historical linkages of the Arab slave trade to the way blacks were used during European colonisation in the region.
In his study titled, 'Perceptions of Race in the Arab world', Mark Perry says: "The past and present trade in African slaves to the Arab world has left a long and bitter memory in African society to this day. Black Africa was the earliest source for slaves and the last great reservoir to dry up; already in the 640s slaves were part of the 'non-aggression pact' between Arab conquerors and Nubian rulers, while as late as 1910 slave caravans were still arriving in Benghazi from Wadai (in Chad). "Scholar Elizabeth Thompson adds that French colonisation of Syria and Lebanon was charged with racial overtones due to the use of West African soldiers. "The Senegalese would become a regular target of nationalist propaganda in sexualised and racialised imagery that fused men's gender anxieties with outrage at French domination."
Think Africa Press continues along the same lines, expanding to other parts of North Africa:
Beyond Mercenaries: Racism In North Africa
Yet the problem of racism goes beyond institutions and governments as a number of articles published online suggest. Writing in December 2008 and describing racism as "the Arab world's dirty little secret", the Egyptian activist and writer Mona El-Tahawy described an incident on a train in Cairo in which a South Sudanese lady was harassed by two "white" Arabs on a train because of the colour of her skin. Other accounts describe how migrant workers from Burkina Faso, Ghana, Sudan, Cameroon, Niger and Chad have suffered daily abuse at the hands of Egyptian Arabs; some have been shouted at, spat on and even stabbed at as they go about their business in the streets.
In 2004, the Tunisian journalist Affet Mosbah wrote for Jeune Afriquedescribing the difficulties of being black and Tunisian. She talked of the widespread custom of calling black Arabs "oussif" or "abid", Arabic terms that refer back to the black slaves common in the Middle East until the beginning of the twentieth century. She talks about how this mentality is so embedded in people's minds that they think nothing of calling their black friends by these terms and are blind to see how they might cause offence. Tunisia, like its other Arabic neighbours in North Africa, has a significant black population as well as migrant workers from sub-Saharan Africa, although their exact numbers are unknown. They are noticeably absent from Tunis' up-and-coming neighbourhoods, and are largely found housed in cheap, overcrowded accommodation in run-down areas such as La Goulette.
Every year the University of Rabat welcomes a large number of students from sub-Saharan Africa on its degree programmes. Every year these students complain that they suffer from racial discrimination from Arab students at the university and from the city's inhabitants at large. They face such prejudice that they choose to live with only other black African students and socialise separately from their Arab classmates. It could be argued that Morocco's historical and political situation may be responsible for this bigotry; although France banned slavery during its protectorate, the Royal Court never officially abolished it, meaning that people still see black Moroccans descended from African slaves as belonging to a lower class. One researcher has explained that Morocco’s recent history may go some way to explaining hostility to Africans from outside of the Maghreb: Morocco withdrew from the African Union after the Polisario Front was recognised by states like Cameroon. Could this hostility have filtered down from government to public? Tensions over the Western Sahara may run high but this explanation seems a little pat.
As we herald an "Arab spring" ...let us not forget that Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco are on the continent of Africa and as such, those citizens within their borders - are not all Arabs. We spend a lot of time addressing "race" and racism here in the US, but often pay little attention to it elsewhere.
I have not forgotten the day I walked into a pâtisserie in Algiers, accompanied by a very dark-skinned brother who was visiting us at the Panther headquarters. The owner spat in my face. He mistook me for an Algerian woman consorting with "a black".
It was a learning experience.
Let us hope that while we support the winds of change...that other deeper changes take place as well.
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Some were weeping. Others were taking pictures of the statue and each other and giving high-fives, lending the unveiling of the memorial the feeling of one big block party. Washington Post: King memorial opens to the public
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The first members of the public to see the official opening of Washington’s new $120 million memorial to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. walked in quietly, smiling but “so slow it was like we were coming to see a body,” said Weldon Ferguson of the District.
What they saw instead was stone and water, words and an iconic image on a picture-perfect summer day along the Tidal Basin.
Some were weeping. Others were taking pictures of the statue and each other and giving high-fives, lending the unveiling of the memorial the feeling of one big block party.
“It’s beautiful, exquisite,” said Paulette Davis of Washington. “I’m remembering where he led us. This exceeded my expectations.”
More than 25 years in the making, the granite memorial features a 30-foot-tall statue of King on a landscaped parcel on the northwest shore of the Tidal Basin, just southwest of the World War II Memorial.
The Martin Luther King Jr. memorial was 25 years in the making. (Nikki Kahn - THE WASHINGTON POST)
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As we started to discuss on Friday Boston Globe: New study identifies stark racial gaps in funding of biomedical research
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Black scientists applying for grants from the nation’s premier underwriter of biomedical research are dramatically less likely to receive funds than their white counterparts, according to a new study revealing stark racial disparities at the highest levels of science.
The study, published today in the journal Science, triggered immediate action to address and understand the root of the problem from top officials at the National Institutes of Health, the funding agency studied. The findings stunned Boston researchers, who said the results have implications that transcend the realms of science and medicine.
“That is incredibly alarming to me,” said Dr. Selwyn O. Rogers, division chief of trauma, burns, and surgical critical care at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Black scientists who are competing for grants, he said, have already overcome many hurdles known to contribute to racial disparities in achievement. “Once you’ve broken those barriers, I think most Americans would believe the playing field would be level,” Rogers said. “If this is the elite, and you can find this achievement gap, what is it like for the rest of America?”
The gap between black and white scientists could not be explained by differences in training, the home institution of a researcher, the number of papers a scientist had written, or even their scientific influence, as measured by the number of times their work had been cited by other scientists. The bottom line remained: If 100 white scientists apply for a grant, about 30 would be likely to get one; if 100 black scientists applied, about 20 would be successful, the study found.
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Peru's populist President Ollanta Humala broke a significant racial barrier by naming world-renowned singer Susana Baca as his minister of culture. New York Times: Peru Names First Black Cabinet Member
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This is the first time that an Afro-Peruvian or a singer has been named to the presidential cabinet in Peru and is a significant step for a country that has long discriminated against its black population. Baca has devoted her career to preserving the rich African-influenced folk culture of coastal Peru.
Ms. Baca was 51 and working in relative obscurity when David Byrne discovered her in the mid-1990s and put her stirring rendition of "Maria Lando" on his compilation "Soul of Black Peru."
Since then she has recorded six albums on Mr. Byrne's label, Luaka Bop, and her reputation as an ambassador of Afro-Peruvian music to the rest of the world has grown. She won a Latin Grammy in 2002 for best folk album when a European label reissued "Lamento Negro," the forgotten record she had made at the Egrem studio in Cuba in 1986.
Critics have lauded the plangent quality of her voice and the way she plays with folk forms, combining rhythms of different genres and tinkering with traditional lyrics, sometimes even setting poetry to folk tunes.
This is an important step in a region that has often pretended that its black citizens don't exist.
Peru's new minister of culture. (AFP/Getty Images)
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Church leaders have a big role to play in steering young rioters away from violence crime and hopelessness. The Voice: The Black Church Must Respond To Disaffected Youth
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THE NATION has been on a roller coaster of emotions during the past nine days. Who would have thought that a peaceful protest outside Tottenham Police station about the shooting of Marc Duggan would have sparked full scale riots? They started in Tottenham and spread across the country, causing mayhem, fear and pounds worth of damage.
Postcode wars were forgotten as gangs, young people of all races, with nothing better to do, and some older people too, battled with police and took advantage of the disorder they caused on the streets to loot and steal. In the process businesses were destroyed, buildings burned to the ground and cars overturned out as young people went on the rampage. It was a sad, painful and terrifying sight.
Those of us who have watched as young people have been killing each other on the streets for the smallest slights should not really be surprised at what’s happened, because the signs have been there. And there’s no doubt that the heady mix of youth disaffection, anger, poverty, poor parenting, educational underachievement and a lack of godliness and morality combusted into a heady cocktail of public disorder.
The question now being asked is where do we go from here? And Christians are asking what can we do? How can we make a difference?
Thankfully the incidents of the past few days has encouraged Christians to join in unity and hold prayer meetings across the country asking God to help them bring about change and social transformation in their communities.
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Exasperated with the first African-American president, the Congressional Black Caucus says it’s time to emulate the Tea Party. Patricia Murphy on its vow to adopt get-tough tactics. The Daily Beast: Obama’s Black Backlash
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With a stinging budget defeat behind them and unemployment in the black community soaring to 16 percent, members of the Congressional Black Caucus say they’re done waiting for Barack Obama to fight their battles for them.
Instead, the 43 African-American lawmakers say they’re taking matters into their own hands and will carry the fight to Tea Party Republicans, whom they blame for Obama’s latest lurch to the right.
“The Tea Party discovered something. That is if they organize, if they talk loud enough, if they threaten, if they register to vote and elect a few people, they can take over the Congress of the United States,” said Rep. Maxine Waters. “They called our bluff and we blinked. We should have made them walk the plank.”
Waters was speaking in Atlanta, a stop on the CBC’s five-city job fair and town-hall tour now making its way across the country.
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Editor
Bay Area Rapid Tranist police officers have killed four unarmed patrons this year. Protests have mounted after the killing of a well known homeless man recently; and in response, BART jammed cell and wireless service at and around downtown San Francisco BART and MUNI stations. A recent tactic used by despots and petty dictatorships to stamp down dissent and direct democratic action from elsewhere in the world, but the first time a government agency in the U.S. has admitted to doing so.
Riding home late the other night, I mentioned the paramilitary behavior of the BART constabulary and was taken to task by two fellow riders who saw nothing untoward by the police. Anticipating such an exchange, I had been carrying a photo I took of a Honduran paramilitary from my time there, a news clipping of the paramilitary from apartheid South Africa and a recent news clipping of a BART police officer during a protest.
"Which one is the BART police?" I asked.
"None of them?" the two demurred. "and anyway, we don't see anything wrong with any of these law enforcers doing what is necessary to keep us safe."
"So," I stated flatly, "you're both believers in the Stasi Quo."
The train was loud and it was difficult to hear properly, but they both exuberantly nodded their heads in the affirmative.
Letter to the Local Police
Dear Sirs:
I have been enjoying the law and order of our
community throughout the past three months since
my wife and I, our two cats, and miscellaneous
photographs of the six grandchildren belonging to
our previous neighbors (with whom we were very
close) arrived in Saratoga Springs which is clearly
prospering under your custody
Indeed, until yesterday afternoon and despite my
vigilant casting about, I have been unable to discover
a single instance of reasons for public-spirited concern,
much less complaint
You may easily appreciate, then, how it is that
I write to your office, at this date, with utmost
regret for the lamentable circumstances that force
my hand
Speaking directly to the issue of the moment:
I have encountered a regular profusion of certain
unidentified roses, growing to no discernible purpose,
and according to no perceptible control, approximately
one quarter mile west of the Northway, on the southern
side
To be specific, there are practically thousands of
the aforementioned abiding in perpetual near riot
of wild behavior, indiscriminate coloring, and only
the Good Lord Himself can say what diverse soliciting
of promiscuous cross-fertilization
As I say, these roses, no matter what the apparent
background, training, tropistic tendencies, age,
or color, do not demonstrate the least inclination
toward categorization, specified allegiance, resolute
preference, consideration of the needs of others, or
any other minimal traits of decency
May I point out that I did not assiduously seek out
this colony, as it were, and that these certain
unidentified roses remain open to viewing even by
children, with or without suitable supervision
(My wife asks me to append a note as regards the
seasonal but nevertheless seriously licentious
phenomenon of honeysuckle under the moon that one may
apprehend at the corner of Nelson and Main
However, I have recommended that she undertake direct
correspondence with you, as regards this: yet
another civic disturbance in our midst)
I am confident that you will devise and pursue
appropriate legal response to the roses in question
If I may aid your efforts in this respect, please
do not hesitate to call me into consultation
Respectfully yours,
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-- June Jordan
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See Adept2u's diary:
RIP Nick Ashford
The Front porch is now open with a tribute