By Nuradin Jilani
The famous Nigerian author Chinua Achebe wrote this essay in 1968 explaining his involvement in the secessionist cause of Biafra, Eastern Nigeria.
My intention in revisiting that sad event now is to draw conclusions from Achebe’s experience in the Biafran war as a fellow African who now confronts (in Ethiopian occupied Ogaden) something similar to the ethnic cleansing and massacre Achebe’s people, the Igbos, had gone through at the hands of the Federal Government of Nigeria in 1967, and how that ‘tragic event’ had radically changed Achebe’s views and attitude towards his native country Nigeria and transformed him from a nationalist Nigerian writer to a rebel fighting for a secessionist cause.
The African Creative Writer
Achebe begins his essay by examining the role of the creative African writer and says that an artist is someone with ‘heightened sensitivities’, a person who “must be aware of the faintest nuances of injustice in human relations.” He adds: “The African creative writer who tries to avoid the big social and political issues of contemporary Africa will end up being completely irrelevant—like that absurd man in the proverb who leaves his burning house to pursue a rat fleeing from the flames.”
In order to analyze the roots of the present dilemma confronted by Africa and her writers, Achebe goes back to the past in a typical Orwellian "He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future" and thereon connects the dots.
Achebe divides the ‘European menace’ of Africa in the last four hundred years into three periods: the slave trade; colonization; and decolonization. Each period had its defining feature. During the period of Slavery, the ‘basic assumption’ behind that horrible practice was a “belief that the slave is somewhat less than human,” argues Achebe. This basic assumption of superiority exists even today and governs how Europe deals with Africa, “in somewhat attenuated form,” he adds.
The African creative writer’s response to these pressures (of slavery, colonization, decolonization) equally came in three phases. According to Achebe, an ex-slave by the name Olauda Equiano (pen name Gustavus Vassar the African) was the first African writer in English language to respond “to Europe’s first assault on the life and dignity of Africans during the period of the slave trade” in an autobiography he wrote in 1789 which was published in London. Achebe says Equiano’s ‘primary concerns’ in writing that autobiography was “to do battle against those fundamental assumptions” in European thought and practice of African inferiority at the time and concludes: “Equiano then represents the African writers’ response to Europe’s first assault on the life and dignity of Africans during the period of the slave trade”.
The second period - which was the middle period - culminated in that infamous Berlin Conference of 1884 when “European statesmen met in Berlin and simply divided the land of the blacks among themselves.” This period was characterized by European attitudes of ‘arrogance, contempt, and levity’ towards Africans. The creative African writer’s response to the arrogant European colonizers of this period was fierce, combative and defiant, not only asserting their dignity and honor but also accusing Europeans of the ‘rape and murder’ of Africa.
The Cameroonian poet David Diop was one of the most vocal and fierce representatives of African creative writers of this period. Repudiating the Whiteman’s moral justification for colonizing Africa (the jargon of ‘civilizing the savage races’ of black Africa) best represented by the imperial poet Richard Kipling’s ‘The Whiteman’s Burden’, and the French notion of La mission civilisatrice, Diop wrote:
The white man killed my father
My father was strong
The white man raped my mother
My mother was beautiful
Thus by characterizing as Rape and Murder the self-righteous European notion of enslaving and colonizing Africans for their benefit and advancement, Diop was describing how the colonized Africans felt, literally and figuratively, towards this ‘civilizing’ European colonial mission in its basic manifestation. As such, he was only putting into words their horrible experience at hands of those supposedly enlightened European colonizers. But there were other writers who adopted a more ‘conciliatory’ tone (“no accusations of rape and murder”), like Léopold Sédar Senghor of Senegal, in the hope that “once a good case had been made for [their] people’s culture and institutions, the rest could be left to the good sense of the reader,” notes Achebe.
Notwithstanding their little differences however, the creative African writers of the middle period on the whole had risen to the task of both battling the ‘arrogance and contempt’ of European colonialism and in showcasing the beautiful side of their people and culture at the same time.
This brings us to the period of independence. Achebe lists a litany of the things that went wrong shortly after independence in Nigeria and shows how Britain “made certain on the eve of their departure that power went to that conservative element in the country which had played no part in the struggle for independence.” He was referring to the mainly Muslim Northern elite of Nigeria who dominated that country’s politics after independence. However this situation was not unique to Nigeria; it was experienced by many African states after they were granted ‘flag independence’. The postcolonial African state - its geographic composition, makeup, constituent parts, and the elite that were tasked to run it - was not an expression of Africans but colonialist imposition. The intention was, as Achebe correctly notes, to “ensure Nigeria’s obedience even unto freedom”. And what was true for Nigeria was true also for other African states as ethnic based conflicts flared up in several parts of the continent due to the unequal distribution of power and resources.
When the great expectations of independence did not materialize for Nigeria and the nation sunk deep into corruption, misrule and nepotism, the creative Nigerian writer could not keep quiet about this sad state of affairs – and this is the reason, Achebe says, he wrote Man of the People, a devastating novel depicting the Nigerian situation of the time.
Of this period, Achebe notes, the Nigerian writer “found that the independence his country was supposed to have won was totally without content. The old white master was still in power. He had got himself a bunch of black stooges to do his dirty work for a commission.
As long as they did what was expected of them they would be praised for their sagacity and their country for its stability.”
However things changed (or at least seemed to have changed) after the army seized power in a military coup in 1966 and Nigerians celebrated the fall of the hated regime. This jubilation did not last long however as there was a counter coup a mere few months later which led to the Nigerian civil-war.
The plotters of the counter-coup had made sure from the start to portray the initial coup plotters and their supporters as “a sinister plot by the ambitious Ibos of the East to seize control of Nigeria.” As a result the Igbos found themselves deliberately targeted, rounded up and thrown into jails. A civil war was ignited and thousands of Nigerians, mostly Easterners, were killed in the ensuing chaos. “In short,” says Achebe, “thirty thousand citizens were slaughtered, hundreds of thousands were wounded, maimed and violated, their homes and property looted and burned; and no one asked any questions.”
It was in this terrible situation that Achebe, together with the young poet Christopher Okigbo, who later died in the war, and other intellectuals from Eastern Nigeria, fled to Igbo land and joined what was to become the Biafra secessionist movement.
After listing the atrocities committed against his people (the Igbos) in Biafra, Achebe concludes his long essay by saying: “Biafra stands in opposition to the murder and rape of Africa by whites and blacks alike because she has tasted both and found them equally bitter.” David Diop, the African writer who described the European colonialism of Africa as rape and murder, Achebe notes, “unfortunately died too young. He would have known that the black man can also murder and rape.”
Ogaden
In the Ethiopian occupied Ogaden region, rape and murder is the order of the day. Hardly a day goes by without another addition to the horrors experienced by the Ogadens at the hands of their African colonizers. In there the Ethiopian troops are conducting a massive campaign of ethnic cleansing which the Human Rights Watch described in a report published in 2008 as amounting to Collective Punishment, War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity. In this scorched earth campaign, entire villages are razed to the ground and their inhabitants maimed; those who’re lucky to escape the carnage and flee to towns are rounded up, put in jails and subjected to cruel mediaeval torture methods. Many do not survive to tell tales of their horrific experience. Rape of young girls by Ethiopian troops is widespread. International media and NGOs are denied access to the region. People are summarily executed and their dead corpses displayed in town centers and denied burial. This is done to terrorize and frighten them into submission. As of late, there are factual reports of innocent civilians thrown into graves and buried alive, while others are burned alive. If one were to ask the Ogaden people today to compare (though comparisons of miseries are inherently immoral) their experience under successive black Ethiopian colonialism to that of the departed Europeans colonizers before them, no doubt the answer would be: “The black Ethiopian colonizers are more savage and inhuman than Europeans.”
Until recently, buildings worth the name, mosques, hospitals, and roads in Ogaden, were those that were built by Europeans, mostly the Italians during their short stay in the region. Our people have habit of saying, “The only thing we get from the Amharic speaking highlanders is death and destruction.”
That is the undeniable hard truth and the verdict of Ogadens about this nation that claims to have a history of resistance against European colonialism and a rich pan Africanist tradition - claims which do not stand to scrutiny. Ethiopia was spared of European colonialism because the rulers of that country collaborated with the colonizers, except briefly when they were made to fight on the side of the Allied Nations against the Italians in the European war of 1941. Somalis were not because they resisted and fought against the combined forces of European colonizers eversince the Whiteman set foot in their land; and when they were crushed by the superior weaponry of the invaders, they were placed under the rule of the collaborators. There is a rich history of Ethiopian kings writing letters to European powers in the ‘Scrabble for Africa’ and asking them to receive their share, as a price for collaboration, of the divided Somali lands. That is how the Ogaden ended up in their hands.
The present rulers of Ethiopia, the TPLF, are able to get away with all the murder and mayhem they’re committing in Ogaden and in Somalia - as did the previous rulers of Ethiopia in their time - mainly because they’re the darling of the West and have cleverly crafted a fictitious image of a nation facing threats to its ‘security’ from violent Islamic extremists in the Horn of Africa. The previous kings use to say “we are a Christian island in an Islamic sea” to win Western plaudits. Melez Zenawi has aligned his interests, like the Kings, Emperors, and other rules of Ethiopia before him, with those of the dominant Western powers of today.
In an article he wrote in 1978 titled “Which Way to the Sea, Please?” the famous Somali writer Nurrudin Farah shows how the pretext changes, depending the circumstances of the time, but the agenda of every Ethiopia ruler – and hence the assured backing he gets from the Western powers of his time - stays the same: expansion, domination and oppression. That was the ‘idea of Ethiopia’, and still is even now, in the national consciousness of its elite.
However lately there are Ethiopians (mostly highlanders) who have become themselves victims when the crimes committed in their name in the faraway lands of the Somalis and other ethnic groups boomeranged on them. They want to establish in its place an Ethiopia of rule of law, equality and democracy, a country at peace with itself and its surroundings. The Tigrean TPLF promised also some like this before and had even written in its token constitution that every Ethiopian shall have equal rights - something that did not materialize in practice.
In conclusion, to rephrase Chinua Achebe, we in Ogaden stand in opposition to the murder and rape of our country by both whites and blacks alike and found them equally bitter.
However, we Ogadens are saying to those who want to bring about a just and beautiful Ethiopia and replace the current Tigreyan tyranny, the same thing Mohamed Hassan of Canadian Center for Ogaden Research and Advocacy (CONCORA) said in the Toronto gathering dubbed ‘Unity is Power’. We do so consciously knowing that we cannot easily forget the over hundred years of brutality and savagery we have been subjected to in the name of Ethiopia – the rape and murder of country.
However, ‘now is not the time’ to quarrel about the past and fight over who is a real Ethiopian or not. As the late Gambian born pan-African poet, Lenrie Peters, wrote in a poem in another context:
But now is not the time to
To lay wreaths
For yesterday’s crimes,
Night threatens
Time dissolves
And there is no acquaintance
With tomorrow...
To argue about the past will divide the voices of the future and prolong this tyranny we all want to topple. As the late Nigerian poet, Christopher Okigbo, wrote in a poem, Path of Thunder, celebrating the overthrow of the corrupted civilian government in 1966 and forewarning the dangers that lay ahead for the nation:
Alas! the elephant has fallen –
Hurrah for thunder –
But already the hunters are talking about pumpkins:
If they share the meat let them remember thunder.
Just as we intend to say Hurrah! when this regime falls, we must not become the hunters which Okigbo spoke about. Let us remember to share the meat equitably – that includes the option to exercise ‘the inalienable right’ to self-determination for those who are unsatisfied with their part of the national meat. As Mohamed Hassan said in Toronto, “We must know what we’re uniting for as we know what we’re uniting against.” Unity of purpose.
References:
1) Chinua Achebe, “The African Writer and Biafran Cause” (1968)
2) Nurrudin Farah, “Which Way to the Sea, Please?” (1978)
3) Lenrie Peters, “We have come home” (Satellites: Poems, 1967, p. 15)
4) Christopher Okigbo by Sunday O. Anozie (1972, p.176)
5) A lecture by Mohamed Hassan of the Canadian Center for Ogaden Research and Advocacy (CONCORA).
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written by BASHIR, May 21, 2011
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written by Jamale, May 23, 2011
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written by Dalmar Bundid, May 23, 2011
As I was reading your article, I could not help but wonder how the Ethiopian highlanders have subjugated other Africans such as Oromo's, Afari's, Somalis etc in the past. In particular the Amhara's have forced themselves on everyone else to the point that whole ethnic groups assimilated into Amhara's; identity lost, language obliterated, cultures assimilate. Having tasted their own medicine, I wonder how they feel now?
In the course of my reading, I also reflected on the European colonialists and how much they (may) have changed over the course of history. Did they change at all in the way they view the African? The only conclusion I came to was that they neither changed nor have any indication to do so. Europe and the west in general have a tremendous power over African leadership. To get their way with our resources they support despots including Meles Zenawi, Robert Mugabe, Gaddafi until recently, Mubarak etc. When popular uprising by people come to the fore they easily switch sides. They are hypocrites!
On the situation of Ethiopia, I have recently commented on this page when someone reported on Ethiopians protesting in Toronto identifying Ogaden Somalis as part of the Ethiopian nation. I could not understand how we (Ogaden Somalis) came to be Ethiopians? In particular how we can build common front with Amhara's who have stolen our land, raped our woman, killed our people. How could we even think of such alliance as with those who annexed our land into Ethiopia in the first place!
In retrospect I feel that I could have given much different contribution. While we Ogaden Somalis have serious issues that require political settlement, perhaps we can present a leadership view that could unite Ethiopian masses including both oppressed and the oppressor in building a common future. To may, including me of few months ago, this may sound far fetched. But if our South African brethren had the capacity to forgive centuries of white minority colonialism; why can we not? At least given the fact Amhara's are not even from a far away continent but rather our very own neighbours!
My question to you Mr. Jilani is, given that Ogaden Somalis have the moral high ground over their highlander compatriots, are you ready to lead Ethiopia? Can Ogadeni Somalis rise above the disappointments of the past and usher Ethiopia into a new reality where the rule of the law is supreme. Where the human rights of all is protected? Where all are equal in front of the law! Can the Ogaden Somalis ever change from the victim mentality into victors and leaders?
I will keep checking on this post for your answer! May all oppressed peoples triumph over their oppressors! May justice be served for all!
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written by Kamaal haji Hassan, May 23, 2011
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written by Liban, May 23, 2011
Our ancestors have struggled for 110 years to get Ogaden independence we cant throw this away. We are still getting raped, killed, discriminated on our own land. We are Somalis and Somalia is our country, we need to get independence from the Amharas and Tigrays by force and join our Somali brethren and help our brethren aswell in the NFD of Kenya.
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written by Caasha cali, May 23, 2011
waxaa ii cadaatay inay tahay oo kaliya halgan diimeed oo aan qowmiyad ku salaysnayn ee diin ku salaysan inuu ahaa kii waagaasna lagu jabiyay haatanna lagu jabin karo.
anigu ma ahi nin wadaad ah, mana aaminsani wax diin ah haba yaraatee, oo waxaan ku qanacsanahay in aadamuhu ka tadawuray noole isaga ka horeeyay, asalka noolha oo dhanna uu ka bilowday noole hal unugle ahaa, taasoo salka ku haysa fikradda (molecular evolution). Waxaan arrintan u caddaysanaa si aydaan iigu malaynin inaan taageersanahay wadaadada.
Hase yeeshee waxaa ii muuqata duruufaha jira awgood inayna manta laba arrimood wax u dhaxeeyaa jirin.
Waa arrinta koobaade, waa inaan wax la qabsanno itoobiyaanka kale, oo aan iska ogolaanno inaynu noqonno second class citizen. Maxaa yeelay reer galbeedkan aan kabaha u qaadayno ee markuu ina yiraahdo wadaadka walaalkaa ah soo dil aynu nacamta gurayno, dan kale nagama lahee waxay rabaan inuu dhidibada u aaso ( Multicultural Ethiopia) oo stable ah.
Haddii aynaan taas ogolayn, waa inaynaan kalareebin axmaar iyo aabihiis oo reergalbeeda oo aan gacmaha qabsanaa nimankaa alshabaab ee dadkoodii gubaya, oo aynu nidhaahnaa war anagaa gaalo dhab ah idiin haynee go’nahayn kaalaya oo nala jaffa, carab iyo cajam waxaad u yeedhan kartaanna u yeedha, oo aynu halkaa dab kaga shidno. ileen cadawgaaga cadawgiisu waa saaxiibkaaye.
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written by kamaal hassan, May 24, 2011
Waa maangal in la is weydiiyo tolow reergalbaadku axmaaray gar iyo gardarraba ku raaceene ma haboontahay inaan garab kale raadsanno. hase yeeshe waxaan u malaynayaa kuwaas aad carrabka ku dhufatay in laga roonyahay, sababtuwa waxa weeye, waa marka koobaade hadee iyagaaban garab haysan oo waxynu noqonaynaa labo qaawani isma qaaddo. waa midda labaade hadii aan dalkeenna ku beerno ururadan diimaha eexagjirka ah, waxay naqu noqonayaan sida kansarka oo kale, oo hadday dalka ku dhashaan waxay u fidaan si xaddhaaf ah waxay cadawga u dhimaanna waxaa ka badan waxay gacalka u dhimaan taasna waa mid taariikhda ku cad.
Dad badan oo asxaabtayda ah, oo aan la sheekaysto ayaa haatan waxay ii muujiyeen inay wadnaha farta ku hayaan, oo ay ka walwalayaan saamaynta uu ururka isdhiibay ee UWSLF ku yeelan doono dadweynaha reer ogaadeenia. Waxaa u muuqata inay isku dayi doonaan inay xoogga saaraan dacwada oo ah sidii xididada loogu siibi lahaa diinta macaan ee islaamka ilbaxa ah ee dadkeenu ku dhaqmaan, Taasoo abuuri doonta shacab badawi ah oo ay diin u tahay habdhaqanka wahaabiyiinta ee laga soo minguuriyay reerguuraaga badwida carabta.
Waxaa jira dadyow badan oo muslim iyo gaalaba isugu jira oo biyodiidsan habka reergalbeedku u dhaqmayaan ee laba wajiilenimada ah, kuwaas ayaa mudan in garab laga dhigto , maxaa yeelay waxa hubaal ah inay iyagu noqonanayaan hogaamiyayaalka mustaqbalka dhow.
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written by Nick, May 24, 2011
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written by najib, June 06, 2011
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written by Canada Goose Coats, September 29, 2011
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