African Unification Front
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FLAWED ETHNIC CLASSIFICATIONS EXCERBATE CONFLICT IN AFRICA
QUESTIONABLE AND DESCREDITED COLONIAL MYTHS
LEGACY OF DEADLY ANTHROPOLOGY
Africa's most violent large scale conflicts manifest a virulent misinterpretation of group consciousness constructed along lines of colonial classification of African ethnicity. The classification divides Africans into three groups, Hamite, Bantu, and Nilote. This is a devastating racial coding based on erroneous assumptions advanced by racial supremacists and misguided scholars.
A tribe in cultural anthropology, is a theoretical type of human social organization based on small groups defined by traditions of common descent and having temporary or permanent political integration above the family level and a shared language, culture, and ideology. In the ideal model of a tribe, members typically share a tribal name and a contiguous territory; they work together in such joint endeavours as trade, agriculture, house construction, warfare, and ceremonial activities. Tribes are usually composed of a number of smaller local communities (e.g., bands, villages, or neighborhoods) and may be aggregated into higher-order clusters, called nations.
As an ideal type, the tribe is regarded by cultural evolutionists as the form of social organization that developed into a stratified society and, eventually, into the type of social organization known as the primitive state. As an ideal type, the tribe derives its unity not from a territorial identity but from a sense of extended kinship.
Few ethnographically known tribes possess all the characteristics of the ideal, or model, tribe. The Amba of Uganda are considered to be one tribe although they speak two mutually unintelligible languages; the Zuni "tribe" consists of only one community; the Dorobo of Kenya live scattered among the Nandi and Masai, for whom they hunt and perform ritual services.
As an anthropological term, the word tribe fell out of favour in the latter part of the 20th century. Some anthropologists rejected the term itself, on the grounds that it could not be precisely defined. Others objected to the negative connotations the word acquired in the colonial context. African scholars, in particular, felt that the term was pejorative as well as inaccurate. Thus, many anthropologists replaced it with the designation ethnic group, usually defined as a group of people with a common ancestry and language, a shared cultural and historical tradition, and an identifiable territory.
The use of the term ethnic group can also be misleading and is particularly inappropriate, where a person's extended kinship ties may be more important than his village or region of origin in establishing his identity and claim to citizenship, land ownership, or other community rights and entitlements.
DECONSTRUCTING THE RACIALISATION OF AFRICA
These are the facts as regards the state of African groups:
[1] There is no concensus on the delimitations of what constitutes the African 'Tribe' or ethnic group. The slave traders, colonial authorities, and post independence African governments, faced with the problem of inconsistent delimitation, banned the unifying supratribal and superethnic multinatinational institutions that were prevalent all over Africa prior to colonial occupation. Colonialists enforced a limiting and debilitating form of tribal identity along European traditions. These developments tended to alienate and isolate communities, and to instil a tribal/ethnic identity.
[2] The conventional definition of tribe/ethnic group cannot even be approximated in reality anywhere in Africa. Because of the 'heritance' structure of African society we have different concepts of what constitutes 'a people', and in Africa the majority of peoples described as tribes are in fact not tribes at all, but are "publics" (even in those cases where the pre-colonial/pre-slavery political structures of groups were based on kinship and not on the civic body or the "res publica"). Essentially because of exogamy, many families don't belong in a definable class under the definitions.
[3] Wilhelm Blake claimed to have described the largest ethno-linguistic group in Africa. But 'Bantu' does not constitute a coherent genepool, nor even a weak bloodline, and most definitely Bantu do not constitute an identifiable cultural group, sharing internal consistency or bonds. Two Bantu groups can be far removed from each other, that it would not make sense to identify them as more closely related, than say each is related to a supposedly non-bantu group, who may be their neighbours.
[4] The Four major language categories in Africa, including the Congo-Benue linguistic formation (of which Bantu and several Nilotic languages are branches), are primarily adjuncts of an extinct language referred to as proto-Kordofanian. This proto-language(s) became at one time the dominant language of the continent (or has become, through dessemination of its daughter languages), but more importantly all of Africans alive today, have inherited cultural and linguistic elements from all ancient African nations, and it is futile and racist to continue trying to identify pure bloodlines.
[5] Lastly, even a cursory examination of the pre-colonial demographic and migratory patterns of Africans will leave you in no doubt that Africans are essentially one people, and have a keen sense of historic belonging that has practical implications in terms of community. Our collective culture is so thoroughly developed that it is possible to say that someone or something (mannerism, artefact) is African without necessarily knowing where specifically it originates.
CONCLUSION
Africa is a product an old process of ancient national alliances, and the African people you think most different from you are not far removed from you in a variety of crosscutting themes, sensibilities, and bloodlines. African culture, and its variagated manifestions, has remarkable internal consistency. Africans are blessed with a thousand "complementary" linguistic and cultural and genetic nuances. Local distictions between groups are in fact minor distinctions within the wider procession of African cultural responses to ancient crises and opportunities.
Africans are a people, the same nation, despite the superficial differences in appearance and culture. We are more alike than we can articulate (and sometimes the only way to trace our past is by understanding other Africans, especially the ones we may think most different from ourselves. When we become separated from other communities we are robbing ourselves of our own roots and genes.
If you are an African you have only fiction to go on if you define your ancestral relationships with others based on differences between your languages, or cultures, or physical appearances. Moreover the presumptive use of Aphaean (non-Africa) cultural modes as a way to identify the future course of events in Africa is akin to standing on a highway overpass and pointing out that green cars will go further than red cars, and that blue cars have no destination of importance. The colours and speed of cars are not designed to tell you much about the things that matter to the drivers, and people who do not understand Africans are like that man on the highway overpass.
END
Ex Unitate Vires
COMMENTARYby Dan Kashagama
DEFUSING THE HAMITE-NEGRO-NILOTE CONCEPTION
The conventional use of the terms 'Hamite', 'Bantu', 'Nilote', are misleading & inaccurate. Common negrophobic conventions have merely been transposed onto an academic plane to give crude racist notions some respectability. In fact the studies that fit Africans into these categories are marked by a pervasive lack of intellectual riguor, as well as lack of knowledge of Africans. None of the chief proponents of these theories have lived in Africa, nor do they speak the languages they purport to classify.
Relying on a pervasive racist myth of the origin of black slavery, an American anthropologist, C.G Seligman advanced the argument that the whites had gone to Africa intermarried and produced a nation of "black-skinned" whites. He appropriated the name Hamites for these 'white-blacks', and claimed that other blacks were not Hamites, but merely Negroes who constitute a subhuman species.
This theory came about because of the misreading of a biblical text, in combination with political rivalries dating back to the crusades. The term 'Hamite' derives from 'Ham' one of the mythical 'Sons of Noah' who was a biblical archetype. In the bible the blacks are referred to as the children/people of Ham (or as Hamites). Africa is the 'Land of Ham (Khem)'. Consider analogies in biblical lingo, "the Children of Israel", the 'Land of Shem' etc,.
Ham is the ancient Egyptian word for Africans. Africa and Egypt have many names in ancient times, but they are interchangeably called 'Khemet'. Before Seligman, every black person was a Khemet, Hamite, etc i.e., a child of Ham, also Hem, Kem, Kham or Kem. Egypt is a Greek corruption of the phrase "Hiku Ptah" meaning Spirit Temple of the god Ptah. The temple of Ptah was a popular destination located in the north, and foreigners came to know the region by the name of the temple. In fact the whole of what is now Africa (including Egypt) was called Khemet (ie. the land of Ham). It was subdivided into different regions, eg Ta Meht, Ta Resu, Ta She, Ta Seti.
The going view among modern anthropologists and archaelogists is that the groups that Seligman and others identified as Hamite are not descendants of Europeans at all, but are indegenous to Africa. In otherwords, Hamites are NOT Europeans in black skin, and all Africans are Hamites.
The human physical structures that were identified in the early 20th century by anthropologists as proof of European descent (acquiline features, narrow cheek bones, high brows etc) are in fact indegenous to Africa and while a cursory examination might show superficial resemblence to some whites, these phenotypes (body features) are not exclusive to any community in Africa. No community fits seamlessly into these stereotypical phenotypes. Every group of people in Africa has people in it who fit these descriptions (in various combinations) and those who do not (even within the same family).
Moreover, there is no consistency in the selection of what groups are Hamitic and those that were supposedly pure Negro. Faced with a dilemma in terms of this arbitrary dichotomy, a series of "intermediate" classifications arose. These include such terms as Hamito-Semetic, Nilotic, Nilo-Hamitic, Negritic, Nilo-Semitic, Bantu, etc. However, these classifications are so problematic as to be useless as a means of identifying, with any consistency, any group or culture of Africans.
Anthropologists have more plausible explanations for Africans with Seligmans phenotypes. The technical term Hamitoid is now used to explain the supposed Europoid features of Africans. In otherwords Hamitoids are not European but rather European-looking. Unfortunately this attempt to correct the fault also is crippled by the established fallacy. But it is a small step forward. The African archaeological remains that fit this description are now refered to as "Hamitoids", to distinguish them from Seligman's misleading "Hamite" definition. Hamitoids are not Europeans in black skin, but are indigenous Africans who happen not to have features that were once considered stereotypically Negroid (racist caricature red-lips, bulging eyes, muscular frame, etc).
But this leaves us in a racist quandary in the court of public opinion. It is still common to hear people say such and such an African has "European" features. Yet in fact these features are not patented in Europe, they are as African as the Serengeti, or the Gambia, or the Etosha Pans. Africans require no European qualification - and it is unacceptable to refer gratuitously to Africans by fictional terms of reference.
The fact is that the so called 'Bantu' and 'Nilotes' are all equally the "Hamites" of the biblical sense, in the scientific sense, in the cultural sense, and most especially in the historic and political sense. It is possible to have any appearance however "refined" (another racist term that connotes beauty to be external to Africa) and still be African.
Africans have a wider genetic and phenotypical diversity than all of the rest of humanity combined, and an examination of the human genome map will indicate that Africans (even within the same family) have more varied genotypes and phenotypes, without having historic Aphaean (non-African) ancestry.
LEGISLATED EXOGAMY
The 'Reconstitution' and 'Amalgamation' of African nationalities, genotypes, and cultural systems, over many centuries have ensured that ethnic purity, in the supremacists' sense, is an impossibility in Africa. The normal order of group formation in Africa follows a highly advanced cultural process of assimilation. All ethnic groups in Africa are "legislated assimilates". This is because it is taboo to marry within one's own clan (tribe), and in some cases it is expected and was required that spouses belong to ethnic groups unrelated to oneself. Until the colonial occupation almost all African groups were exogamous by law.
THE BANTU
Wilhelm Blake, a European anthropologist is to blame for popularizing the 'Bantu' myth. Wilhelm Blake, coined the term 'Bantu' (he was wrong in the inferences he made from supposed similarities and differences between groups and the languages they spoke). Wilhelm's way of looking at Africans has left African's paralyzed in a false linguistic convention (essentially because scholars keep on repeating the old fallacies).
We know from historical observations that language acquisition among African groups is rather remarkable. One might return ten years later to find that a refugee population has adopted another language, and assimilated into a host group. This happened all across Africa during the struggles of resistence against slavery and colonial occupation.
Moreover, there are many groups that share relations and ancestry but yet speak languages unintelligeable to their closest kin. This is certainly the case in Central Africa where Bantu-speaking "Nilo-Hamites" (Luos) are found, next to their neighbours who retained the Luo languages. There are also Luo-speaking Bantu in parts of Eastern Africa, on account of the fact that Bantu are conventionally considered not just a language group, but also a race. The fact that the same region, was a central destination for migrants from far west as Sokoto, and the Gambia, that West African communities such as the Yoruba came from this region, and that it was a major migrantion route across the continent, and franky it is unreasonable to make the divide the people along racial lines.
The yearly migrations of herding communities across the continent, as well as displacement in times of struggle, have made the exercise of tracing relations based on language an exercise in futility. The two regions in Africa that exemplify this are the communities of the Niger Delta in Nigeria, and the Inner Delta of Mali. Many of the languages spoken in these places have defied classification, and do not fall in any of the four major language groups in which all African languages are supposed to belong. In the Niger Delta, the languages remain unclassified and yet groups the speak mutually unitelligible languages are related by other cultural and genetic similarities. Perhaps because these areas were intensively settled by people from all over Africa for thousands of years, it is no longer useful to break them down into convinient racial types to suite Wilhelm and Seligman.
AFRICAN PUBLICS AND COMMUNITY CROSS-MIGRATION
When we talk of the spread of the 'Bantu' peoples we are discussing the the history of African language dissemination, not the relationship between bloodlines. For example the Banyoro (East Africa) are a so called 'Bantu' tribe, yet Bunyoro was a "State", by definition consisting of different peoples and numerous ethnic groups, including Bantu and others, and so Ba'Nyoro (the people of the place called Nyoro) do not constitute a kinship group in the way that a tribe or clan might indicate, but instead are a "public" or a multinational "state".
The dominant (more numrous) groups in BuNyoro, have ancient and recent ancestral origins among groups that are not now considered Bantu. The language spoken by most BaNyoro falls under the classification "Bantu". Fundamental Nyoro cultural practices are common throughout Africa (as far apart as Senegal and Azania) and indicate common heritage with the rest of the non-Nyoro African.
End
PAST MASTERS AT SHIFTING GOAL POSTS
February 10, 2002
Posted to the web February 10, 2002
Philip Ochieng'
Stephen Jay Gould remarks in Ever Since Darwin, that "...you cannot beat a racist a priori..." Europe's original story was that, being black, we were apes, with inferior brains and unable to make history. Then a spoil-sport noticed aloud that the Caucasian was the one that's thin-lipped, straight-haired, hairy, light-skinned and flat-bottomed - all ape features that should make him the inferior one mentally.
Archaeology, too, began to show that certain past civilisations had made technological achievements which still baffle even today's Informational Age.
You could no longer avoid the fact that Egypt, Crete, Pelasgus, Anatolia, Canaan, Colchia, Sumeria, Elam, Harappa and Yucatan were all Hamito-Negro cultures. So the goal-post had to move.
Last week I dealt only with the Hamites (though I did not mention such later Hamitic kingdoms as Aksum, Cush (Meroe), Ghana, Mali, Songhai and Kanem-Bornu - all shining before or during a long European night called Dark Ages or simultaneously with the Renaissance, the awakening from that hibernation).
But anthropologists recognise three other African groups, Nilo-Sahara, Niger-Congo and Khoisan.
Predominantly Bantu, Niger-Congo produced the Ashanti, Benin, Oyo, Ife, Kongo, Ganda, Tswana, Ndebele, Zulu and Shona kingdoms - this with its Great "Zimbabwe" (actually: dzimba dze mabwe, "houses of stone").
To recap, the original European story was that "God" had cursed the Hamites (the children of "Ham") because they were black.
Yet Shem and Canaan only clashed over property. Canaan (the Jebusites) had taken Syro-Palestine, with Yurushalayim ("Jerusalem") as their seat. But the Semitic Israelites claimed it as "the Promised Land". So their "God" slaughtered these Africans like rats.
Shame of shames, "Good Christian" black people still "rejoice, with heart and soul and voice", at this heinous crime against their own kind! Yet, we know from the Bible, that the Semitic Jews were never anti-black. "Joshua's" beastliness was ethnic, not racial.
Canaan lost his Hamitic link after Sharrukin ("Sargon") of Semitic Ashur ("Assyria") overran Israel in 722 BC to lump the Canaanites, the Philistines and 10 of Israel's 12 tribes into the melting pot from which emerged the Samaritans - the modern Palestinians - the rightful heirs to that land.
The Ham-as-slave story was invented only by Caucasian Jews. Medieval European Benjamin ben Jonah was the first to write that Africans "...have no intelligence of ordinary men" and that Shem had "enslaved" Ham because he was "black".
But when it could no longer be denied that Ham was the progenitor of such illustrious figures as Menes, Minos, Memnon, Nimrod, Jonah, Abraham, Tutmosis, Akhenaten, Tutankhamun, Moses, Ramses and Hammurabi, the goal-posts moved. Their own internal dialectics
The Hamites now became white and the creators of all the Nilo-Saharan and Bantu civilisations.
Charles Seligman wrote that "...the Hamites...belong to the same great branch of mankind as the Whites..." and that these "Europeans" were "... quicker witted than the dark agricultural Negroes..."
All "Negro" (Nilotic and Bantu) civilisations, John Speke ruled, were created by "white Hamites". Africa's own elite historians still peddle the Eurocentric stupidity, for instance, that the Tutsi were "Hamitic" and brought civilisation to the Bantu Hutu.
Joseph Greenberg later showed conclusively that the Nilotes and Bantus civilised themselves out of their own internal dialectics. "The stereotype of the pastoral conquering Hamite must be abandoned," he wrote.
Seligman, Speke, Evans-Pritchard and others were finally demolished by Cheik Anta Diop, the great Senegalese archaeologist who introduced me to Egyptology in Dar es Salaam in 1972.
But the line that blacks could not have erected the Sphinx, the pyramids, the ziggurats, the Acropolis, Baalbek, Stonehenge, Carnac and Zimbabwe was soon smuggled back into Egyptology by Schwaller de Lubicz, Erich von Daeniken, John Anthony West, Robert Temple, Graham Hancock, Robert Bauval, Alan Alford, Zecharia Sitchin, Colin Wilson and Murry Hope.
This knowledge, they ruled, had been given to humans by "the gods", some of whom - like Peru's Virakocha and Mexico's Quetzalcoatl - they depicted as white.
The goal-posts had turned 360 degrees. The Hamites were black numskulls. No, the Hamites were white civilisers of blacks. No, the Hamites were black robots of white gods. You just could not beat a racist a priori.
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