By Mujib Dada-Qadri, Esq

A well travelled woman raised an issue about how MOROCCO players didn’t dedicate their recent world cup victory against Spain to AFRICA and hardly identify as Africans, “they mostly identify themselves as ARABS” she asserted. I have heard similar stories about Algerians,Tunisians, Egyptians and even Libyans (except under Ghadaffi) not identifying as Africans, i personally encountered one Algerian man acting in a similar way. The most annoying is the case of “light skinned Sudanese” identifying as Arabs when they are largely light skinned Nubian negroes and recorded to have discriminated black skinned South Sudanese before the separation. I hope Somalians don’t act in similar ways just because of difference in Negroid hair textures and nearness to Arabs.

Interestingly, over the gulf, North Africans are not regarded as core Arabs (not part of Al Jazeeratul Arabiyya/Arabian peninsula). Infact, there are reports that they are discriminated in core Arab states as not being “Arabian” enough, “Maghreb versus Arab” sort of gesture . Sudanese will not even count as one across the gulf sea. Fundamentally, North Africans are largely mixtures of Aboriginal Berbers (not pure negroes), Chadic tribes, Arabs, migrant Persians, Turks, Negroes and Iberian Europeans but nature has placed them in Africa and they have intermixed with Negroes for over 1,000 years leading to emergence of “Black Arabs/Arab Negroes”. It pays them to identify more as “Arab Africans” if i am chanced to solve the identity problem considering the cultural and racial dynamism.

Also, 20th century North Africa’s political leaders such as great Gamal Abdul Nasser of Egypt and Muammar Ghadaffi of Libya united the two identities in different ways, though more confused by “Arab league” politics of that time but the two leaders spread arms of comradeship to their black cousins but not well sustained after their exits due to poor diplomatic, cultural and trade relationship between Sub-sahara Africa and North Africa, so deepening the divide between Black Africans and “Arab Africans” . Infact, Mauritania still sees blacks as “slave trade worthy” in recorded events. Morocco has chosen to be play same regional politics of comfort like Ghadaffi by penetrating West Africa through it’s proposal to join ECOWAS in order to maximize the strategic parts of West Africa/Sahara region and serves as the bridge between Blacks and the Arab world. Arabs in solving the identity crisis should be more strategic by harmonizing Arab/African identity by honouring the two identities and in the conflict of loyalties, loyalty to Africa should win because that is where nature has placed them. The Gamalian modern experiment of “United Arab Republic” merging Egypt with Syria failed because of these identity conflicts which Arabian solidarity couldn’t resolve politically.

Black Skin and African region have become something some people don’t want to associate with because black/Negroid identity is mostly associated with “backwardness/poverty”. Very painful but i find it hard to blame them because Black community within and outside Africa has failed to show the world to be an organised and sophisticated race. We must accept the challenge like the Jews and work towards earning global respect instead of begging or clamouring for it, we should beyond black right advocacy to strategic economic actions. We must start by creating and building organised cities that will rival the standards of Asian cities or North African cities, we must rise beyond the “hut civilization” culture and let the world perceive our arrival through monumental infrastructures just like the way Arabs are currently flaunting to the world and selling the Arabian culture as progressive.

Mujib Dada-Qadri is a lawyer and policy analyst. He writes from Abuja.

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