Mamdani: Apartheid and Africa

In a way, we have to recognize that all of Africa was organized according to the apartheid system because the principle of the apartheid system was racial privilege and ethnic fragmentation; these two things went hand in hand. The British are the real innovators of apartheid, the Afrikaners were just stupid enough to give it a name, and so call attention to themselves, but the British were the originators. The South Africans realized that they don't have a common history; so, they had to create a common understanding of history.

Nigeria has to create a common understanding of the Sokoto Caliphate. The Jos-Plataeu indigenous is whoever came before the Sokoto Caliphate, and non-indigenous is whoever came after that. The real dividing line is not British colonialism; the real dividing line is Sokoto Caliphate. If you go to Congo, all the Luba from Kasai, who came to Katanga before Belgian colonialism, are considered natives of Katanga, even though they are culturally Luba. All those who came in the colonial period are considered non-indigenes.

We all know about the British and Belgian involvement in the killing of Patrice Lumumba, but what we don't talk about is that British and the Belgians got the opportunity because of internal failures in Congo, and Lumumba's failure to address them adequately. The internal failure was the secession of Katanga and South Katanga. Both were based on a confrontation between different indigene and non-indigene tribes, and I say tribes because I want to locate the political unit, rather than the cultural unit. Lumumba ordered the troops to end the Katanga secession, and the troops on their way stopped in South Kassai to take sides in the conflict between the indigenes and non-indigenes. There was slaughter and killings, and Dag Hammarskjold (UN Secretary-General) accused Lumumba of genocide, and then Kassavubu dismissed Lumumba. At that point, Lumumba's mistake was that he took sides in a local conflict.