BY: Ousainou Mbenga
If the reactionary and backward Arabs in Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania and “North Sudan” were able to carve out these land mass and add it to Europe, America, (the people they have always aspired to be) or for that matter create their own land mass elsewhere on this planet earth, they would have gladly done it. Even as Europe and America harbors disdain for Arabs in particular and Africans in general.
But we must bring to the fore this historical reality of the so called “Arab world” living in Africa, if we are to resolve this deep seated “white –like” disdain many reactionary Arabs have in their hearts against black Africans.
The recent merciless and barbaric beatings of a Senegalese youth man, Pathe Diop by the thuggish Tunis Air airport police and security is not an aberration but a recurring behavior of the police, security and ordinary civilians alike in many “Arab countries”. The most savage of the maltreatment of “non-Arab” Africans happens in post Gaddafi Libya, where the imperialists NATO sanctioned invasion destroyed Libya just as it did Iraq and continuously Syria into reactionary vying sections for control. Videos of abject barbarism inflicted on African youth by Libyan “security forces” have gone viral across the spectrum of social media.
Pathe Diop’s family should take matters into their own hands and file a criminal law suit against the Tunisian government, airport police and Tunis Air security at the Courts of Justice of the African Union. Test the mettle of the African Union (AU), if it has any. We must begin to vigorously challenge these institutions that claim to represent our interest.
The brutal beatings against Pathe Diop brought back bitter memories of the similar beatings of Rodney King on March 3, 1991 in Los Angeles, California. The ill-natured beasts of the Los Angeles police during the tenure of Chief Darryl Gates unleashed a barrage of fifty-six strikes on King with batons while other officers looked on. Fortunately, both incidents were captured on videos. The video at the Tunis Air counter shows Diop being beaten and wrestled down the floor on a deadly choke –hold with uninterrupted baton strikes by those troglodytes. Diop was finally hauled away from the scene of his attack casting doubts as to what happened behind the scene.
If this was a onetime incident, we would have considered it an aberration, a deviation from what is normal. But this is a characteristic behavior of reactionary – backward Arabs towards black Africans, it has been going on for centuries without interruption. And the belly crawling and equally reactionary black African misleaders hiding behind Islam are always terrified to call out the particular “Arab country” where the brutality occurred. One notorious belly crawling African country terrified to call out Mauritania for its barbaric treatment of its citizens is Senegal. The “black skin white masks” elite in Senegal and indeed other quisling African countries hiding behind Islam and religiosity, will never take a principled stance and denounce president Kais Saied’s sulky statements against black African “migrants” and airline passengers alike on transit through “Arab countries”. Complaints by black Africans of abject maltreatment by Arab airlines fall on deaf ears of cowardly African governments.
BUILD AN AFRICAN LAND, SEA & AIR TRANPORTTION
The logical solution to this humiliating problem we have with “Arab” and European airlines is to duplicate the example of Ethiopian Airlines, one of the longest serving airlines in Africa. Since the deaths of Ghana Airways and the French controlled Air Afrique, Air Senegal is currently going through suffocating mismanagement that will result in its obvious death. Notwithstanding Ethiopia’s contradictions. We must ask, how did Ethiopian Airlines survive the catastrophe that buried and continue to bury African airlines? One obvious fact is, the imperialists and their stooge governments in Africa don’t want us to know Africa, therefore the constraints and horrors to travel within and outside the continent. Only a united revolutionary Africa can change this nightmare.
Travelling in colonial and neocolonial Africa remains a nightmare, whether on land, sea or air. Travelling by sea is now relegated to the deadly voyages our desperate young risk their precious lives in search of imagined “greener pastures” in hostile Arab and European countries.
To this date, non -Arab Africans are still grossly mistreated in Mauritania and at varying degrees in other Arab countries that profess to be Muslims and uphold the principles of Islam. As always, our contention with the Arabs living in Africa is trivialized to “racism”, the stupid ideas Arabs have in their heads about Africans, the same stupid ideas “white people” have in their heads about Africans and Arabs. Our contention should be about POWER! Political and economic power to reverse the miserable conditions that cause African workers especially our youths to leave West Africa into hostile Arab and European territories.
THE EXAMPLE OF AHMED BEN BELLA
To resolve this contradiction, Arabs living in Africa must attain the political maturity the likes of the great revolutionary Ahmed Ben Bella attained to fight against the local and French oppressors out of Algeria before the revolution was subsequently betrayed by the local elite.
We unite with the protests in outrage of the neocolonial buffoonery of president Kais Saied and his reactionary Tunisian base. But outrage alone will not uproot the likes of Saied, as was proven by the hijacking of the “Arab springs” by the reactionary petit bourgeois elites in the respective Arab countries that erupted into rebellions. It is evident that the conditions that sparked the rebellions and riots of the “Arab spring” remain the same; business as usual. Therefore, the likes of Saied will remain in power as long as the oppressed Arab masses share the same disdain for black Africans as the elite in the respective “Arab countries” in Africa. The example of the revolutionary Ahmed Ben Bella and his comrades that propelled the Algerian revolution to victory against parasitic France, is the only solution against the reactionary and backward “Arab states”. In order for these protests to sharpen the blunted edges of the “Arab spring”, the wavering allegiance to Africa must end. You cannot live in Africa and show disdain for black Africans.
AFRICA MUST UNITE! ONE AFRICA, ONE NATION!
