Where did people get the idea that Africa is ‘Black’ n belongs by right only to so-called ‘Blacks’? What we think of as ‘Black’ is actually just West African Bantus. Bantus are a language n racial group that spread from Nigeria n Cameroon thru colonization n conquest across central n south Africa over a period of 2000 years, genociding Bushmen, pygmies, n other racial minorities as they expanded. Whites arrived in the 17c n rapidly colonized the western part of modern South Africa at the same time that Bantus were gradually arriving n colonizing the eastern half of today’s South Africa. That geographic division is still apparent today with the Bantus in the east expanding to occupy the traditional white areas in the west. When whites first settled around Cape Town, there were no Bantus anywhere near, only San n Khoikhoi (Bushmen).
Arabs colonized n conquered North Africa in the 700s, killing n intermarrying with whites n Romans who had previously conquered n colonized North Africa over 1000 years. The huge island of Madagascar was colonized by Indonesians in the 9c n today 93% of Madagascar are half Indonesian or Polynesian descent, i.e, in their maternal line only, while just across the straits Mozambique is entirely Bantu, all the Bushmen formerly living there having been eradicated as the Bantus colonized the area.
The east coast of Africa n the island of Zanzibar were Arab for 2000 years. The Swahili language is derived largely from Arabic, the word Swahili meaning ‘coastlands’ in Arabic. When Zanzibar obtained independence from Britain in 1960s the ethnic Bantus rounded up n murdered all the Swahili Arabs they could find, actual footage of these horrendous massacres of thousands of minority Swahili Arabs, by Bantus, of ‘Arabs’ who look just as ‘black’ as the murderous Bantus to outsiders, can be seen in the movie Africa Adio filmed by Italian pilots from the air as it happened, having been rounded up in concentration camps n on beaches so they could not escape the Bantu killers. Similar massacres of even larger numbers of black ‘Arabs’ by Bantus in Dar es-Salaam (‘Home of Peace’) in Tanzania/Tanganyika are also documented in the film.
Tutsis are different from Bantus. Tutsis are related to the cattle-raising Maasai, who are called ‘Nilotics’. Tutsis n Bantus have massacred each other in central Africa for centuries, the latest episode being the Rwandan genocide of 800,000 Tutsis by Bantus in the 1990s (after a previous smaller massacre of Bantus by Tutsis). In the 1960s, when Rwanda first achieved independence, Bantus massacred 18,000 Tutsis/Watusis, piling up dismembered Watusi hands. Outsiders can hardly tell the difference between Bantus n Watusis n ‘Arab’ Swahilis, yet the expanding Bantus have massacred them all indiscriminately n now claim that Africa is ‘Black’, n has always been Black, n is only for Blacks, meaning by that term just Bantus.
Cutting off hands was also done by the Bantu RUF during the tribal war in Sierra Leone in the 1990s, n was also a common practice in Congo during the Belgian regime, but was likely done by black slavers as part of their campaign of terrorism against resisting blacks, tho, predictably, it was blamed entirely on the remote King Leopold since it is always more palatable to blame white Europeans for Africa’s problems even when whites were the only people actually trying to solve those problems.
Ethiopians are a huge population n are visually distinct from West African Bantus, Tutsis, n Nilotics, n have no reason to fear Bantu invasion like the rest of Africa. Eritreans n Somalis are different from both. They are also too numerous for Bantus or for Ethiopians to genocide, tho Ethiopians have attempted this in the recent past, with millions dying, tho, as usual, entirely unreported or misreported in the West.
Then there were the large populations of Indians who immigrated to British mandate territories in the 19c like Uganda, Kenya, the 2 Rhodesias, n South Africa. They too are regarded by Bantus as aliens having no right to live in ‘their’ Africa, n the Bantu Ugandan dictator Idi Amin notoriously threw out all ethnic Indians in 1971, confiscating all of their property almost overnight. Many ethnic Indians n ‘coloureds’ (mixed-race) live today in South Africa but their future, in the face of a general Bantu tendency to exclude all non-Bantus from being authentic Africans except themselves, is uncertain.
To sum up: it makes no sense to say that Africa is ‘Black’, when Africa is just as much home to white Afrikaans (almost 400 years), Malagasy in Madagascar (1100 years), Tutsis in Uganda n Rwanda (500 years), Nilotics in South Sudan, Uganda, n Kenya (500 years), n to often very light-skinned Arabs in Mauretania, Morocco, n Sudan (1300 years), n to Semitic-speaking Somalis n Eritreans in the east (2000 years). What the outside world think of as ‘Black’, especially uninformed Black Americans, is actually just Bantus whose racial home is Nigeria n Cameroon n only occupied the rest of Africa more recently (the last 1000 years), n often by horrendous genocides, the genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda as only the most recent of many such.
There is no group anywhere in Africa who can deny that they occupied their land by any other way than colonization n conquest, excepting maybe the Indonesians in Madagascar whose colonization is lost to history, the Bushmen (San n Khoikhoi) who used to be the only humans in most of Africa below the equator, n maybe the tiny population of pygmies who also used to be widespread in central Africa until dispossessed n genocided by Bantus expanding from Nigeria n Cameroon.
Slavery was endemic in every part of Africa since ancient times. Bantus, Arabs, Nilotics, Ethiopians, Somalis, n whites along the coasts ALL enslaved each other n themselves, with no group being exceptional in this. In fact, it was only the Europeans who decided to end slavery worldwide in the 19c, n the European colonization of Africa in the 19c was largely a Christian-inspired project to end the slavery that was endemic in every part of black n Arab Africa, n it was the European abolition of the slave trade that triggered much ‘anti-colonial’ resistance.
The Mahdi’s revolt against British rule in the 1880s was a revolt against the British primarily due to their outlawing of Arab slavery. The Mahdi wanted to revive slavery as an essential part of Islamic rule n an important part of Sudanese Arab wealth. Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 was also partly an attempt to end official slavery in Ethiopia by deposing the Emperor of slaves, Haile Salassie, with the latter ironically appearing before the League of Nations posing as a victim of cruel Fascism.
African revolts against European rule were often attempts to revive the custom of blacks enslaving other blacks, like Tippu Tip in the Congo, documented by Henry M. Stanley in his several books on African exploration. (Well worth reading.) Black slavery of each other began long before Europeans arrived, n endured long after European slave ships had ended. N in fact black slavery has returned to some African countries now that Europeans have left, n not just to Arab countries like Libya n Mauretania, n de facto in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, n the Emirates, but also in places like Uganda, Angola, Nigeria, Togo, Congo, Gabon, Niger, Burkina Faso, n Central African Republic, only the name has changed to ‘human trafficking’ since the word ‘slavery’ is too embarrassing for today’s African regimes.
Cannibalism has also returned to places like Uganda n Congo where it was endemic for centuries before Europeans tried to stamp it out with their ‘evil’ colonialism. (Where are the student protests denouncing slavery n cannibalism in today’s Africa? Why only signs denouncing a long-dead Fascism?) But, again, the subject of cannibalism is too sensitive for today’s ‘journalists’, who find it too risky to seriously analyze Africa but more convenient to simply label all of Africa as ‘Black’ n assume that no one else has any right to its soil without bothering to examine its history.
