Africa has an epidemic of hate in historical kinship with white privilege, colonialism, apartheid, xenophobia, and tribalism.

Hate is defined as the intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury. Africa and hate have five things in common, White Privilege, Colonialism, Apartheid, Xenophobia, and Tribalism.

Despite improvements in the security, tribalism and humanitarian situation in Darfur, continued deadly challenges remain.

Africa and Hate Have Five Things In Common

White Privilege

The attitude of white supremacy and white privilege, the idea that white people are brought up with - that psyche of being above blacks - rests on their privilege and advantage over black people. It rests on the reality that each day of their lives, from birth, their lived experience as a collective is to be served by blacks. There must always be millions of black people available as cheap and easily disposable labor for the advancement of the privilege of white people.

In Africa, a country with a majority of blacks, black people are worth less than land their ancestors lived on for millennia. White privilege in Africa causes the lives of millions of black Africans to turn upside down inside out and subjected to unspeakable hardships. White Africans privileged by their white skins can lead comfortable lives by ignoring what was happening around them. The layer of selective unawareness is most noticeable in rural African towns.

Colonialism

Colonialism is a political-economic systematic construction whereby various European nations explored, conquered, settled, and exploited large areas of the world. Africa faced colonization, occupation, and aggression from the United Kingdom, Germany, Romans, Arabs, Danish, Berbers, Turkish Ottoman Empire, the French, Portuguese, Italians, the Dutch and countless internal battles. The colonization of Africa imposed boundaries without regard to culture or heritage of native Africans.

Between January and December of 1960, 17 sub-Saharan African nations, including 14 former French colonies, gained independence from their former European colonists. The longest, most divided, and bloodiest wars against colonialism in the subcontinent occurred in the Portuguese colonies. War lasted from 1961-1974. African independence, which mainly took place in the 1960s, meant indigenous Africans were finally able to exercise self-government over the territory in which their ancestors, ancestors lived riding the continent of the relics of colonization, in theory.

In Africa, Ghana was the first to achieve independence in 1957. The new nation's most influential figure was its prime minister, later president, Kwame Nkrumah. Ghana's route to independence became the model for the rest of the continent.

"We face neither East nor West: we face forward." -Kwame Nkrumah.

The American Colonization Society (ACS) had its origins in 1816, when Charles Fenton Mercer, a Federalist member of the Virginia General Assembly, discovered accounts of earlier legislative debates on black colonization in the wake of Gabriel Prosser's rebellion. Some blacks supported emigration because they thought that blacks would never receive justice in the United States.

Others believed blacks should remain in the United States to fight against slavery and for full legal rights as American citizens. Some whites saw colonization as a way of ridding the nation of blacks, while others believed blacks would be happier in Africa, where they could live free of racial discrimination. Still, others believed black American colonists could play a central role in Christianizing and civilizing black Africans.

China has invested more than 60 billion dollars in African infrastructure. Today China has become Africa’s largest trade partner and has greatly expanded its economic and political connections to the continent.

Increasing Chinese investment in everything from food enterprises, monuments, and real estate to colossal railway projects across Africa has surely put a new face on modern-day colonization of Africa and a future dependency on China as a superpower claim on Africa. Disturbingly, on January 29, 2017, China fiercely denied reports that it spied on the African Union for five years after building its new headquarters.

Apartheid

Apartheid is the Afrikaans name given by white-ruled South Africa's Nationalist Party in 1948 for the institutionalized system of racial segregation. The international community began to take notice of Apartheid after white South African police opened fire on unarmed black protesters in the town of Sharpeville in 1960, killing 69 people and wounding 186 others.

Senzeni na, a powerful song was frequently sung during funerals and anti‐apartheid demonstrations. Steve Biko was one of South Africa's most significant political activists and a leading founder of South Africa's Black Consciousness Movement. His death in police detention in 1977 led to his being hailed as a martyr of the anti-Apartheid struggle.

Massacres, forced removals, substandard education and the consequent political crisis that gripped South Africa had awakened a militant attitude among the people, including women. Between 1963 and 1985, three women were murdered and one executed in South Africa freedom struggle. Victoria Nonyamezelo Mxenge, Ruth Heloise First, Dulcie Evonne September, and Notemba Bozwana.

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was a South African political activist, Nobel Peace Prize winner and in 1994, he became the first President of South Africa to be elected in fully representative democratic elections. Patrice Émery Lumumba was a Congolese independence leader and the first democratically elected leader of the Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) calling for national unity and overall African independence.

“Third World is a state of the mind and until we change our attitude as Africans, if there is a fourth, fifth and even sixth world, we will be in it.” -Patrice Lumumba.

Apartheid officially ended in 1994.

Xenophobia

Xenophobia is the unreasoned fear felt to be foreign or bizarre. Xenophobia is defined as someone who prejudices and is afraid of people from different countries or cultures. Xenophobia has affirmed indifference to people who live in Africa and beyond her our own shores, embracing legislation that sharply limits legal immigration; entertaining a further choke hold on admitting immigrants; renouncing commitment to humanitarian ideals and rejecting pleas to help the vulnerable escape from war and bloodshed.

“Who No Know Go Know” is a song by the legendary Nigerian Fela Kuti.; Chimurenga in Zimbabwe’s Shona language is a Pan-African publication of culture, art, and politics based in Cape Town South Africa. The Chimurenga Chronicle challenged South Africa to look at the man in the mirror the week of May 11 – 18, 2008, the period marked by the rash xenophobic violence in South Africa that is occurring to this day in 2018.

Tribalism

Tribalism is the behavior and attitudes that stem from strong loyalty to one's own tribe or social group. Tribes are not built on independent ideas; tribalism and tribal interests have played a major role in armed conflict and civil unrest across the African continent. In the absence of efforts to build genuine political parties that compete on the basis of ideas, many African countries have reverted to tribal identities as foundations for political competition.

Why is a United Africa a distant dream? The allegiance to one's tribe is most times placed before the welfare of the country. There are an estimated three thousand African tribes each commonly having its own language and culture. Africa has many tribes who share the same region; tribalism is a result of arbitrary post-colonial boundaries that force different communities to live within artificial borders.

Unrest and violence persist today in Sudan and Chad; the War in Darfur located in western Sudan is a major armed that began in February 2003 when the Arab Janjaweed, Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) rebel groups began fighting the government of Sudan. The Darfur civil war is a form of tribalism ethnic cleansing to a historic extreme. Africa has 54 countries, there are 15 African countries fighting wars and involved with perpetual terrorism violence.

Sadly, 27 percent of people on the African continent are directly affected by hate, bloodshed, mayhem, and post-traumatic stress. During a 15 year period, the cost of conflict in Africa was equivalent to the funds granted to the continent in international aid over the same period, from 1990-2005.

Girl from the Kpelle tribe in Kpaiyea, Liberia

Liberia is Africa's oldest republic and a long-running, catastrophic civil war

Links to war, human trafficking and black exploitation articles you will find thought provoking.

African Food and Art: Sharing History and Heritage

All Things African

African Food and Art