Brother Vukoni,
Here is a follow-up article on Darfur by the same beloved, brother Clem Marshall. This one however has a different tone, I think.
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The 'Innocents' of Darfur will prevail
By CLEM MARSHALL
Our Wolof elders from Senegal taught me an ancient Afrikan truth: "Lu reen jan jan, reen geen ko jan" - "When you see a deep root going into the ground, never forget that there is another root that goes even deeper still." In Sudan, the deepest roots are not Persian, Hebrew, Greek, Arab or any mixture of those groups. The deepest roots are folks who look like the young bruthas falsely convicted over raping a White woman in Central Park, or the sistahs denied housing in St. Jamestown because their sons are treated like suspects from the cradle to the grave. According to all the science, archeology and history accepted by experts from every continent, Afrika is home to the first First Nations on earth. Sudan's First Nations who go back before recorded time are Kushites and Black. They are like the Masai in Kenya, the Wolof in Senegal, the Shona in Southern Afrika, the Rastas of Jamaica and the Jukkas of Suriname. They are folks who look like us and seem to get p icked on the most whether we speak French Kreyol in Haiti, Jamaican Patois in the Jane and Finch of Toronto, Portuguese in Bahia, Brazil, Ebonics in Harlem, New York or Spanish in Colombia.
Bruthas and sistahs here, in the Caribbean or other parts of Afrika tell me that they find the horrors in Darfur both disturbing and confusing. They know that Black folks are dying. However, unlike apartheid, this time the identity of the killers seems less clear.
For example, CNN casts Colin Powell as a champion of Black folks in Darfur. Never mind that he has been particularly silent when Whites profile Afrikans, shoot us down or rob them of their voting rights in the country he calls his own. Today, six guns blazing, he goes after Arabs for persecuting Afrikans in Sudan.
On the other hand, while fighting against apartheid or for a free Palestine, Arabs and Afrikans have generally been on the same side. Yet, today's Arab League defends the Khartoum government that bombs Afrikan villages and arms the gangs attacking them. Instead of coming to the rescue of the dying, it blames Israel and Christian fundamentalists for stirring up trouble between Muslims. To add to the confusion, not all Arabs agree. Some Arabs, such as the prominent scholar, Professor Helmi Sharawy, head of the Arab Research Centre for Arab-African Studies and Documentation in Cairo, criticize their own people. At a conference in South Africa in 1996 he said: "The Arabs seem to have been preoccupied with expressing their own identity which they isolate from other identities…They tend to come forward only with their own problems, ignoring those of others."
What Dr. Sharawy says challenges the conscience of all Arabs. They, too, can state publicly that they are against suppressing Afrikan languages, religion or culture and replacing Afrikan with Arab ways. Arabs of integrity can also call on their leaders to uphold the rights of Afrikans to remain the majority on the soil where the bones of our Ancestors are buried.
My moral guides to the situation in Darfur are the sistahs and bruthas who are completely innocent. As decent folks, my job and yours is to make sure we get to hear from them. In the meantime, I listen harder for the faint voices of those who are usually the hardest to hear. Then I tend to the sufferers first. No one can accuse us of hating any group if we're just defending innocent sistahs and bruthas against brutal, unjust attack.
The Innocents I refer to are not "passport Whites", like me, with residence or citizenship in Canada, the U.S., Australia or the European Union.
The Innocents aren't like the government ministers who make putrid, sweetheart deals with the International Monetary Fund and World Bank that trade away clean water, fertile land and the heritage of Afrika's heirs for privileges for their own children or their clan - privileges like trips to foreign casinos; professional credentials from Harvard, the Sorbonne or the U of T and shares in Afrikan oil, gold and diamonds on the New York, London, Toronto or Paris Stock Exchanges.
The Innocents don't confuse the issue with big words while humble people keep dying little by little. They don't spout meaningless nonsense like "Racism hurts everybody" and "Everybody is Afrikan".
The Innocents don't collude with hypocrite missionaries, NGOs and media spies who wear benign faces to mask brutal foreign plots and promote their people's interests so that whether their schemes are called "NEPAD" or "The War on AIDS" they always leave Afrika poorer in the end and cost more Afrikan lives.
The Innocents don't manufacture land mines to maim grandmothers or babies and turn lush land into barren fields of death.
The Innocents don't hire or conspire with White, racist thugs, the dogs of war who openly own companies that hire mercenaries, as if blowing up families for a few thousand dollars were a profession and not a dastardly, cowardly crime.
The Innocents don't dress up in tall bishops' hats, red robes or white wigs, spout Shakespeare and quote Latin, Hebrew or Greek to fool their suffering flock. They don't trick vulnerable and trusting Black folks into putting up with the humiliating betrayal of The Truth and Reconciliation Commission or into grovelling for crumbs while the European or Asian monster robbers of Afrika's wealth go free.
We do know who the Innocents are. I've looked in the mirror and stared into the past. I have asked the Ancestors for guidance and the courage to search my deepest heart. They whisper these words to me in my dreams: "The Innocents are us." Ashay!
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