Free Sudan from serfdom

When you create vacuum and people work endlessly…crazy from morning to evening and nothing comes out of it, you have anger and resentment in abundance.Carmen Angelique Kidjo in Thisday

The ‘Queen Bee’ as someone referred to Angelique, is the multitasking nature of the African woman. She lives in New York where the highest number of world’s languages are spoken in a confined space – check UN workers –and she is in contact with them and knows how people there exude confidence, as mostly unobtainable from where most of them come from. UN is a place where almost every government on earth has a representation. It is a place concerned representatives ought to send feedback to their government on how to treat their people or at least start thinking the way best to treat human beings led by what United Nations stand for. So sovereignty or no sovereignty when people, in this age that slavery has been seen as pardoned crime, courtesy of UN, still see themselves as slaves of a given ruler anger and resentment must be seen in abundance so that UN could intervene. Omar al Bashir as a vassal of powers that be in the middle east and their extended acolytes beyond that space had subjected the Sudanese people to great slavery and they needed to be liberated.

From Khartoum reports have it that Sudanese are being hounded as they found that it has all been deceit since al Bashir came to power as they are no more feeling any need to continue living as no work and even bread that seems to be cheapest they can think of eating is deprived anyone that is not ready to compromise on their beliefs. If you don’t believe in what al-Bashir stands for, as the execution of charge handed by his masters beyond Sudan, count yourself a waste. Africans are belief minded people, agreed; but when government uses belief system to profile and eliminate its citizens and make them hopeless then anger and resentment must be expressed for a humanistic supranational body to intervene.

Africa, as a continent, has suffered from the misgovernance of al Bashir and the leaders needed to intervene notwithstanding how comfortable such misgovernance is to Egypt or its acolyte in getting Sudanese lands for themselves and entrenching more serfdom in the land. All the bordering countries of Sudan suffer it including remote ones like Nigeria and Congo Democratic Republic. Sudan, historically has served as a link in trying to destroy all the vestiges of black civilization including the Nubian heritage that birthed most of black pharaohs’ greatness. In effect making a particular belief system to matter most in being a Sudanese is repulsive to Africa where a given traditional belief gave rise to the civilization of pyramids, dams and mummifies that the world is still striving to fully understand.

That belief system is not asking for supremacy having already yielded to other humanistic belief system accepted by others and, so, Sudanese should not be decimated psychologically or otherwise if they keep any belief system they deem fit for their spiritual anchor. Like one Chinese Christian leader (Wu) once said that true realization of the kingdom of God on earth new roads have to be built, mines opened, factories operated, machines installed in all sorts of industrial enterprises and that humankind should be liberated from persecution, oppression, injustice and governments should strive to meet physical, emotional and material needs of people. In effect when that is not the case the so called “enforceable belief system canvased by a government must be resisted with resentment and anger.

Even after getting South Sudan to secede on grounds of irreconcilable belief systems with what al-Bashir and his lords expects, the rest of Sudan are seeing the frictions of more irreconcilable belief systems that could only be reconciled if people are put to work and know that their crazy work output will fetch hope in the future as against hopelessness of making people believe that adherence to a proclaimed belief system that favours the lords amounts to life in abundance for the adherents.

Al-Bashir is not alone in Africa but his own is more pronounced than the others. Most African youths are facing the same coercion and take it to be an ordained situation as no fewer than 6 die every day in the average trying to cross the Mediterranean sea in search of greener pastures and that records no fewer than 3000 dying every year to get to the other side of the coast. Like Angelique mentioned in one of her interview, who is telling the African Story to avoid more killings of the Africans as Sudan embarks on more killings and, of course, colour will surreptitiously work against some as seen before South Sudan seceded. “Many African people were killed because they resisted to be taken away in slavery and someone could say it is a choice thing… The brilliance of the British, French, Americans (WASP) (and one must add the Arabs) that profited from slavery is that they turn the story around and the victim becomes responsible for what happened to them”. To them it was a profitable business then, hence why blame the victims now as the oppressors feel its guilt recognizing that the victims were ignorantly believed not to be humans.

For the western world it is over and they must be commended for working hard for restitution as seen in the works of UN which they lead, but for the al-Bashir allies, it is still business as usual, subjecting more Africans on African soil to slavery. His allies should let the Sudanese be and fashion new policy of inclusiveness which could have been better than the secession road taken by the South Sudanese.

Slavery must be seen as great sacrifice made by Africans in the past to get the world going and Egypt that claim to be al-Bashir greatest ally should recant its policies on Nile and its heritage to obliterate all the evils committed on the grounds of superior ownership of the Nile. African Arabs if they so wish to be so called should change their ways and embrace new ways of making the continent great as against seeing anything that involve black skin as ab initio sinful or criminal. Interact with black skin Arabs and you see that they are living in eternal fear, and they are many in Sudan. The irony of it all is that their youths are taught to feel the same way and they go on to contest what France of ‘liberte, egalite et fraternite’ seems to be cautioning them about. Leave France if you are not comfortable with its national ethos that groom you, first, to integrate instead of isolating yourself as a product of a so called ‘superior belief’ system.
• ARIOLE, is Professor of French and Francophone Studies, University of Lagos.