Africa and tragedy could be said to run
parallel. The hopelessness of this
enduring phenomenon has been an

undercurrent whenever you look and provide
a constant challenge to the most human of
humanity.Andbecause in most cases it is a case
of man inhumanity to man, concerned
humanitarians are endlessly confronted with
how to be rational. How do you for instance
explain the perennial situation in Africa where
countries with all the resources you could
imagine, end up with the mostly deprived and
impoverished people?
In Africa, suppression of one group by the
other is the norm, while you would found this
all through history; time appears to have had a
remission effect in the rest of the world. The
history of Europeans and Arabian exploit in
Africa masqueraded in the guise of one
spiritual superiority or the other is instructive.
The Arabs came and aided by the inhospitable
deserts almost wiped out all other shade of
human being to the North and East of Africa.
From their horsebacks, they hunted down
millions in thenameof a holy Jihad.
Almost simultaneously, on other shores of
Africa, the Europeans as missionaries coerced
the inhabitants into forsaking their own
spiritual heritage for a 'holier' version. Long
before Darfur caught the attention of the
international news media, Sudanese history
has been about effort to suppress the so called
'black' Southern Sudanese by the Arabic
Sudanese. This was the Sudan known to the
rest of the world; a place where the government
employed extermination as a weapon of war.
Because of its size and geographical scope, it
was in the news an open bleeding sore the rest
of the world could do nothing about.
Sudan is the largest country in Africa and the
long suppression of the South provided a
diversion from other smaller regions where
genocides were being perpetrated.
Apartheid with all its extremity was really
only obvious because of the colour shade of the
oppressors. In a lot of spots in Africa
exemplified by Darfur, groups with similar or
indistinguishable colour shade wantonly
dehumanise fellow being in pursuit of
religious or tribal fundamentalism.
Sadly, even though this is the twenty first
century with our over claim to civilization and
global sophistication, Darfur represents the
actual state of whereweare ashumanbeing.
The Arabic Janjaweed on their horsebacks