THE NONSENSE OF TRIBALISM

by

Issah Hassan Tikumah

An extract from:

THE AFRICAN GOD
Commonsense for the 21st Century


First published in Nigeria in 2003 by: Jos University Press Ltd, Jos.
 ISBN: 978-166-273-5


Mutual Respect

President Reader, Your Excellency. What is just the reason that makes it so difficult for the various ethnicities/tribes of we communalists to live together with mutual respect?! - It is nothing but ignorance and ignorance only!! Because when one ponders profoundly the simple conclusion one would ultimately reach is that passions such as ethnic identity and tribal superiority/inferiority are reduced to nothing more than a mere illusion. The one simple reality is that we are all human beings - nothing more, nothing less; everything else is a sheer myth. To substantiate my point that hostile ethnocentric assumptions are motivated by ignorance because they are nothing but a mere illusion, let me take the situation in my own country, Ghana, as a model for analysis. Like any other African nation, the Ghanaian society is made up of dozens of different tribes (or ethnic groups) and some of these tribes view the others with severe indignity. There is a kind of hierarchy of tribal superiority/inferiority right from the national level through the regional level down to the community level. At the national level the Ashantis are the most notorious; they view themselves as the supreme tribe in Ghana as well as viewing all other Ghanaian tribes as sub-human beings. At the regional level I will use my own tribe, the Dagbamba who are the domineering tribe in the North of Ghana, as an exemplary case. First of all, a brief sketch of the historical background of the Ashantis' tribal arrogance at the national level and that of the Dagbamba at the regional level:

In the pre-modern era there was no central neutral government for the various tribes and each tribe was its own boss. As such there was a state of anarchy at the inter-tribal level whereby the definition of justice was the exclusive right of the stronger tribe. The stronger tribe could raid the weaker one at any time, kill them as massively as decided, capture their numbers home for slavery purposes, etc.; in short the stronger tribe could mete out any kind of injustice to the weaker one at any chosen time with impunity. As such, a stronger tribe used to view the weaker one as slaves or inferior sorts of human beings. The Ashantis in southern Ghana were the strongest tribe in the country; they subdued and maltreated all other tribes in the South of Ghana. The Dagbamba, on the other hand, were the strongest tribe in northern Ghana and they subdued and maltreated all other tribes in the North. Although the Ashantis were stronger than the Dagbamba, the latter proved too difficult to be annihilated by the former and a number of attacks by the Ashantis on the state of Dabgong (the empire of the Dagbamba) were met with tough resistance. In the end a truce of military alliance and co-operation was signed between the Ashantis and the Dagbamba, which made it an obligation on the part of each party to go to the aid of the other one in case of any military threat. The truce, which remains in place up to date, relieved the Dagbamba of any military threats from the stronger Ashantis and allowed the Dagbamba to remain the supreme master of the North but act as an accomplice for the Ashantis by capturing the other Northern tribes and selling them cheap to the Ashantis as slaves.

President Reader Your Excellency, that was the bare-bones of the historical events that have kept illusioning the Ashantis with tribal supremacy at the national level as well as the Dagbamba in the North. I will now advance a five-point argument to prove that the passion for tribal superiority/inferiority comes from ignorance since it is completely unreasonable.



(1) Not so important: Generally, arrogance is a manifestation of ignorance: people are mostly arrogant because they do not know that they are not up to where they think they are; people are mostly arrogant because they over-estimate their importance; people are mostly arrogant because they think they are indispensable, when in reality as soon as they die or stand aside it is only a matter of time before they will be forgotten. Similarly, the feeling of tribal superiority is a manifestation of ignorance about the real significance of one's tribe, as such the more ignorant a person is the more tribalistic he is likely to be, in that such a passion is imparted by parents or elders and the ignorant person (who has not learnt or looked into The Tikumah Mirror) is hardly inclined to question whatever tribalist views or stories have been imparted to him by his parents or ancestors. Let me use my own experience as an example: I used to be extremely arrogant as a Dagbana (= singular of Dagbamba) and all my secondary school colleagues in Tamale will tell you how really tribalistic I used to be. I used to think that anyone who is not a Dagbana is not a full human being and I could express such sentiment in the most vocal tone and manner amidst my school colleagues who belonged to other tribes. In the midst of my secondary school colleagues it was my habit to go about humiliating non-Dagbamba by barbs of tribal vilification. My tribalistic arrogance began to wane when I travelled to the South of the country in 1988 for the first time ever whereupon I discovered that my tribe was not as important as I had been taught to believe. In Accra I discovered that Northerners were viewed by their Southern countrymen with scorn and, whereas we in the North were living as masters and slaves, in the South all Northerners were viewed strictly as one homogenous whole and tribal categorizations between them were apparently unknown to the Southerners. President Reader how shocked and disappointed I was to see myself, a whole Dagbana, being viewed with ridicule and, more seriously and rather disgustingly, no distinction was being made between my slaves and myself but all of us were seen as one and the same. I was particularly embarrassed when in the course of my attempt to explain to my Southern counterparts that Northerners were in categories, one of them asked me about my tribe and when I told him I was a Dagbana he asked, "Dagbana, is that different from Hausa?!" ('Hausa' was an alien settler tribe from Nigeria.) President Reader what a disillusioning discovery!: Hitherto I could never have imagined that there could be a place on this planet Earth where my tribe, Dagbamba, will not be popularly known. But I now realized that even within my own country there were people who had never heard about the name "Dagbamba"; rather shamefully, an alien tribe, the Hausas, was better known than my tribe in my own native country. What would be the status of my tribe outside my country then? Anybody could guess. So I began to question the basis of my tribalistic arrogance. President Reader my discovery of the false superiority of my tribe, coupled with the fact that the pain that the ridicule of my Southern counterparts inflicted on me now made me begin to understand how much I really hurt the other "inferior" tribes in the north by my acts of tribal vilification against them, made me begin to question the sense of my negative attitude towards the other tribes in the North: “...If outsiders (the Southerners) view us all as one and the same, why should we discriminate against each other?!...If I am identified with someone and I degrade that person then I am obviously degrading myself…”

The Ashanti man can apply the above line of analysis to himself vis-a-vis the other Ghanaian tribes when he travels outside Ghana. Let us take for granted that the Ashantis are supreme in the midst of all other Ghanaians. However, let all Ghanaians travel together to one of the neighbouring countries, say the Togolese Republic. Perhaps 99% of the people in Togo have never heard of the name Ashantis, so when we arrive there the only thing that matters to the people over there as far as our identity is concerned is that we are Ghanaians. Perhaps no amount of explanation from the Ashantis will be enough to persuade the people of Togo to view them as superior to the other Ghanaians because all the explanation given by the Ashantis will be of little significance to them (the Togolese). Then we move from Togo to Oyinboland, say Germany. Our nationality will hardly matter to the people of Germany - our tribal or ethnic identity is rather too far beyond the pale - who would view us merely as blacks only. Even if at a point they bother to ask about our tribal identities, it will take the Ashanti man ages to satisfactorily explain to the people of Germany that his tribe is superior to that of his fellow Ghanaians. In fact, an attempt by the Ashanti man to explain to the Germans that he is superior to the other Ghanaians will only provoke a snort of derision from the Germans who would say for instance, "look at a chimpanzee trying to say he is superior to his fellow chimpanzee too! - you're all chimpanzees!!" On the contrary, the other Ghanaians are likely to receive much higher respect from the German Nazi racist than the Ashantis would, in that, as far as the white racist is concerned, the darker your skin is the more non-human you are and since the Ashantis are the darkest Ghanaians you can find the white racist is most likely to rate the Ashantis at the lowest point of the strata of the Ghanaian society.

At this point, every thoughtful Ashanti will begin to become disillusioned as he questions himself: “What have I been bragging about all along then?! I've all along thought of myself as a better person than all other Ghanaians; but when we all travelled together to Togo we were all treated as one and the same; in Germany my fellow Ghanaians were even accorded more respect than me because my skin is darker; so it is merely within the boundaries of Ghana, a tiny corner of the world, that my "superiority" lies?! If outsiders view us as one and the same thing, why should we discriminate against each other?! If I am identified with someone and I degrade that person then I am obviously degrading myself...”



(2) Not so different: Assuming all the various tribes of Ghana were brought together at one spot and an outsider or even a Ghanaian was asked to categorize the people into their respective tribes, she would not be able to do that categorization satisfactorily, she will simply see all of us as human beings only - we are all having the same type of flesh, when we are opened apart we are all having the same type of blood, and so on and so forth. Probably we can make it possible for people to look at us and identify our tribes only by using a sharp knife to cruelly smudge some special types of ugly blotches on our cheeks or faces in order to give ourselves some unique appearance as members of a particular ethnic group, otherwise no tribal distinction can be possible in our natural human appearances. Some tribes may have certain physical features peculiar to them but certainly not all members of a tribe will have the kind of physical features peculiar to that tribe, so we still cannot use such peculiar features to distinguish one tribe from another. So in the end we find that all the tribe-based differences between us are reduced to nothing but illusive artificial manufacture.

Or is it the language we consider to be so special? There is absolutely nothing special about our language as to form a basis for our arrogance and snobbery towards other tribes - because anybody can speak that language; the language a person speaks is determined by the environment he lives in and not by tribal background. Indeed, there are too many cases of someone from a different tribe speaking our language even better than some of our native speakers while our own tribesman does not know a single word of our language because he was raised up in a different linguistic community.



 (3) Barbarity is not a pride: What is the basis of a discriminatory attitude of one tribe towards another? The basis is nothing but the relationship between the respective ancestral generations of the two tribes in question during the pre-modern era; if the ancestors of tribe A were superior to tribe B then tribe A views tribe B with indignity. However, the question tribe A ought to ask themselves is, "what is the credibility of the superiority of our ancestors to tribe B?" In other words, if my ancestors were stronger than a particular tribe so that they enslaved and maltreated that tribe, should I be proud of my ancestral heritage in that regard? I suppose not, because when I look at the kind of savage treatment meted out by my ancestors to weaker tribes I see that the behaviour of my ancestors was nothing but barbarity - they did it because they were ignorant and they lived in a state of lawlessness - and I would not like to be identified with such barbaric acts. As a civilized person I will simply be too disgusted to be associated with acts of selling my fellow human beings into slavery, killing them arbitrarily, etc., because that is too primitive. Now, if I would not like to be associated with the barbaric acts of my ancestors, why should I be proud of the legacies of such barbaric acts then? There is simply nothing credible about the savagery of my ancestors so that I can boast about it as a civilized person.




 (4) Descendants are different from ancestors: The Arabs have a poem which says:

Laisal fataa man yakoolu kana abii
Innal fataa man yakoolu haa ana dhaa
(A youth is not he who says "my father was"; but rather, a youth is he who says "I am")

As such, if in the past my ancestors were stronger than your ancestors and so manipulated them but today I do not have the power to manipulate you, it makes no sense to me why I should view you as inferior merely because your ancestors were inferior to my ancestors (when you are not inferior to me now). It is absolutely stupid and irresponsible for us to continue seeking to conjure the spirit of our ancestors to assert ourselves instead of asserting ourselves by merit of our present hard work. The barbaric order of yesteryear is past and gone. We are now living in an era of intellect and education; who rules over the other or who is superior to the other is now determined by the intellectual and educational merits of the individual, not by ancestral linkage. So it will be stupid for us to continue using ancestral heritage as a benchmark for determining people's value or personality. President Reader tell me, is the naked lunatic who hallucinates about himself as the ruler of his community not better than me if someone is much better educated than I am (and is also economically and politically better placed in the society than I am) yet I view him as inferior to myself on the mere grounds that his ancestors were slaves to my ancestors? But that is exactly the situation you now find in some African societies: out of complacence those tribes that were superior in the pre-colonial era have relaxed and the "inferior" tribes have surpassed them in the field of education and political influence, yet they (the "superior" tribes) delusively continue to view themselves as superior while shrinking further backward as the "inferior" ones are constantly on the move forward. President Reader can you imagine a miserable messenger who is running around in the heat of the sun seeing himself as superior to his own boss sitting back in the air-conditioned office and pushing him around, merely because that boss comes from an “inferior” tribe?!



 (5) Blood does not know tribe: Perhaps the strongest point against tribalism (and racism) is that blood does not know tribe (or race). The blood of a man from one tribe can be perfectly transmitted into the body of a man from any other tribe. A friend once needed blood transfusion. A team of his own siblings accompanied by his classmate went to the hospital to donate blood for him. Funnily enough, his blood did not match with that of any of his own siblings but that of his classmate who was not only from a different family, a different tribe altogether but also from “an inferior” tribe. As such, we might have received blood transfusion at the hospital, or our parents might have received blood transfusion and gave birth to us. The blood was taken from the hospital’s blood-bank without the tribe of the donor being written on the bottle – simply because the tribal identity of the donor was irrelevant to the situation. The result is that we do not actually know the tribe of the blood we have inside our own body. It is possible that the very quintessence of our life, i.e. the blood we have inside our own body, came from someone from an “inferior” tribe so unbeknownst to us we are now going about enjoying life with the blood of that very tribe we view with contempt. What could be more laughable?!

 One funniest thing about the whole illusion is that we do not even know where our so-called tribes came from; no one can tell you the exact and precise origin of any particular tribe. Invariably this is how the history books talk about origins of our tribes: Some people suggest that tribe A came from place B; others claim that tribe A originated from place C; however, it is generally believed that the actual origin of tribe A is place D. It is all a game of guess and check, fairy tales of some sort – and it is only logical to surmise that in an emotionally-charged contest such as the game of ethnocentrism every tribe would have concocted the most wonderfully-noble story possible to explain its origin. So how can we be so proud of our tribes when we do not even know where exactly these tribes came from? One who is not sure where exactly he/she came from cannot be sure who exactly he/she is. It is possible that the real origin of your tribe is that very “inferior” tribe you hate but the links between the two tribes have been successfully erased by metamorphosis of history.

What Else?

President Reader Your Excellency, in view of the five-point argument I have provided above, from 1988, that is right from my first ever journey to the South of Ghana, I have found myself rapidly becoming de-tribalized. I have since found myself increasingly losing my tribal sentiment and pride, and tribal or ethnic affiliation now appears to me as a mere symbolism of identification only - there is nothing inferior or superior about it. By the end of 1990, that is only about three years from the beginning of my tribal disillusionment, I had already become so de-tribalized to such an extent that I could think of marrying someone from a different tribe, so I got to marry Sharifah from the Kotokolese tribe (one of the Togolese tribes which settled in Ghana and is severely scorned by my tribe – it was like using one stone to kill two birds: tribalism and xenophobia). Until the beginning of my tribal disillusionment I was too ignorant (tribalistic) to be able to think of marrying someone outside my own tribe. In a nutshel, President Reader let the post-twentieth century patriotic generation of father Africa be challenged to adopt the following proposition as their personal motto:

WE CANNOT FORGET HISTORY, BUT WE CAN LET HISTORY BE HISTORY:

The era of our ancestors was their era, today is our own era. If our various ethnic groups cannot live together with mutual respect simply because our various tribal ancestors lived as masters and slaves then there should be no earthly reason for us to expect the erstwhile colonial master to respect us after having colonized us virtually as slaves; so long as we do not respect each other inside our own home, we must not expect outsiders to respect us; so long as domestic colonialism is justified, foreign neo-colonialism is justified too; so long as ethnic discrimination makes sense in our home countries, foreign white racism makes sense too. Yet it is now clear to all of us that there is no sensible reason that prevents us from viewing ourselves as one and the same. We all belong to THE MOVEMENT FOR TRIBELESS AFRICA flowing with milk and honey. We are tired of tribalistic Africa flowing with blood and tears. --- ----- ----- ---- ---- ---- ----- ----- ------- ----- ------ ------- ----- ------



The Most Important Ministry

President Reader Your Excellency, it appears to me that Africa is a thoughtless continent. I say so because I believe every thoughtful observer will agree with me that the most important ministry in the governmental set-up of any African nation should be The Ministry Of National Cohesion, yet there is no such ministry or its equivalent in the governmental set-up of any African nation. The Ministry of National Cohesion is to be charged with the task of de-tribalization of all citizens of the nation. We must understand that Africa simply has no meaningful future so long as malevolent tribalism persists therein. Essentially, Africa is not developing because the African has a very low sense of patriotism, and that is because he has a very high sense of tribalism; the loyalty he should have owed to the nation, he owes it to the tribe instead. Africa can never progress until Africans have learnt to place national interest above tribal considerations. Yet so long as tribal and ethnic discrimination persist in Africa, it is virtually unthinkable that national interest would ever be placed (first) before tribal considerations, regardless of how much “education” people may receive. I remember while I was in Ghana during the 1996 general elections I had a discussion with a friend and former school mate, Mr. Abudu Alhassan, who was then a student at the University Of Ghana: The two main contending political parties in the elections were the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) whose leadership was dominated by the Ashantis. I had not registered to vote since I was not in the country at the time of registration, so I had no vote. However, I took a keen but passive interest in observing the direction of the political activities in the run up to the elections. For about a couple of months from the polling day Abudu had not yet made up his mind as to which party to vote for. However, just when polling was about to take off he decided to vote for the NDC. I became eager to know the motive behind his decision to vote for the NDC instead of the NPP, and I said: "Abudu, I've heard many Ghanaians complaining that life is getting more difficult by the day, what's your view about that?". He concurred: "That's true, things are not getting better; life is becoming harder…" Then I said: "Alright, Abudu, if the present rulers have been in power for fifteen years yet things are getting worse, is that not a clear proof that they've failed and for that matter they should be voted out of power in favour of, say, the NPP?". To my shock and dismay, Abudu rebuffed: "No! I can't vote for the NPP; the Ashantis can never be trusted; although life is hard I still believe that if I live in poverty with dignity is better than to live in affluence as a second class citizen in my own country..." I say I was shocked and dismayed by Abudu’s reaction, not because I was really surprised by his words since I knew that many Ghanaians - I was certainly not an exception - would have said the same thing; after all we seek power, money, knowledge and all kinds of wealth in order to lead a dignified life, all wealth without dignity is absolutely nonsense; man is ever prepared to give away all that he owns in return for respect; no one can be truly proud of his nation if the nation does not treat him/her with dignity; no one can afford to honestly place his/her nation first if the nation does not place him/her first. What really shocked and dismayed me about Abudu’s words was the kind of gloomy future looming high on Africa if all these tribalistic imbecilities of ours are to continue - during elections we are careless about the state of socio-economic progress of our nation, all we care about is "what tribe is in power?" regardless of their leadership performance. In short, as I said earlier, Africa's prospect for progress is extremely bleak so long as national interest is subordinated to tribal passion. Yet we will never be able to place national interest above tribal considerations until there is mutual respect among all tribes.


Time for Action

 President Reader Your Excellency, in view of the foregoing analysis it is amazing to find that African leaders have placed greater emphasis on infrastructural development - if they place emphasis on anything at all - than trying to de-tribalize the citizens of their respective nations into well-knit communities. We ought to understand that infrastructural development without national cohesion is completely meaningless since the infrastructural development is likely to be reduced to the ashes of internecine civil war sooner or later. I may not be sounding palatable, but I am telling the truth and there is no better alternative to the truth.


President Reader Your Excellency, how serious we should be in searching for a solution to a problem should be proportionate to the seriousness of the problem itself. Africa's problem of malevolent tribalism is extremely serious so extreme seriousness is needed in the search for its solution before we can really achieve the desired kind of solution. But it is rather unfortunate that African leaders think that merely talking about national unity can bring about national unity, so you often hear them singing the call for national unity without actually doing anything really concrete to achieve it. I remember in His Excellency's address at the 40th Independence Anniversary of Ghana on 6 March 1997 the then President Rawlings was emotionally calling for nation-wide reconciliation with the past and national unity. I wanted to respond to President Rawlings’ call by saying: Mr. President, I heard your call for reconciliation and national unity and I believed you were absolutely serious about that. Since you really meant business I will tell you what to do, so just sit down quietly, open your ears widely and listen to me carefully as I propose to Your Excellency a five-point policy of ACTION as a foundation for your endeavours to reconcile and forge unity among the hostile tribes of your country:

(1) Apologies from predatory tribes: We ought to understand that the most difficult thing for man to do is to forgive. It becomes even more difficult to forgive when the aggressor is too arrogant to accept any wrong doing, let alone to apologize for his aggression. It is provocative to ask me to forgive someone for his crime against me when he has not only shown no remorse for his crime against me but he continues to commit more crimes against me as well boasting about his old injustices against me. So, Mr. President Your Excellency, if you are really willing to reconcile the antagonistic tribes of your country, then Your Excellency must first of all get the predatory tribes come out publicly and render formal apologies to the victims of their past and present injustices and then promise an attitude of mutual respect henceforth - "we are sorry for what happened, it will never be repeated!"

(2) Abolition of all traces of tribal colonization: In the pre-modern era some tribes acted as colonizers of other tribes whereupon some kind of feudal relationship was established between the colonizing tribe and the colonized one and up to date traces of such feudal relationship still exist between certain tribes whereby the subordinate tribe has to demonstrate some kind of symbolic loyalty to the master tribe at regular intervals. All traces of tribal subordinationism should be abolished immediately so that each tribe becomes its own master. Let it be made crystal clear to all and sundry that so long as Tribe B feels justified in looking down upon Tribe C, Tribe A is well excused for lording it over Tribe B too.

(3) Out-law tribal vilification: If you observe the legal system of Oyinboland you would find that those issues that are considered to be the most threatening to stability in the society are the areas where the law is most severe and uncompromising. In Australia for instance two of the areas where the law is most severe and uncompromising are issues of race and gender discrimination, because these two are considered to be among the most dangerous causes of discontent in the society. Similarly, in our case here in Africa, tribalism is the most dangerous cause of discontent and potentially devastating conflict among us. Therefore, tribalism should become an area in which the law is most severe and uncompromising if we want to promote inter-tribal tolerance and co-habitation. Tribal or ethnic vilification should be categorically out-lawed in the strongest possible terms and severe laws enacted to penalize offenders. Of course, no matter how severe any laws enacted against tribal vilification may be they will be absolutely meaningless if there is no apparatus for their proper execution. Therefore special structures should be instituted to ensure the efficient and effective execution of anti-tribal vilification laws: complaint centres should be established in every suburb so that people can have quick access to reporting offences, and the people should be seriously educated about the law and its significance; anti-tribal vilification units should be created in the police force to be dealing exclusively with crimes of tribal vilification; matters of tribal vilification should not be left to the slow and cumbersome ordinary courts, special tribunals should instead be established for that purpose.

(4) Fair distribution of the national cake: We cannot possibly eradicate tribal or factional discontent until the politico-economic agenda of the nation has paid fair attention to all tribes or regions of the country; the national resources must be equitably distributed. Every province must be given what it actually deserves, not what is merely decided for it. People do not really have to have a big share of a treasure before they will be satisfied, what they actually need in order to be satisfied is their fair share of the treasure; if people are given their fair share even if it is not enough for them they still cannot blame anyone, but if they are not given their fair share then they have an excuse to cause trouble and they naturally will cause trouble.

(5) Education against tribalism: If the four steps outlined above are taken effectively, Mr. President Your Excellency, the people would then be in the mood to listen to lectures on forgiveness, reconciliation and unity. So we can then launch educative programmes that would seek to de-tribalize the embittered spirits of the people and work towards the total dismantling of all tribal barriers. We can achieve the goal of eradicating tribal barriers by means of a variety of measures including: the promotion of inter-tribal marriages; at school, children should be taught to make friends from different tribes than their own; movement of civil and public workers by means of transfer from their own ethnic base to other areas so that they can interact with other tribes; all sorts of activities that promote tribal segregation should be persuasively or coercively discouraged and the people should be seriously educated to understand that we simply have no meaningful future so long as we remain divided into hostile tribes, so we better start de-tribalizing ourselves now if we want a peaceful and progressive future for our progenies.

President Reader Your Excellency, it will take time, perhaps centuries, to fully accomplish the goal of de-tribalization of Africa, but it is a possibility if we mean to do it and if we start it now. If you study the history of Oyinboland (Britain, France, Germany, etc.) you would find that they were once divided into hostile and warring tribes as we now are but with time all tribal hostilities ceased with them and tribal demarcations have virtually become non-existent in their societies today.

President Reader Your Excellency, some people may resentfully think that any suggestion of eradication of tribal demarcations is too much to hear. However, the question we Africans ought to ask ourselves is ‘what is the meaning of our tribal identities as we currently have them?, what is the significance of tribal identity without human dignity attached?’ Because it is clear that our present tribal identities give us nothing except disaster and dehumanization. Consider the 1994 Rwandan genocide, for instance: What a disgusting scene and dreadful memory!: hundreds of thousands of people slaughtered on top of each other; decomposing bodies scattered everywhere like garbage; mass burial of tens of thousands with other thousands floating on top of bloodied water in rivers; in short, there was simply no human value attached to the mass-slaughtered Tutsis and it was delusive to rate them above any dead animals in the bush, in fact, the latter was obviously more dignified. The question is, what was the cause of the dehumanization of the Tutsis in Rwanda? It was nothing but their sacred cow of tribal identity! So we find that our tribal identities only put us at the risk of obliteration and debasement, so we must give them up if we really want to attain our real value as human beings; there is simply no sensible reason why we should not start the process of de-tribalization now. If we cannot de-tribalize Africa then the only alternative for us to solve the problem of tribal discontent (which is the potential cause of our total destruction sooner or later) is to create a separate independent sovereign state for each single tribe of every country on the continent. Unfortunately, such a move would only replace the problem of tribal discontent with international anarchy all over the continent by way of a return of the pre-modern order whereby the weaker tribe was at the mercy of the stronger one.

 Our situation has been further complicated by the fact that rather than helping to bring us closer together the erstwhile European colonizers only promoted and exploited our differences in their divide-and-rule tactics. The consequence was that these mischievous colonizers created for us wounds that have become difficult to heal. We must stand up and prove to the malignant imperialists that we are capable of uniting ourselves for our common good even after they have divided us.

To set the seal on this point, President Reader Your Excellency, the post-twentieth century Africa desperately looks forward to responsible leaders who will say goodbye to LEADERSHIP OF DOUBLE-DEALING - chanting national unity in public while building up tribal muscles behind the facade.