Afrikaanse identiteit in diversiteit: "Whites cannot be REAL Africans whereas African Americans and African Europeans can"

6 juni 2005    Lees de reacties   

In The Namibian van 3 juni 2005 schrijft H Junge in antwoord op een brief van J. Ramphaga’s aan de uitgever op 27 mei 2005: “Iemand die geboren is en leeft ergens in Afrika, en van plan is er te blijven, te werken en uiteindelijk te sterven mag geaccepteerd worden als een Afrikaan, in de breedste zin het woord.”

“This, of course, implies a commitment to a specific African community’s interests or rather to individual interests interpreted and articulated in the context of a specific African society. This would, for instance, make Johnny Clegg of Savuka fame an African, whereas it would exclude, say, Condoleeza Rice. There is also a definition of being African that equates blackness and Africanness and postulates a corresponding black cultural kinship as well as brotherhood. Whites therefore cannot be REAL Africans whereas African Americans and African Europeans can. Definition No.1 may sound wishy-washy in its all-embracing fashion, but definition No. 2 has a number of questionable implications: (1) Being African is, of necessity, a rather general, even abstract concept because it relates to a continent of more linguistic, cultural and ethnic differentiation than any other continent, largely due to its seniority as the Cradle of Humankind: Africa not only offers an estimated 3 000 languages, a wide range of religions from the veneration of ancestors to Christianity and Islam, both religions with more than a millennium of African presence, but also a large variety of complexions, facial features, etc. and a long history of co-operation as well as conflict.