From: rath@binah.cc.brandeis.edu
Subject: Re: Sexist African Males
Reply-To: rath@binah.cc.brandeis.edu
Organization: Brandeis University
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1992 18:51:31 GMT

In article <205044@unix.cis.pitt.edu>, pmmst8@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Paul M Mweene) writes:
>In article <1992Apr16.043334.4906@zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu> jkgreen@function.mps.ohio-state.edu (Jere K Green) writes:
>>
[stuff deleted]
>4)do all the races in Africa have the same culture ?

corrollary to 4--4a) Do all Africans of the same race share the same culture?

>
>4)Can you quote a specific case where negroes held other negroes in slavery 
>without the participation of caucasians one way or the other?
>
>5)do you realize that the northern part of Africa has been for the last 1300
>yrs been totally different from the rst of Africa?
>
>>West and Central Africans didn't have much of a tradition of writing
>>things down in ancient and medieval times, if my understanding is
>>correct, and in fact, when you go to the library most of the
>>scholarship is done by people who consult the original sources as best
>
>by Walter Rodney. who lived for many years in Africa.

from Walter Rodney, *How Europe Underdeveloped Africa*:
p 59--"The3 Western Sudan never provided any significant capital for the
trans-Saharan [slave] trade.  Capital came from merchants of ...the cities of
Maghreb..."  He calls ther relationship "colonial" because it was unequal in
favor of the North Africans as compared to the sub-Saharan peoples.  While this
is true if sub-Saharans are considered as one homogenous lot of the same
people.  However, further down the same page, Rodney says: "Ghana, Mali, amnd
Songhai all exported small numbers of slaves, and the empire of Kanem Bornugave
slave exports a much higher priority because it controlled no gold supplies. 
Kanem-Bornu [a sub-Saharan black African empire] used its power to raid  for
captives to the south as far as Adamawa in modern Cameroon."  The trade
enriched Kanem-Bornu at the expense of its weaker neighbors.  
p 99--on European involvement and African participation in raiding: "One
European on the scene noted that 'as one fortunate marauding makes a native
rich in a day, they therefore exert themselves in war, robbery and plunder
rather than in their old business...'
p98: "So long as population density was low, then human being viewed as units
of labor were far more important than other factorsof ,production, such as
land."  Rodney is sspeaking of African, not European, perspectives here.  He
then cites a number of examples of African conceptions of political power as
being based on the heads of the people rather than on the legal fiction of
land.  Land did not become a valuable commodity unless it was scarce.  Where
land was plenty, as in many areas of Africa at the time, power was measured in
the number of human dependents that one had.  
Dependents came in three forms,
which varied regionally: 1) Kinship and clientage relations (2) the use of
multiple wives as dependents.  In Benin and Nigeria, rulers some rulers had
thousands of "wives," some of whom might never see their husband.  These women
were units of production and measures of strength to the ruler.  For this
purpose, Queen Njinga of Ndongo was "husband" to a number of "wives" as well as
being a military leader of great savvy and a slaveholder as well.  (3) Slavery
was theq third form of dependence.  
At first, Europeans tried toi raid and capture African Slaves by force, but
they were nearly always roundly defeated, guns or no.  The effect of the
introduction of guns seems to make sense, but many African nations which did
not use guns were superior militarily to gun-toting African and European
nationals.  Euros did divide and conquer, but they did it through capitalizing
on greed, setting on group off against another and taking in the profits.  Not
all Eoropeans were involved in the slave trade, but the ones which were were
greedy.  They tapped into and exploited the power seeking of African rulers and
merchants.  
Much of the perniciousness of the European version of slavery came from the
fact that dependency was exploitetd twice.  The worker's produce was "owned" by
the slaveowner and the legal fiction of land ownership was given to the same
people, by which means they extracted a double share from the worker.  Even
today, landownership crdeates dependency and enriches some at the expense of
others.  Slavery in Africa, while not defensible today, was in many respects no
more pernicious than landownership is today.  I am not defending slavery or
advocating its return, only pointing out thaty the same methods of explotation
and dependency are carried on today under the guise of legal land ownership. 
Rather than seeking to blame one set of people for the problems of another set,
it might be more productive to stop looking at it on the terms of the
oppressors--ie landownership/good vs slaver/bad, white vs black, first world
third world, etc...Oppressors are not all in one place, all of the same color
and gender, waiting to be found and punished.  This is a ruse, to distract. 
Instead, look at how some people are able to exploit others by setting them
off, one against the other to do the dirty work while a few skim the cream off
the top.  
Rich Rath
>
>Makala