August 1996

Editorial

This issue of AFRICANEWS is evidence that the articles of the Declaration quoted above are not put into practice by a good number of African states. In Sudan Fr Kizito witnessed the implementation of a slow genocide of the Nuba people by the Khartoum government. His experience is nerve-chilling yet it is a daily life of the Nuba people.

Also in this issue, a close look at the likely effects of sanctions on Burundi announced by its neighbours. The sanctions follow the recent military take over that has brought Major Pierre Buyoya back to power. In Zaire, the Bunyamulenge people, a minority group in their own country, are suffering silently. Theirs is a state terrorism aimed at driving them across borders to neighbouring countries.

Minorities are constantly oppressed. Any human group can become a minority when the Big Man in power belongs to a different group. Apartheid is finished, but discrimination is very much alive in Africa.

The words that summarize this misery are tribe and tribalism. In present parlance the two words have acquired a very negative connotation.
If tribalism means a loyalty to a tribe or tribal values to the extent of despising or discriminating against the other, no doubt the term indicates a negative reality.

Yet "tribe" in itself is nothing negative. In fact it is the only African social institution which works; it provides the deepest identity of every African person. The positive values which keep a tribe together (common property, mutual help, solidarity) - once purified of the negative element of exclusiveness - could provide the building blocks for a new African society. At AFRICANEWS we do not want to propose ourselves as an example, but allow us to say something about our editorial staff. We are six Kenyans and a Sudanese, living in the same house. Each one has a full time profession apart from contributing to AFRICANEWS.

We work as a cooperative. The six Kenyans belong to different tribes. Yet the difficulties we find in cooperating do not spring from the ethnic differences, but from more basic human factors. The colonialists and the tribalistic African dictators have - for different reasons and in different ways - attached to the "word" tribe the negative connotation it has. They have almost convinced us that to belong to a tribe is a kind of original sin. Instead we are convinced that it is a divine gift.

With the implementation of the respect of our different cultural heritage and of the human rights of everyone, as stated in the quoted declaration, tribes can reveal themselves as the blessing they are.

Africanews staff