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Somalia needs African solidarity

In June 1974, a few of us spent some days in Mogadishu, Somalia, as members of an ANC delegation. We had come to the capital of Somalia to attend the annual Organisation of African Unity (OAU) Assembly of Heads of State and Government. As was the practice then, the Assembly had elected the President of Somalia, Major General Siad Barre, as its Chairperson and Chair of the OAU until the next Assembly. Siad Barre therefore presided over the proceedings of the Mogadishu Summit.

During that month of June, as it hosted the Assembly, Mogadishu served as the venue for a great African celebration. The reason for the celebration was the then impending collapse of Portuguese colonialism and the liberation of the African Portuguese colonies. Unquestionably, the star of the day, who attended the Assembly, was the late Samora Machel, who was to become the first President of liberated Mozambique.

In its 24 June 1974 edition the US "Time" magazine carried an article entitled "Sinking the Lusitanian". Among other things it said: "When President Antonio de Spinola inaugurated new governors for Angola and Mozambique...for the first time ever in a public speech about the territories, (he) used the word that Africans had been waiting for him to speak: independence. 'Self-determination cannot be dissociated from democracy,' he said, adding: 'Neither can we dissociate self-determination from independence.'

"The declaration suggested that Spinola was willing to let sink his pet idea of a 'Lusitanian Federation' - a close alliance of Portugal with semi-autonomous African territories. As the general's speech went on, however, a chill set in. In an apparent volte-face from his earlier tone, he outlined four gradual stages of decolonisation, only at the end of which would the possibility of independence be broached.

"All this may merely have been Spinola's way of asserting his determination not to see white settler interests sold down the river in the territories. However it was meant, liberation movement leaders at the annual meeting in Mogadishu, Somalia, of the Organisation of African Unity...read neo-colonialism into every word. Declared Frelimo Vice President Marcelino dos Santos: 'Our attacks will be maintained and even increased until independence is conceded under the sole leadership of Frelimo.'"

If others might have had doubts about the certainty of the liberation of the Portuguese colonies, the ANC had none. In a letter of congratulations to the new Secretary General of the OAU elected in Mogadishu, William Eteki Mboumoua, Oliver Tambo said:

"Throughout the world, the forces of reaction are suffering successive defeats. The peoples of Africa and the world struggling for national liberation, social progress and peace are scoring impressive victories.

"Of particular relevance to us and to the great peoples of Africa is, of course, the heroic victory scored by our brother peoples and combatants of Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde in helping to bring about the downfall of the hated Portuguese colonial and fascist regime of Caetano.

"This decisive victory has not only opened up the prospects for the rapid accession to independence of the Portuguese colonies in Africa, it has also greatly strengthened the liberation forces of our own country..."

As part of a cultural programme put together for the benefit of the delegates, a Somali drama group performed a play that sought to denounce the neo-colonialism mentioned by "Time" magazine, and which severely compromised the independence of African countries. The play had scenes of delegates visiting Western embassies on their way to OAU meetings.

Here they would be given briefcases full of cash. They would then be given instructions on the resolutions they should propose at these OAU meetings and how they should vote. The sketches included instructions on the need for these delegates to do everything possible to frustrate the struggles against colonialism and apartheid.

This was the first and last time I visited Mogadishu. For many years afterwards Mogadishu and Somalia remained in our memories as African places of hope for us, a reliable rear base for the total liberation of Africa, including our liberation from apartheid. Indeed, in later years, others of our comrades returned to Mogadishu, this time to work with the Somali government to prepare for the clandestine infiltration into South Africa of cadres of Umkhonto we Sizwe, who would travel to apartheid South Africa by sea, secretly departing from the Somali ports!

The fact of the matter however is that in time Somalia fell apart and ceased to exist as a viable state. This has led to the eventuality that, as the year 2007 began, Somalia put itself firmly at the top of the African Agenda. Whereas in 1974 all our liberation movements and independent Africa counted on Somali support to achieve the goals of the African Revolution, in 2007 Somalia needs the support of the rest of the African Continent, again to achieve the goals of the African Revolution.

It is true that Somalia remains an independent state. However, for 15 years it has been victim to a protracted internal conflict that resulted in the collapse of the state, the death of an estimated one million Somalis, the emigration of thousands as refugees, and the impoverishment of millions as a result of severe and sustained socio-economic regression.

Further to complicate the situation, giving it a global dimension, allegations have now been made that international terrorist groups have established themselves in Somalia, taking advantage of the situation created by the collapse of the Somali state.

Earlier, in the context of the conflict that ensued after the overthrow of Siad Barre, the United Nations (UN) had authorised a US-led military mission to intervene in Somalia, among other things to create the conditions for the distribution of humanitarian assistance. In 1993 Somali combat groups in Mogadishu killed 18 US soldiers, after shooting down a US helicopter. This incident came to be known as "Black Hawk Down", and led to the withdrawal of the US troops and the termination of the UN mission, which failed to achieve its objectives.

Somalia has also turned into a source of regional instability, even as the African Continent through the African Union (AU) has intensified its efforts to ensure that ours becomes a Continent of peace, focused on responding to the challenge of eradicating poverty and underdevelopment.

For the sake both of Somalia and our Continent as a whole, Africa has no choice but to come to the aid of this sister African country. In many respects the deeply entrenched Somali crisis demonstrates what can happen to many of our countries if they are not governed and managed in a manner that addresses the interests of all citizens, bearing in mind the national specifics of each country.

As a state entity Somalia came into being as recently as 1960. In that year the two colonies, British and Italian Somaliland, gained their independence. To end the fragmentation of the Somali population brought about by colonialism, they then decided to merge and form the United Republic of Somalia.

This process of the unification of the Somali-speaking people however also led to tensions with neighbouring countries, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya, each one of which has a Somali-speaking minority. The worst manifestation of these tensions was, of course, the 1977 war with Ethiopia, when Somalia tried to annex the Somali-speaking Ogaden region of Ethiopia. (Feudal Ethiopia had managed to seize part of Ogaden during the 1880s, and later succeeded to get the whole of it through an agreement with colonial Britain.)

We mention these events because today there are Ethiopian troops in Somalia. Not surprisingly, the media reports that many Somalis consider this Ethiopian presence as a humiliation. One businessman, Abdulahi Mohamed Mohamud, was reported as saying, "We are afraid of a long war, and people are angry at the Ethiopian troops."

As the Somali state collapsed after the overthrow of Siad Barre in 1991, it became a conglomeration of different enclaves. North-west Somalia proclaimed itself the independent Republic of Somaliland. The Puntland region declared its autonomy. Various parts especially of southern Somalia fell under the control of different clan leaders, or "warlords".

The question that must arise is whether, in fact, during the years of independence, the different traditional "clan" areas and sections of the Somali population had developed a strong enough sense of national cohesion and identity to ensure the survival of the United Republic of Somalia proclaimed in 1960!

The importance of this question is highlighted by the role played by the issue of clan divisions in the uprising that overthrew Siad Barre in 1991, who evidently had discriminated against some clans, specifically the Mijertyn and Isaq clans, in favour of his own Marehan clan. In this regard, a BBC correspondent, Peter Biles, has reported that: "When Somalia's president was overthrown in 1991, much of the country fell under the control of warlords and clan-based factions."

Another report spoke of "the oppressive, capricious, and clan-based autocracy of the late dictator, Siyad Barre, who used his interpretation of clan institutions for his own ends, to oppress political opponents, create inequality, and promote conflict and violence. So great was his malevolence and abuse of power that virtually all Somalis now hold a deep-seated fear and distrust of any centralized authority."

Another important element of the story of Somalia is that, as had happened in many African countries at the time, General Siad Barre had acceded to power in 1969 by coup d'etat. He seized power after Abdi Rashid Ali Shermarke, elected President in 1967, had been assassinated. Inevitably, the absence of democratic institutions would make it extremely difficult for the different Somali clans, regions and interest groups to negotiate among themselves to define a national compact that would ensure the cohesion of the nation.

Somalia now has an Interim Government that is recognised by the AU and the rest of the world, born in 2004 after protracted negotiations held in Kenya, involving the warring Somali factions. As a result of the Ethiopian intervention, which ousted the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) that had fought itself into a position of power in Mogadishu and other parts of southern Somalia, this Government is now operating from Mogadishu.

As the military conflict continued after the ouster of the UIC, the US decided to launch air strikes against the retreating UIC adherents, claiming that it was striking at terrorists who had bombed the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam in 1998 and then taken refuge in Somalia. The majority of the world, including the AU and the UN, has been forthright in opposing this action, correctly asserting that this will not help to resolve the crisis in Somalia and would add oil to the fires that are burning in the Middle East. In addition, some Somalis have been quoted as saying that these air strikes were carried out as an act of vengeance for the death of 18 US soldiers in Mogadishu in 1993 and the shooting down of the US 'Black Hawk' helicopter.

Responding to the events in Somalia, including these US air strikes, the Foreign Minister of neighbouring Yemen, Abu Bakr al-Qirbi, said:

"Yemen was hoping that the Islamic Courts and the interim government would have settled their differences through the negotiating table. Unfortunately this did not happen.

"Now we have to deal with the situation as it is, and we will have to work on getting everybody concerned in Somalia to negotiate the future management of Somalia, to restore peace and security, and to put the interests of Somalia above the interests of clans or political parties or ideologies."

In these words, Abu Bakr al-Qirbi set the agenda for Somalia that the AU must address during this year, 2007. Supported by the UN Security Council, the AU is engaged in an urgent process that should result in the deployment of AU peace-keeping troops in Somalia, to help this sister country to extricate itself from its protracted crisis.

In this regard, the January 2007 President of the Security Council, Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, announced that the Council regards Somalia as "a high priority matter" and is concerned about instability, security, and the humanitarian situation. The Council strongly supports an inclusive political dialogue among various political forces in Somalia and favours the speedy deployment of IGASOM, the new force that would be set up by the African Union and a seven-nation East African regional group of nations.

Time will tell when the next Assembly of Heads of State and Government, this time of the AU, will convene in Mogadishu. For that to happen, as Africans we will have to do everything necessary to overcome the old and new historic problems that have placed Somalia on our agenda as an unresolved problem of the African Revolution, as the liberation of the Portuguese colonies was an unresolved problem of the African Revolution in 1974.

Beyond this, perhaps, as Africans, we should seriously consider whether we should not take up the call originally made by former President Khatami of Iran for a "dialogue of civilisations" - a dialogue that would lead to a peaceful resolution of conflicts between clans, within nation states, between states, and between coalitions of states, to ensure that the Somali example of anarchy and death is not visited on our countries and the rest of humanity. Might this not serve as a fitting tribute to the 50th anniversary of the historic independence of Ghana of Kwame Nkrumah, which we will celebrate this year, 2007!

Nice thread...waiting for the ancient, ancestral and can you add spiritual please and thanks.

__________________
"A generation of people who refuse to be themselves.
The philosophy of 50 cent has them hook, line and sinker.
The young black men become like a sacrifice.
They love it; they living in a fool's paradise."
-Brother Valentino

No PROB.

W.E.B. DU BOIS AND THE STRUGGLE AGAINST RACISM IN THE WORLD
BY
HERBERT APTHEKER, July 1983
The life of William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963) was devoted fundamentally to eliminating racism in the world. Bearing in mind how widespread that poison was during his lifetime, how deeply imbedded it was in the nature of dominant social systems and how great consequence it had to the wealth and power of exploitative ruling classes, it is clear that Du Bois had selected a powerful adversary.

Du Bois, as an Afro-American growing up in late nineteenth century United States and living both in the North and in the South, felt daily upon his own flesh and soul - and that of his family and friends - the impact of this poison. He began his crusade with his own people and his own country; he soon realized, however, that the ideology and practice of racism was worldwide. The realization came with a comprehension of its strength in Latin America, in Africa and in Asia. He saw that the effort at the liberation of blacks in the United States was part of a global effort to eliminate the special oppression and exploitation of coloured peoples. By the first decade of the twentieth century he realized, as he stated in 1907, that the liberation of the coloured peoples of the world was part of the vast movement for the emancipation of the working classes of the world.

Du Bois concentrated upon the condition of his own people in the first place. The concern for coloured people everywhere was a logical consequence thereof. It has to be emphasized, however, that he never thought of this issue in any exclusionary sense or with any invidious content. Du Bois had enormous pride in his own people but that pride was part of his wonder at the magnificence of human beings in general and of his confidence in the splendid life they could create when freed of exploitative social systems that breed, need and sustain divisive concepts, laws and practices. To eliminate the specially onerous oppression and exploitation of coloured men and women (and Du Bois early called attention to the frightful suppression of women, in particular) was part of the necessary effort to eliminate inequality and injustice confronting all who - bereft of the means of production - worked for those holding in their private possession the wealth and producing capacity of the world.

Africa is a refrain in Du Bois’ life from its earliest moments until its end, after ninety-five stirring and fruitful years. He remembered to the end of his days the melody and sounds of an African lullaby his grandmother sang to him in his infancy. He lies buried in Ghana, in the soil of that West Africa from which certain of his ancestors had been torn by slave traders centuries ago.

As a young man in his twenties, he devoted the ten minutes allotted to him at the 1980 commencement ceremonies at Harvard to explaining to the distinguished white audience what made "Jefferson Davis a Representative American" - namely his energy, drive, lack of compassion and brutal vigour for self-advancement - and suggesting what the African component in American could offer: unselfishness, warmth, composure, neighbourliness and above all the value and dignity of service to others.

His doctoral dissertation, accepted at Harvard in 1895 and published as Harvard Historical Studies No. 1, the next year, examined The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870. It was the first scientific work in Afro-American history and it remains the classic exposition of this subject. Basically a scrupulously documented collection of data, it is not devoid of value judgement, which, Du Bois always insisted, could not be omitted from true scientific endeavour. Its final chapter condemns the "cupidity and carelessness" of those in power in the United States; its closing words are: "…we may conclude that it behoves nations as well as men to do things at the very moment when they ought to be done."

In his address before the American Negro Academy in 1897, entitled "The Conservation of Races", Du Bois pointed to the emergence of unifying movements among various peoples of the earth - he named the Japanese and the Slavic peoples - and urged that the same effort at unity was required of the Afro-Americans. In this instance, Du Bois projected for the first time his famous concept of the "twoness" of the Afro-American: "Am I an American or am I a Negro?" His reply was that the Afro-American is sui generis and is one of the great peoples of the earth which, through unity and collective consideration, must lead in working out its own destiny. Here, too, he projected the concept of Pan-Negroism as he called it then, and urged that the millions of Afro-Americans see themselves as part of a coming unity of African peoples in the world.

It was in the very year of the delivery of that address that Henry Sylvester-Williams, born in Trinidad the same year as Du Bois, founded an African Association in London where he practiced law. This Association projected the idea of holding what it termed a "Pan-African Conference" which was finally convened in London, at the Westminster Town Hall, from 23 to 25 July 1900. Some thirty black men and women from the United States, Haiti, Abyssinia, Liberia, the British West Indies and West Africa attended.

The Lord Bishop of London welcomed the delegates at the opening ceremonies and, according to Du Bois, "a promise was obtained from Queen Victoria, through Joseph Chamberlain", then Colonial Secretary, not to "overlook the interest and welfare of the native races".

Sylvester-Williams served as General Secretary of this Conference; its President was Alexander Walters, Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion church. Du Bois, who had been in Paris in charge of the "Negro Section" of the United States exhibit at the World’s Fair held earlier that year in Paris, was Chairman of the Committee on Address. His words were issued in the name of the Conference under the title "To the Nations of the World". In this appears for the first time Du Bois’ famous statement that the colour-line is the problem of the twentieth century - then just dawning. It appears in this context:

The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the colour-line, the question as to how far differences of race - which show themselves chiefly in the colour of the skin and the texture of the hair - will hereafter be made the basis of denying to over half the world the right of sharing to their utmost ability the opportunities and privileges of modern civilization.

A paragraph of this appeal elaborates the matter which would be central to Du Bois’ thinking for the next six decades:

The modern world must remember that in this age, when the ends of the world are being brought so near together, the millions of black men in Africa, America and the Islands of the Sea, not to speak of the brown and yellow myriads elsewhere, are bound to have a great influence upon the world in the future, by reason of sheer numbers and physical contact. If now the world of culture bends itself towards giving Negroes and other dark men the largest and broadest opportunity for education and self-development, then this contact and influence is bound to have a beneficial effect upon the world and hasten progress. But if, by reason of carelessness, prejudice, greed and injustice, the black world is to be exploited and ravished and degraded, the results must be deplorable, if not fatal - not simply to them, but to the high ideals of justice, freedom and culture which a thousand years of Christian civilization have held before Europe.

The address also contained specific proposals for various areas of the world: for the United States there is this paragraph:

Let not the spirit of Garrison, Phillips and Douglass wholly die out in America; may the conscience of a great nation rise and rebuke all dishonesty and unrighteous oppression toward the American Negro, and grant to him the right of franchise, security of person and property, and generous recognition of the great work he has accomplished in a generation toward raising nine millions of human beings from slavery to manhood.

Bishop Walters delivered a paper devoted to the 1900 London meeting to the 1901 gathering of the American Negro Academy. Du Bois was President of the Academy. One year later, in March 1902, a printed prospectus for the African Development Company was issued from a Philadelphia office and signed by T.J. Minton, Chairman, Du Bois, Secretary, and H.T. Kealing, Treasurer. The objective of this enterprise was to raise a capital stock of $50,000 "to acquire land in East Central Africa to be used for the cultivation of coffee and other products; to establish and maintain the means for transport by land, river, lakes and ocean; to establish and maintain trading stations, and to develop the natural resources of the lands acquired". The prospectus stated that "the promoters" possessed "contracts with certain native chiefs for valuable concessions of land". Du Bois’ papers show a continuing interest in African affairs thereafter, but the African Development Company seems never to have reached the stage of incorporation, let alone actual operation. It remains rather mysterious, but it certainly shows great interest in Africa and its development. In some respects, it reminds of one of the early plans of Marcus Garvey to be announced in a later generation.

In November 1904, in Liverpool, England, the Ethiopian Progressive Association was founded. In March 1905 a revised version of its constitution and by-laws was published. In that form, a copy went to Du Bois from the Secretary of the Association, Kwesi Ewusi, of the Gold Coast colony. The Association had twenty founding members. They were from England, Sierra Leone, Lagos, Fernando Po, Barbados, Jamaica, Cuba, the Gold Coast, and South Africa.

The objectives of the Association were reminiscent of Du Bois’ 1900 call "To the Nations of the World": to develop friendship among Africans in England; to "create a bond of union" among all African peoples; to "raise the social status" of all Africans; to "strengthen the friendly relations" among them and all other peoples; and "to discuss…matters of vital importance concerning Africa in particular, and the Negro race in general".

In 1905, under the leadership of Du Bois and the very militant William Monroe Trotter, was founded the Niagara Movement uniting a broad spectrum of black professionals and intelligentsia who demanded full equality for black people, in contradistinction to the programme of acquiescence in second-class citizenship which was being promoted by Booker T. Washington. The concept of Pan-Africanism was present in the early texts written by Du Bois, and at the 1906 Annual meeting of the Niagara Movement the constitution was amended to add among its fourteen standing committees one called "The Pan-African Department".

To further the purposes of the Niagara Movement, Du Bois founded a monthly magazine, The Moon, printed in Memphis, Tennessee. It was published between December 1905 and July 1906. Very few copies survive. One of them, dated 2 March 1906, contains a regular column conducted by Du Bois and entitled: "Tidings of the Darker Millions". It was devoted to news of African and African-derived peoples around the world. This particular account emphasized reports of uprisings in South Africa against colonial rule. It reflects Du Bois’ constant concern to bring news of the actual activities and desires of African people to the attention of an audience in the United States.

From 1898 to 1913, Du Bois organized the Atlanta University Conferences devoted to questions confronting black people especially in the United States. Characteristically, however, discussion of areas beyond the United States was encouraged by Du Bois. In this connection, a seminal event occurred at the 1906 Conference wherein, at Du Bois’ invitation, the great anthropologist, Franz Boas, delivered a paper forthrightly attacking ideas of racism and bringing forward significant data on the influence of African civilizations and their pioneering contributions to the well-being of all humanity. This paper and similar work by the pioneer black historian Leo Hansberry, were very influential in Du Bois’ thinking and he repeatedly paid tribute to their impact upon his own development.

From January 1907 through February 1910, Du Bois edited, along with L.M. Hershaw and F.H. Murray, a monthly magazine, The Horizon, which served as the organ of the Niagara Movement. In addition to contributing poetry and short stories to this magazine, Du Bois was in charge of a column called "The Overlook", which devoted itself to reporting major developments throughout the world impinging upon African and African-derived peoples. In the first number of The Horizon, Du Bois called attention to the "shameful" exploitation of African peoples by Western capital, including the capital from the United States, especially Rockefeller, and warned: "The day of reckoning is coming". Thereafter, no issue of The Horizon failed to observe African developments. The issue of February 1907 reported on the "exploitation of the native West Africans" by "organized, ruthless and ruling capital backed by greed". Issues called attention to the work of such African leaders as Casely Hayford and Edward Blyden. In the issue dated November-December 1908, Du Bois wrote of the desirability of the development of a vast Pan-African movement because "the need of Liberia, the cause of Haiti, the cause of South Africa is our cause, and the sooner we realize this the better."

Not only did The Horizon, as the organ of the Niagara Movement, pay great attention to African developments; it is a fact that the Movement had a Pan-African department reflecting Du Bois’ early and basic commitment to this effort.

Related is the fact that at least as early as 1909, Du Bois had conceived the publication of what he then called an Encyclopaedia Africana. Stationery with this heading was printed, and he actively sought scholarly participation throughout the world. His effort was quite successful, but neither at that time nor later was he able to find the funds to bring the great idea into existence. He was to return to this effort in the 1930s, with some encouragement from the Phelps-Stokes Fund, but other than the publication of two editions in the 1940s, containing an annotated index and selected bibliographical guide, that project under the auspices of the Phelps-Stokes Fund also failed to materialize. It was only with the coming into being of an independent Ghana, headed by Du Bois’ disciple, Kwame Nkrumah, that the Encyclopaedia project could again be taken up seriously. Du Bois went to Ghana in 1961 despite the hostility of the United States State Department to direct this project and to bring into being the vision of his young manhood. With the able assistance of the very conscientious Dr. Alphaeus Hunton, this project was considerably advanced by the time Du Bois died, in his 95th year in August 1963. There is indication despite a most unfortunate hiatus of more than a decade, that something approaching the vision of Du Bois would yet materialize.

* * *

The single most sustained, and in many ways most significant of the manifold activities of Du Bois, was his leadership in the founding, in 1910, of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and his editorship of its monthly magazine, The Crisis, from its first number issued in November 1910, until his resignation from the NAACP in the summer of 1934.

The Crisis, as Du Bois’ Moon and Horizon, paid careful attention to the history, culture and art of Africa during the period of Du Bois’ editorship. In the first number of Crisis, in his column, "What to Read", he called attention to eleven articles dealing with Africa in various magazines. Out of a total of twenty books which Du Bois felt his readers should know about, nine had as their subject some aspect of the life and history of Africa. In that first Crisis also, Du Bois described at some length a conference devoted to Africa held earlier in 1910 at Clark University in Massachusetts where black and white scholars delivered papers on "The Contributions of the Negro to Human Civilization" as well as others treating some aspect of reality in the Belgian Congo, Liberia, French Africa, and British Africa. This problem was a constant theme in Du Bois’ Crisis: its issue of June 1912 called attention to the recent death of D.J. Lenders, a leader of the African Political Organization in South Africa. Du Bois commended D.J. Lenders as a militant fighter "for full political and civil rights to all". In an editorial in the issue of August 1913, Du Bois excoriated domination in South Africa "by means of theft, disfranchisement and slavery". He denounced the oppression of "the voteless and voiceless blacks who toil for dividends to support luxurious restaurants and churches and automobiles in London and New York." The issue of May 1922 paid great attention to a current strike of workers in South Africa. This was characteristic of Du Bois’ editorship, because his Crisis was one of the very few publications in the United States to carry such news. In the issue for September 1930, Du Bois characterized the South African regime as "barbarous". And in the December 1933 issue, which was published shortly before Du Bois resigned his editorship, details concerning South African oppression again are offered and Du Bois concludes with the rhetorical question: "Who is civilized in South Africa and who is not?"

Thereafter, in Du Bois’ writings for newspapers and periodicals, this theme of protesting colonialism and racism in Africa, and especially in South Africa, recurs. In the 1940s, Du Bois conducted a weekly column devoted entirely to news from Africa in Adam Clayton Powell’s newspaper in Harlem called People’s Voice. Quite typical of Du Bois’ writings there was his column dated 14 October 1947. There he described South Africa as "this medieval, slave-ridden oligarchy" which is ludicrously "placed in the front ranks of the ‘democracies’ of the world". Again, in the issue of 20 December 1947, one finds Du Bois denouncing "the racist, anti-democratic and intensely exploitative situation" in South Africa.

In New Africa the organ of the Council on African Affairs, which Du Bois co-chaired with Paul Robeson from 1948, in the issue dated January 1949, Du Bois again condemned the "oppressive and racist rule" in South Africa and urged "effective action by the United Nations and the creation of a democratic society in South Africa". Du Bois’ article in this periodical, dated May-June 1950, was entitled "Repression Madness Rules South Africa". It noted that New Africa was banned in South Africa. Du Bois reiterated his certainty that within the next fifty years the black majority in South Africa would "take over this wretched and reactionary section of the world and make it into a new democratic state". In the 1950s many of his columns in the then progressive weekly, the National Guardian, published in New York City, were devoted to African history and especially to the struggles of the African peoples. In one of his final columns published on 20 September 1960, a year before his departure for Ghana, Du Bois warned that if "racism and super-exploitation persist" in South Africa it "may well be the place wherein a new world war begins".

These newspaper columns were necessarily very brief. Du Bois was one of the earliest authors in the United States who managed to publish full length in leading journals and present critical examinations of the colonialism that characterized European and United States relations with Africa. Two of these essays have assumed really classical positions in the relevant literature.

First, there is the remarkable essay on "The African Roots of the War" published in the Atlantic Monthly for May 1915. With the hindsight provided to us by the passage of sixty-five years, one detects certain philosophic idealism and, politically, certain classlessness and therefore a kind of naiveté and moral exhortation. One must, however, recall that this analysis appeared two years prior to Lenin’s Imperialism and that one would be hard put to find so incisive an examination of its subject matter in any language at that time. For example, here are two paragraphs from this essay - published, the reader will bear in mind, less than one year after the start of First World War:

What, then, are we to do, who desire peace and the civilization of all men? Hitherto the peace movement has confined itself chiefly to figures about the cost of war and platitudes on humanity. What do nations care about the cost of war, if by spending a few hundred millions in steel and gunpowder they can gain a thousand millions in diamonds and cocoa? How can love of humanity appeal as a motive to nations whose love of luxury is built on the inhuman exploitation of human beings, and who, especially in recent years, have been taught to regard these human beings as inhuman?…

We, then, who want peace, must remove the real causes of war. We have extended gradually our conception of democracy beyond our social class to all social classes in our nation; we have gone further and extended our democratic ideals not simply to all classes of our own nation, but to those other nations of our blood and lineage - to what we call "European" civilization. If we want real peace and lasting cultures, however, we must go further. We must extend the democratic ideal to the yellow, brown and black peoples.

Du Bois here noted that colonialism treated its victims "as beasts of burden"; he insisted that: "We shall not drive war from this world until we treat them as free and equal citizens in a world-democracy of all races and nations". He demanded that "the ruling of one people for another people’s whim or gain must stop", or wars would recur. With passion and eloquence, he concluded this pioneering analysis:

Twenty centuries after Christ, black Africa prostrate, raped, and shamed, lies at the feet of the conquering Philistines of Europe. Beyond the awful sea a black woman is weeping and waiting with her sons on her breast. What shall the end be? The world-old and fearful things: War and Wealth, Murder and Luxury? Or shall it be a new thing - a new peace and new democracy of all races: a great humanity of equal men?

The other of the two major efforts appeared in Foreign Affairs for July 1943, and its title conveyed its essence: "The Realities in Africa: European Profit or Negro Development?" In this essay Du Bois gave short shrift to the propaganda concerning racial "inferiority". "We must come back", he wrote, "to dollars, pounds, marks and francs". The reality was: "The process of exploitation that culminated in the British, French and German empires before the First World War, turned out to be an investment whose vast returns depended on cheap labour under strict colonial control, without too much interference from mawkish philanthropy."

The analytical advance over the 1915 essays is conveyed in this paragraph:

Unless the question of racial status is frankly and intelligently faced it will become a problem not simply of Africa but of the world. More than the welfare of the blacks is involved. As long as there is in the world a reservoir of cheap labour that can raise the necessary raw materials, and as long as arrangements can be made to transport these raw materials to manufacturing countries, this body of cheap labour will compete directly or indirectly with European labour and will be often substituted for European labour. This situation will increase the power of investors and employers over the political organization of the state, leading to agitation and revolt within the state on the part of the labouring classes and to wars between states which are competing for domination over these sources of profit. And if the fiction of inferiority is maintained, there will be added to all this the revolt of the suppressed races themselves, who, because of their low wages, are the basic cause of the whole situation.

The logical conclusion of the analysis was phrased this way:

The social development of Africa for the welfare of Africans, with educated Africans in charge of the programme, would certainly interfere with the private profits of foreign investment and would ultimately change the entire relationship of Africa to the modern world. Is the development of Africa for the welfare of Africans the aim? Or is the aim a world dominated by Anglo-Saxons, or at least by the stock of white Europe? If the aim is to keep Africa in subjection just as long as possible, will it not plant the seeds of future hatreds and more war?

In his second tour of duty as a professor at Atlanta University, from 1934 to mid-1944, Du Bois managed to establish, in 1940, the scholarly quarterly Phylon. He edited it during its formative years until he left the University to take up work, again briefly, with the NAACP. With Du Bois as editor, this journal was crammed with material on Africa, notably in the contributions under his own signature. In the second issue of 1940, Du Bois wrote of the inequitable land distribution and of the very heavy penal laws in South Africa; in its third number he called attention to the outlawry in South Africa of union efforts by black workers.

In the last issue of 1940, Du Bois examined at some length various proposals for resolving the "native problem" in South Africa. He discussed parallelism, assimilation, or some device for the total separation of black from white. He showed that none would or could work and that only a democratic and egalitarian society offered a lasting solution. Phylon for 1941, again especially in Du Bois’ own writings, contains important information on the realities of oppression in South Africa and, especially on evidence of black resistance against this situation. South Africa, he summarized, in issue number 2 for 1942, has "the worst system of colour caste in the world".

Another form of periodical writing by Du Bois was that of book reviews. Here too, this concentration upon African materials, and especially South African ones, is notable. Two examples must suffice. In Crisis for October 1927, Du Bois reviewed Sidney Olivier’s Anatomy of African Misery, published that year in London by Hogarth Press. Summarizing that important book, Du Bois wrote that "slavery and caste exploited by capitalistic imperialism spread over the whole southern half of Africa". He concluded that "South Africa is wrecking civilization" and closed with his repeated warning: "South Africa is a menace to the peace of the world". In the scholarly, Marxist-oriented quarterly, Science & Society for summer 1953, Du Bois reviewed E. Solly Sachs’ The Choice before South Africa, published the preceding year in London by Turnstile Press. Noting that its author was a militant white South African radical forced into exile, Du Bois, after detailing the contents of the book, concluded that "the methods used by the Nazis in Germany were identical in every respect to those used by enemies of trade unions in South Africa".

Most of Du Bois’ twenty published books dealt in some way with Africa and several were devoted entirely to that continent. Note has already been taken of his first book The Suppression of the African Slave Trade. In his biography of John Brown, first published in 1909, Du Bois did not fail to note that: "The mystic spell of Africa is and ever was over all America. It has guided her hardest work, inspired her finest literature, and sung her sweetest songs".

The Negro, one of the volumes in the Home University Library of Modern Knowledge, published in New York and London in 1915, is a brief and pioneering effort at depicting the entire scope of Africa’s past. It also placed within this context the position of African-derived peoples in the United States, Latin America and the West Indies and showed the relationship between the exploitation of Africa and the rise of capitalism and imperialism in Europe and the United States.

Du Bois’ second novel, Dark Princess, published by Harcourt Brace in New York in 1928, sought through fiction to convey to readers a conception of the depths of discontent in the world of coloured peoples and the critical need for significant change if catastrophic global violence were to be avoided. The plot is that of the development and failure of a world-wide conspiracy of people of colour, led by a Princess of India, to undo the domination of the globe by European and American States.

In the 1920, "Little Blue Books", brief paperbacks which sold for five or ten cents and treated historical, philosophical and economic subjects, was an important publishing venture. It was published by a radical-oriented company known as Haldeman-Julius Publications, located in Girard, Kansas. In 1929, Du Bois was given the opportunity of producing two such "Little Blue Books", and they appeared the next year. Each was a 64-page booklet; one treated Africa, its Geography, People and Products while the other was concerned with Africa: its Place in Modern History. The second book was somewhat repetitious of The Negro, but it dealt only with Africa and concentrated as its title indicates, upon the 19th and early 20th centuries. It placed Africa within the context of European power politics and showed its close connexion with the imperialism of the major powers. A feature of the little work is the great attention it pays to evidence of African resistance and initiative.

In the late 1930s, Du Bois was given the opportunity of completing a fuller study of Africa than he could accomplish in either the 1915 or the 1930 studies. The result of it was: Black Folk Then and Now: An Essay in the History and Sociology of the Negro Race published in New York by Henry Holt & Company in 1939.

It was a volume of 400 pages containing sixteen chapters and an extensive bibliography. The volume opened with a history of Africa and a description of some of its major early civilizations. The United States and the West Indies were not neglected in the work, but most space was given to Africa. Its final four chapters concentrate upon modern Africa, especially upon questions of land ownership, condition of the working masses, systems of education and of political control. The final chapter, "The Future of the World Democracy", deals with major strikes and uprisings in the first third of the 20th century. Its concluding lines are:

The proletariat of the world consists not simply of white European and American workers but overwhelmingly of the dark workers of Asia, Africa, the islands of the sea, and South and Central America. These are the ones who are supporting a superstructure of wealth, luxury and extravagance. It is the rise of these people that is the rise of the world.

And then Du Bois repeated the words he first penned in 1900: "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the colour line".

Upon Du Bois’ return to the NAACP in 1944, in the position of Director of Special Research, he concentrated his efforts upon what he understood to be the purpose for which he was hired, namely, to turn the attention of as much of the world’s population as he, and the NAACP could reach, to problems of colonialism and especially to the question of the continued subjugation of most of Africa. One result was the appearance of a brief book: Colour and Democracy: Colonies and Peace, published in New York by the Harcourt Brace & Company in 1945.

The premise of this book was that with the world to come after the Second World War, "the majority of the inhabitants of earth, who happen for the most part to be coloured, must be regarded as having the right and the capacity to share in human progress and to become co-partners in that democracy which alone can ensure peace among men, by the abolition of poverty, the education of the masses, protection from disease and the scientific treatment of crime". The thought is developed that "colonies are the slums of the world", and that the slum dwellers are in righteous rebellion. If these slums are not ended, Du Bois warned, there would be not only these "justifiable revolts" but also "recurring wars of envy and greed because of the present inequitable distribution of gain among civilized nations". Statements from the Western Allies and their proposals such as those issuing from Dumbarton Oaks, showed a failure to consider the question of colonialism and the need for liberation; this was fatal, Du Bois insisted, for "so long as colonial imperialism exists, there can be neither peace on earth nor good will toward men". Du Bois took a positive view of the Soviet Union here, as he had from 1919 onwards, until his death, noting that it had not "like most nations, without effort to solve it, declared the insolubility of the problem of the poor, and above all, it has not falsely placed on the poor the blame of their wretched conditions".

Another volume resulted from Du Bois’ position at the NAACP. This was: The World and Africa: An Inquiry into the Part which Africa has Played in World History, published by Viking in New York in 1947 and issued, with an additional hundred pages by International Publishers in New York City two years after his death.

The book began with a consideration of a meaning of the just concluded World War (its original preface was dated May 1946). It moved on to an analysis of the impact of European colonialism, especially in Africa, during the preceding two centuries and of the "rape of Africa" in the four centuries beginning with the mid-15th century. It was followed by a delineation of what Africa thus ravished had been: a history of Egypt, the Sudan, West and Central Africa and of Asia until the 16th century, and finally, an inquiry into "the future of the darker races" whose coming liberation was held to be "indispensable to the fertilizing of the universal soil of mankind". The final thought in the 1947 edition was: "There can be no perfect democracy curtailed by colour, race, or poverty. But with all we accomplish all, even Peace".

The 1965 edition, enriched with selections from periodical pieces by Du Bois in the 1950s (selected by the present writer) - emphasized in particular the key role of United States corporations and banks - Morgan, Rockefeller, Ford, General Motors, General Electric, Firestone, after the Second World War in the continued exploitation of Africa and especially South Africa.

Du Bois’ monumental fictional trilogy: The Black Flame, published in 1957, 1959 and 1961 by Mainstream Publishers in New York City, was a novelized autobiographical presentation of what it meant to be a black man in the United States from 1876 to 1956; it certainly does not neglect the consequence of Africa in general and its significance for Du Bois in particular.

His final volume, the posthumously published Autobiography (edited by the present writer), was written during the years 1958-1961 and was published in full in 1968 by International Publishers. Again, the central role of Pan-Africanism, of the effort in general by Du Bois to alert the world to the realities of Africa and the necessity of achieving its liberation, fills this book, as they had filled his incomparable life.

* * *


Du Bois was not only an editor, a skilled essayist, a poet and novelist, a superbly trained social scientist who produced lasting works in sociology and history, and a teacher who inspired hundreds of students during decades of instruction. Du Bois was also an agitator, an organizer, an activist in the struggles for the liberation of the Afro-American people, of the African peoples, of humanity and in the supreme effort he devoted to eliminating the scourge of war.

Note already has been taken of Du Bois’ participation in the seminal 1900 Pan-African conference in London, his role in connexion with possible commercial relationship between black people in the United States and portions of Africa, going back to 1902, the relationship in 1904 with the Ethiopian Progressive Association and the Pan-African commitment of the Niagara Movement founded largely by Du Bois and headed by him until its dissolution and merging with the organization that became, in 1910, the NAACP. The development of Du Bois’ idea of an Encyclopaedia Africana by 1909 and the beginnings of his regular correspondence with African leaders and scholars at the turn of the 20th century were also observed.

In 1911, Du Bois participated in the first All-Races Congress held in England. There appeared leading figures from the entire world, including China, Japan, Haiti, India, Persia, Turkey, the British West Indies, Egypt, the Sudan and Western Africa. Du Bois played a central role in the proceedings of this meeting and made lasting friendships. One of the basic conclusions of this Congress was that the idea of racism was as false as it was pernicious.

Towards the end of the First World War, colonial and oppressed peoples began to plan for a post-war world that might bring an end to colonialism and oppression. This very much included African and African-derived peoples. Du Bois devoted much effort to persuading the other leaders of the NAACP to devote some of the energies and funds of the organization to Pan-African efforts. He had some success, and his trip to Paris in 1919, funded by the NAACP, had among its objects the inquiry into conditions of U.S. black soldiers in France, gathering of material for a projected history of African and Afro-American participation in the War, and the holding of a Pan-African Congress.

Du Bois managed to get some support and even meagre funds for the latter from the British Labour Party and, with great difficulty, he was able to call and lead the first Pan-African meeting since that of 1900, in Paris in 1919. Most of the commercial press of Europe and the United States denounced the gathering as too radical; a few papers denounced it as Bolshevik-inspired! But it did meet, and an organization did come into existence. The idea of Pan-African unity in the struggle against colonialism and racism took on organizational form, never thereafter to expire.

The Second Pan-African Congress met in London, Paris and Brussels in 1921. Appropriate resolutions were made, old and new friendships created, and the concept of a permanent secretariat projected. The latter did not eventuate, nor did plans for an international journal in French and English dedicated to the movement. Still, with Du Bois as the driving force, another (Third) Pan-African Congress met in 1923 in Paris and Lisbon.

While there, Du Bois learned of his appointment by President Coolidge as Ambassador Extraordinary, representing the President of the United States at the 1924 inauguration of C.D. King as President of Liberia. Du Bois fulfilled this mission and again made new and renewed old ties. He used the occasion of his first to visit to Africa to enter other West African areas, notably Sierra Leone. This actual observation of Africa made a profound impression upon Du Bois and found outlet in numerous newspaper columns, magazine articles and speeches heard in the United States by thousands of blacks and whites.

Du Bois set his mind upon holding the Fourth Congress in Africa, and for a time it appeared that France would agree upon Tunis as a venue. This, however, was finally rejected. Britain and France also turned down request for the holding of the conference in the West Indies. A result was that the Fourth Congress was not held until 1927 and then took place in New York City, with not only Du Bois’ participation but also the active work of several black women in the United States, notably Mary Church Terrell and Addie W. Hunton.

One result of Du Bois’ visits in the 1920s to European museums and to Africa itself was his intense interest in the great wood and metal artwork and music of the African continent. Du Bois played a central role in promoting appreciation of these facets of African culture from 1924 to 1928 as part of the so-called Harlem Renaissance of that period.

Soon after 1927, the Great Depression, harmful to white people but catastrophic to black folk, made Du Bois concentrate his mind and activities upon the United States, although, as earlier pages have shown, he continued to publish on Africa throughout the 1930s.

With the Second World War, Du Bois again turned his attention to Africa and the question of colonialism and the struggle for peace. As already shown, Africa was a major concern of Du Bois during his service with Phylon magazine between 1940 and 1944. When in 1944 he returned to the NAACP he did so with the idea of devoting all of his energies to the battle against colonialism and, in particular, to the liberation of the African continent.

In this role, he not only produced the articles and books already mentioned, dealing directly with Africa. Along with Walter White and Mary McLeod Bethune, he also served as Consultant to the United States delegation at the founding of the United Nations in 1945.

In private and public speeches and in letters and published writings, Du Bois maintained his anti-colonial position and affirmed his disappointment with the Western Powers and the United States. He asserted that they were not taking an anti-colonial stance, but on the contrary, seemed to be assuming that the post-war world in that regard, would be similar to the world of 1939.

It was Du Bois’ opposition to the Truman foreign policy of United States hegemony that finally determined Du Bois’ removal, late in 1947, from his position with the NAACP. The leadership of that organization and especially Walter White himself, became part of the Truman bandwagon.

Du Bois joined Paul Robeson as leader of the heroic work of the Council on African Affairs, which was the voice in the United States keeping alive opposition to colonialism in Africa and particularly to the infamous regime in South Africa. Though well past eighty, Du Bois agreed to run for United States Senator from New York State in 1950; he made this an educational effort against colonialism and for disarmament and peace. While his American Labour Party candidacy was not successful, he did manage to get over 200,000 votes, according to the official count.

In this same period, Du Bois undertook the leadership of the struggle in the United States against atomic armaments and for world peace. In this connexion he headed the Peace Information Center, responsible for gathering, in face of the McCarthyite terror, well over two million signatures in the United States appealing for the banning of the A-Bomb. Meanwhile, in 1946 Du Bois had headed a resurrected Pan-African movement and tightened close connexions with figures like Nkrumah, Azikiwe and Kenyatta.

A Washington gone quite berserk actually indicted Dr. Du Bois and four others as "unregistered foreign agents" because of the heroic work in connexion with the Peace Information Center. World-wide protest and outrage at this atrocious act induced Washington to attempt to offer Du Bois a "deal". If he would admit guilt, the Government would assure him a suspended sentence. Du Bois indignantly rejected this in a letter to his attorneys and stated that he would rather rot in jail for the rest of his life than agree to a lie with such an administration for such a purpose.

The world-wide protest movement was successful and Du Bois and his fellow defendants were acquitted in this first great legal setback to McCarthyism.

Du Bois’ lectures and world-wide travels, his leadership in the anti-war movement and his writings in favour of peace and against colonialism, continued throughout the 1950s. It was in 1960 that President Nkrumah of Ghana invited Du Bois to Accra to undertake the setting up of a secretariat that would finally produce an Encyclopaedia Africana. The present writer had the honour to drive Dr. and Mrs. Du Bois to the airport for the flight to Ghana in October 1961, to undertake this formidable task.

I recall that a reporter at the airport asked Du Bois how many volumes he projected for the work. Du Bois replied that he thought ten stout volumes would be sufficient. How long would each volume’s production take the reporter asked. Du Bois, then 93 years old, responded with just the hint of a smile: "I should think it will take me about ten years per volume".

While in Accra, Du Bois advanced the project considerably. In addition, he continued to be asked to give advice to leaders of the burgeoning African liberation movements which he did in public speeches, articles and in private communications.

Shortly before leaving for Accra, Du Bois had come to the decision that the programme and ideas of the Communist Party of the United States were nearest to his own views. With the warlike policy of Washington and its persecution of radicals and Communists, Du Bois decided that it might be some contribution to peace and sanity if he were not only to join that Party but to do so with a public announcement of the fact. He did it on 1 October 1961, and the act did gain worldwide attention. It heartened fighters for peace and equality in the United States and it served to embarrass ruling powers in the United States.

In Ghana, the United States consulate refused to renew Dr. Du Bois’ passport. Under the terms of the McCarran Act, which was then still in force, it was a crime subject to ten years’ imprisonment for a communist to have a passport! The result was that, having inquired with President Nkrumah, Dr. and Mrs. Du Bois abandoned their United States citizenship and became citizens of Ghana.

When Du Bois died in August 1963 at the age of 95, President Nkrumah ordered a State funeral for this Father of the modern black liberation movement and of the African liberation movement. Representatives of all embassies and consulates were officially represented, except that of the United States.

Du Bois said in his last message - characteristically he had prepared this some time earlier - read at the grave-site by his wife Shirley Graham Du Bois:

I have loved my work, I have loved people and my play, but always I have been uplifted by the thought that what I have done well will live long and justify my life; that what I have done ill or never finished can now be handed on to others for endless days to be finished, perhaps better than I could have done.

"Peace", he said, in this final word, "will be my applause".

He added:

One thing alone I charge you. As you live, believe in life. Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader and fuller life. The only possible death is to lose belief in this truth simply because the great end comes slowly, because time is long.

The accomplishments of this Titan assure immortality. His ideas, his prophecies, his admonitions, his examples, are adornments to the record of the human race. One of his great dreams - the full liberation of what he called his Motherland, his Africa - has not yet been realized although, thanks in considerable part to his work, a very great deal has been accomplished. All of it will be accomplished, probably within this twentieth century, as he once projected. Above all, in this regard, stands yet the abomination of apartheid South Africa, but its doom is written in the stars. It is for those of us who remain and who comprehend and cherish the legacy of Du Bois, to finish the great work he had begun and so mightily advanced; in particular to bring a fully democratic and egalitarian social order to South Africa and therefore to immeasurably advance the prospects for a stable world peace.

Skull Supports Theory of Human Migration

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Published: January 12, 2007
From a new analysis of a human skull discovered in South Africa more than 50 years ago, scientists say they have obtained the first fossil evidence establishing the relatively recent time for the dispersal of modern Homo sapiens out of Africa.

The migrants appeared to have arrived at their new homes in Asia and Europe with the distinct and unmodified heads of Africans.

An international team of researchers reported yesterday that the age of the South African skull, which they dated at about 36,000 years old, coincided with the age of the skulls of humans then living in Europe and the far eastern parts of Asia, even Australia. The skull also closely resembled skulls of those humans.

The timing, the scientists and other experts said, introduced independent evidence supporting archaeological finds and recent genetic studies showing that modern humans left sub-Saharan Africa for Eurasia between 65,000 and 25,000 years ago; probably closer to 45,000 to 35,000 years ago for Europe.

Until now, however, paleontologists had been frustrated by the absence of fossils to test the hypothesis of most geneticists that the people of sub-Saharan Africa and in Eurasia at that time were one and the same — modern humans. The human fossil record in Africa from 70,000 to 15,000 years ago had been virtually blank.

Some scientists, on the other hand, have contended that the migration could have begun as early as 100,000 years ago and that in the intervening time, contact with more archaic populations like the Neanderthals could have produced recognizable changes in what became the modern humans of Eurasia. But no scientists in the migration debate have disputed that ancestors of the human species originated in Africa.

In a report in today’s issue of the journal Science, a research team led by Frederick E. Grine of the State University of New York at Stony Brook concluded that the South African skull provided critical corroboration of the archaeological and genetic evidence indicating that humans in fully modern form originated in sub-Saharan Africa and migrated, almost unchanged, to populate Europe and Asia.

Dr. Grine and his colleagues said in an announcement by Stony Brook that the skull was the first fossil evidence “in agreement with the out-of-Africa theory, which predicts that humans like those that inhabited Eurasia should be found in sub-Saharan Africa around 36,000 years ago.”

Ted Goebel, an anthropologist at Texas A&M University who was not connected to the research, said the skull opened the way to important insights about “the missing years of modern humans.”

Writing in an accompanying commentary in the journal, Dr. Goebel said, “Here is the first skull of an adult modern human from sub-Saharan Africa that dates to the critical period, and one that can speak to the relationship of early moderns from Africa and Europe.”

The new findings pivoted on fixing the skull’s age. When it was uncovered in 1952 near the town of Hofmeyr, South Africa, the cranium was almost complete, but the bone was degraded. Not enough carbon remained for scientists at the time to extract a radiocarbon date.

Using new technology, Richard Bailey and other researchers at the University of Oxford measured the amount of radiation that had been absorbed by sand grains that had filled the braincase since its burial. They calculated the yearly rate at which radiation had collected in the sand and checked this with data from a CT scan of the bone. In this way, they determined that the Hofmeyr skull belonged to a human who lived 36,000 years ago, plus or minus 3,000 years.

Another member of the team, Katerina Harvati of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, made a detailed examination of the shapes, sizes and contours of all parts of the skull. She compared these three-dimensional measurements with those of early human skulls from Europe and with skulls of living humans in Eurasia and southern Africa, including the Khoe-San, commonly known as the Bushmen.

Because the Bushmen are well represented in the more recent archaeological record, Dr. Harvati said, they were expected to bear a close resemblance to the Hofmeyr skull. Instead, the skull was found to be quite distinct from all recent Africans, including the Bushmen, she said, and it has “a very close affinity” with fossil specimens of Europeans living in the Upper Paleolithic, the period best known for advanced stone tools and cave art.

“Much to my amazement,” Dr. Grine said in an interview, “the skull linked very closely with those from Europe at the time and not with South African remains 15,000 years on.”

Dr. Grine said these modern humans probably originated in East Africa, which is rich in fossils of ancestors of the species, and moved into Eurasia and also south to the tip of Africa.

“It would be nice,” he conceded, “if we had more than one specimen.”

Another report in Science describes one of the earliest occupation sites of modern humans in Europe, at Kostenki on the Don River, 250 miles south of Moscow. Its stone and bone tools and a human figurine appeared to have been made about 45,000 years ago, perhaps earlier than human sites to the west.

The lead author of the report was Michael Anikovich of the Russian Academy of Sciences. John Hoffecker of the University of Colorado, a team member, said the small figurine might be “the oldest example of figurative art ever discovered.”

Dr. Goebel said the new research, archaeology, genetics and the Hofmeyr skull should help explain when and how modern humans leaving Africa spread out to different environments, which, he added, “is one of the greatest untold stories in the history of humankind.”

The Making, and Unmaking, of a Child Soldier

By ISHMAEL BEAH
Published: January 14, 2007
Sometimes I feel that living in New York City, having a good family and friends, and just being alive is a dream, that perhaps this second life of mine isn’t really happening. Whenever I speak at the United Nations, Unicef or elsewhere to raise awareness of the continual and rampant recruitment of children in wars around the world, I come to realize that I still do not fully understand how I could have possibly survived the civil war in my country, Sierra Leone.

Most of my friends, after meeting the woman whom I think of as my new mother, a Brooklyn-born white Jewish-American, assume that I was either adopted at a very young age or that my mother married an African man. They would never imagine that I was 17 when I came to live with her and that I had been a child soldier and participated in one of the most brutal wars in recent history.

In early 1993, when I was 12, I was separated from my family as the Sierra Leone civil war, which began two years earlier, came into my life. The rebel army, known as the Revolutionary United Front (R.U.F.), attacked my town in the southern part of the country. I ran away, along paths and roads that were littered with dead bodies, some mutilated in ways so horrible that looking at them left a permanent scar on my memory. I ran for days, weeks and months, and I couldn’t believe that the simple and precious world I had known, where nights were celebrated with storytelling and dancing and mornings greeted with the singing of birds and cock crows, was now a place where only guns spoke and sometimes it seemed even the sun hesitated to shine. After I discovered that my parents and two brothers had been killed, I felt even more lost and worthless in a world that had become pregnant with fear and suspicion as neighbor turned against neighbor and child against parent. Surviving each passing minute was nothing short of a miracle.

After almost a year of running, I, along with some friends I met along the way, arrived at an army base in the southeastern region. We thought we were now safe; little did we know what lay ahead.

1994: The First Battle

I have never been so afraid to go anywhere in my life as I was that first day. As we walked into the arms of the forest, tears began to form in my eyes, but I struggled to hide them and gripped my gun for comfort. We exhaled quietly, afraid that our own breathing could cause our deaths. The lieutenant led the line that I was in. He raised his fist in the air, and we stopped moving. Then he slowly brought it down, and we sat on one heel, our eyes surveying the forest. We began to move swiftly among the bushes until we came to the edge of a swamp, where we formed an ambush, aiming our guns into the bog. We lay flat on our stomachs and waited. I was lying next to my friend Josiah. At 11, he was even younger than I was. Musa, a friend my age, 13, was also nearby. I looked around to see if I could catch their eyes, but they were concentrating on the invisible target in the swamp. The tops of my eyes began to ache, and the pain slowly rose up to my head. My ears became warm, and tears were running down my cheeks, even though I wasn’t crying. The veins on my arms stood out, and I could feel them pulsating as if they had begun to breathe of their own accord. We waited in the quiet, as hunters do. The silence tormented me.

The short trees in the swamp began to shake as the rebels made their way through them. They weren’t yet visible, but the lieutenant had passed the word down through a whisper that was relayed like a row of falling dominos: “Fire on my command.” As we watched, a group of men dressed in civilian clothes emerged from under the tiny bushes. They waved their hands, and more fighters came out. Some were boys, as young as we were. They sat together in line, waving their hands, discussing a strategy. My lieutenant ordered a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) to be fired, but the commander of the rebels heard it as it whooshed its way out of the forest. “Retreat!” he called out to his men, and the grenade’s blast got only a few rebels, whose split bodies flew in the air. The explosion was followed by an exchange of gunfire from both sides.

I lay there with my gun pointed in front of me, unable to shoot. My index finger became numb. I felt as if the forest had turned upside down and I was going to fall off, so I clutched the base of a tree with one hand. I couldn’t think, but I could hear the sounds of the guns far away in the distance and the cries of people dying in pain. A splash of blood hit my face. In my reverie I had opened my mouth a bit, so I tasted some of the blood. As I spat it out and wiped it off my face, I saw the soldier it had come from. Blood poured out of the bullet holes in him like water rushing through newly opened tributaries. His eyes were wide open; he still held his gun. My eyes were fixed on him when I heard Josiah screaming for his mother in the most painfully piercing voice I had ever heard. It vibrated inside my head to the point that I felt my brain had shaken loose from its anchor.

I searched for Josiah. An RPG had tossed his tiny body off the ground, and he had landed on a tree stump. He wiggled his legs as his cry gradually came to an end. There was blood everywhere. It seemed as if bullets were falling into the forest from all angles. I crawled to Josiah and looked into his eyes. There were tears in them, and his lips were shaking, but he couldn’t speak. As I watched him, the water in his eyes was replaced with blood that quickly turned his brown eyes red. He reached for my shoulder as if to pull himself up. But midway, he stopped moving. The gunshots faded in my head, and it was as if my heart had stopped and the whole world had come to a standstill. I covered his eyes with my fingers and lifted him from the tree stump. His backbone had been shattered. I placed him flat on the ground and picked up my gun. I didn’t realize that I had stood up to take Josiah off the tree stump. I felt someone tugging at my foot. It was the corporal; he was saying something that I couldn’t understand. His mouth moved, and he looked terrified. He pulled me down, and as I hit the ground, I felt my brain shaking in my skull again, and my deafness gave way.

“Get down,” he was screaming. “Shoot,” he said, as he crawled away from me to resume his position. As I looked to where he lay, my eyes caught Musa, whose head was covered with blood. His hands looked too relaxed. I turned toward the swamp, where there were gunmen running, trying to cross over. My face, my hands, my shirt and my gun were drenched in blood. I raised my gun and pulled the trigger, and I killed a man. Suddenly all the death I had seen since the day I was touched by war began flashing in my head. Every time I stopped shooting to change magazines and saw my two lifeless friends, I angrily pointed my gun into the swamp and killed more people. I shot everything that moved, until we were ordered to retreat because we needed another plan.

We took the guns and ammunition off the bodies of my friends and left them there in the forest, which had taken on a life of its own, as if it had trapped the souls that had departed from the dead. The branches of the trees seemed to be holding hands and bowing their heads in prayer. In the swamp, crabs had already begun feasting on the eyes of the dead. Limbs and fragmented skulls lay on top of the bog, and the water in the swamp was stagnant with blood. I was not afraid of these lifeless bodies. I despised them and kicked them to flip them and take their guns. I found a G3 and some ammunition. I noticed that most of the dead gunmen and boys wore lots of jewelry on their necks and wrists.

We arrived in the village, our base, with nightfall and sat against the walls of houses. It was quiet, and perhaps afraid of the silence, we began cleaning the blood off our guns, oiling their chambers, and shooting them into the air to test their effectiveness. I went for supper that night but was unable to eat. I only drank water and felt nothing. I lay on my back in the tent with my AK-47 on my chest and the G3 I had taken from a dead rebel leaning on the peg of the tent. Nothing happened in my head. It was a void, and I stared at the roof of the tent until I was miraculously able to doze off. I had a dream that I was picking up Josiah from the tree stump and a gunman stood on top of me. He placed his gun against my forehead. I immediately woke up from my dream and began shooting inside the tent, until the 30 rounds in the magazine were finished. The corporal and the lieutenant came in afterward and took me outside. I was sweating, and they threw water on my face and gave me a few white capsules. They were the same capsules that we’d all been given before we had gone into battle, and to this day, I do not know what they contained. I stayed up all night and couldn’t sleep for days. We went out two more times that week, and I had no problem shooting my gun.

Rebel Raids

After that first week of going out on raids to kill people we deemed our rebel enemies or sympathizers of the rebels, our initiation was complete. We stayed put at the base, and we boys took turns guarding posts around the village. We smoked marijuana and sniffed “brown brown,” cocaine mixed with gunpowder, which was always spread out on a table near the ammunition hut, and of course I took more of the white capsules, as I had become addicted to them. The first time I took all these drugs at the same time, I began to perspire so much that I took off all my clothes. My body shook, my sight became blurred and I lost my hearing for several minutes. I walked around the village restlessly. But after several doses of these drugs, all I felt was numbness to everything and so much energy that I couldn’t sleep for weeks. We watched war movies at night, Rambo “First Blood,” “Rambo, First Blood, Part II,” “Commando” and so on, with the aid of a generator or a car battery. We all wanted to be like Rambo; we couldn’t wait to implement his techniques.

When we ran out of supplies, we raided rebel camps in towns, villages and forests. “We have good news from our informants” the lieutenant would announce. “We are moving out in five minutes to kill some rebels and take their supplies, which really belong to us.” He often made speeches about how we were defending our country, how honorable we were. At these times, I would stand holding my gun and feeling special because I was part of something that took me seriously and I was not running from anyone anymore. The lieutenant’s face evinced confidence; his smiles disappeared before they were completed. We would tie our heads with the green cloths that distinguished us from the rebels, and we boys would lead the way. There were no maps and no questions asked. We were simply told to follow the path until we received instructions on what to do next. We walked for long hours and stopped only to eat sardines and corned beef with gari, sniff brown brown and take more white capsules. The combination of these drugs made us fierce. The idea of death didn’t cross my mind, and killing had become as easy as drinking water. After that first killing, my mind had stopped making remorseful records, or so it seemed.

Before we got to a rebel camp, we would deviate from the path and walk in the forest. Once the camp was in sight, we would surround it and wait for the lieutenant’s command. The rebels roamed about; some sat against walls, dozing off, and others, boys as young as we, stood at guard posts passing around marijuana. Whenever I looked at rebels during raids, my entire body shook with fury; they were the people who had shot my friends and family. So when the lieutenant gave orders, I shot as many as I could, but I didn’t feel better. After every gunfight, we would enter the rebel camp, killing those we had wounded. We would then search the houses and gather gallons of gasoline, enormous amounts of marijuana and cocaine, bales of clothes, watches, rice, salt, gari and many other things. We rounded up any civilians — men, women, boys and young girls — hiding in the huts and houses and made them carry our loot back to the base. We shot them if they tried to run away.

On one of these raids, we captured a few rebels after a long gunfight and a lot of civilian casualties. We undressed the prisoners and tied their arms behind their backs until their chests were tight as drums. “Where did you get all this ammunition from?” the corporal asked one of the prisoners, a man with an almost dreadlocked beard. He spat in the corporal’s face, and the corporal immediately shot him in the head at close range. He fell to the ground, and blood slowly leaked out of his head. We cheered in admiration of the corporal’s action and saluted him as he walked by. Suddenly, a rebel hiding in the bushes shot one of our boys. We dispersed around the village in search of the shooter. When the young muscular rebel was captured, the lieutenant slit his neck with his bayonet. The rebel ran before he fell to the ground and stopped moving. We cheered again, raising our guns in the air, shouting and whistling.

During that time, a lot of things were done with no reason or explanation. Sometimes we were asked to leave for war in the middle of a movie. We would come back hours later after killing many people and continue the movie as if we had just returned from intermission. We were always either on the front lines, watching a war movie or doing drugs. There was no time to be alone or to think. When we conversed with one another, we talked only about the movies and how impressed we were with the way either the lieutenant, the corporal or one of us had killed someone. It was as if nothing else existed.

The villages that we captured and turned into our bases as we went along and the forests that we slept in became my home. My squad was my family, my gun was my provider and protector and my rule was to kill or be killed. The extent of my thoughts didn’t go much beyond that. We had been fighting for more than two years, and killing had become a daily activity. I felt no pity for anyone. My childhood had gone by without my knowing, and it seemed as if my heart had frozen. I knew that day and night came and went because of the presence of the moon and the sun, but I had no idea whether it was a Sunday or a Friday.

Taken From the Front

In my head my life was normal. But everything began to change in January 1996. I was 15.

One morning that month, a truck came to the village where we were based. Four men dressed in clean blue jeans and white T-shirts that said “Unicef” in big blue letters jumped out. They were shown to the lieutenant’s house. It seemed as if he had been expecting them. As they sat talking on the veranda, we watched them from under the mango tree, where we sat cleaning our guns. Soon all the boys were told to line up for the lieutenant who selected a few of us and asked the adult soldiers to take away our guns and ammunition. A bunch of boys, including my friend Alhaji and me, were ushered to the truck. I stared back at the veranda where the lieutenant now stood, looking in the other direction, toward the forest, his hands crossed behind his back. I still didn’t know exactly what was going on, but I was beginning to get angry and anxious. Why had the lieutenant decided to give us up to these civilians? We thought that we were part of the war until the end.

We were on the road for hours. I had gotten used to always moving and hadn’t sat in one place idly for a long time. It was night when the truck stopped at a center, where there were other boys whose appearances, red eyes and somber faces resembled ours. Alhaji and I looked at this group, and he asked the boys who they were. A boy who was sitting on the stoop angrily said: “We fought for the R.U.F.; the army is the enemy. We fought for freedom, and the army killed my family and destroyed my village. I will kill any of those army bastards every time I get a chance to do so.” The boy took off his shirt to fight, and on his arm was the R.U.F. brand. Mambu, one of the boys on our side, shouted, “They are rebels,” and reached for his bayonet, which he had hidden in his army shorts; most of us had hidden either a knife or a grenade before our guns were taken from us. Before Mambu could grab his weapon, the R.U.F. boy punched him in the face. He fell, and when he got up, his nose was bleeding. The rebel boys drew out the few bayonets they had in their shorts and rushed toward us. It was war all over again. Perhaps the naïve men who had taken us to the center thought that removing us from the war would lessen our hatred for the R.U.F. It hadn’t crossed their minds that a change of environment wouldn’t immediately make us normal boys; we were dangerous, brainwashed to kill.

One boy grabbed my neck from behind. He was squeezing for the kill, and I couldn’t use my bayonet effectively, so I elbowed him with all my might until he let go. He was holding his stomach when I turned around and stabbed him in his foot. The bayonet stuck, so I pulled it out with force. He fell, and I began kicking him in the face. As I went to deliver the final blow with my bayonet, someone came from behind me and sliced my hand with his knife. It was a rebel boy, and he was about to kick me down when he fell on his face. Alhaji had stabbed him in the back. He pulled the knife out, and we started kicking the boy until he stopped moving. I wasn’t sure whether he was unconscious or dead. I didn’t care. No one screamed or cried during the fight. After all, we had been doing such things for years and were all still on drugs.

We continued to stab and slice one another until a bunch of MPs came running through the gate toward the fight. The MPs fired a few rounds into the air to get us to stop, but we were still fighting, so they had to part us by force. They placed some of us at gunpoint and kicked others apart. Six people were killed: two on our side and four on the rebel side.

As MPs stood guard to make sure we didn’t start another fight, we, the army boys, went to the kitchen to look for food. We ate and chatted about the fight. Mambu told us that he had plucked an eye out of the head of one of the R.U.F. boys, and that the boy ran to punch him, but he couldn’t see, so he ran into the wall, banging his head hard and fainting. We laughed and picked up Mambu, raising him in the air. We needed the violence to cheer us after a whole day of boring travel and contemplation about why our superiors had let us go.

That night we were moved to a rehabilitation center called Benin Home. Benin Home was run by a local NGO called Children Associated With the War, in Kissy neighborhood, on the eastern outskirts of Freetown, the capital. This time, the MPs made sure to search us thoroughly before we entered. The blood of our victims and enemies was fresh on our arms and clothes. My lieutenant’s words still echoed in my head: “From now on, we kill any rebel we see, no prisoners.” I smiled a bit, happy that we had taken care of the rebel boys, but I also began to wonder again: Why had we been taken here? I walked up and down on the veranda, restless in my new environment. My head began to hurt.

It was infuriating to be told what to do by civilians. Their voices, even when they called us for breakfast, enraged me so much that I would punch the wall, my locker or anything nearby. A few days earlier, we could have decided whether they would live or die.

We refused to do anything that we were asked to do, except eat. At the end of every meal, the staff members and nurses came to talk to us about attending the scheduled medical checkups and the one-on-one counseling sessions that we hated at the minihospital that was part of Benin Home. As soon as the live-in staff, mostly men, started telling us what to do, we would throw bowls, spoons, food and benches at them. We would chase them out of the dining hall and beat them. One afternoon, after we had chased off several staff members, we placed a bucket over the cook’s head and pushed him around the kitchen until he burned his hand on a boiling pot and agreed to put more milk in our tea. During that same week, the drugs were wearing off. I craved cocaine and marijuana so badly that I would roll a plain sheet of paper and smoke it. Sometimes I searched the pockets of my army shorts, which I still wore, for crumbs of marijuana or cocaine. We broke into the minihospital and stole some painkillers — white tablets and off-white — and red and yellow capsules. We emptied the capsules, ground the tablets and mixed them together. But the mixture didn’t give us the effect we wanted. We got more upset day by day and, as a result, resorted to more violence. We began to fight one another day and night. We would fight for hours for no reason at all. At first the staff would intervene, but after a while they just let us go. They couldn’t really stop us, and perhaps they thought that we would get this out of our systems. During these fights, we destroyed most of the furniture and threw the mattresses out in the yard. We would stop to wipe the blood off our lips, arms and legs only when the bell rang for mealtime.

It had been more than a month, and some of us had almost gone through the withdrawal stage, even though there were still instances of vomiting and collapsing at unexpected moments. These outbreaks ended, for most of us, at the end of the second month. But we now had time to think; the fastened mantle of our war memories slowly began to open. We resorted to more violence to avoid summoning thoughts of our recent lives.

Whenever I turned on the faucet, all I could see was blood gushing out. I would stare at it until it looked like water before drinking or taking a shower. Boys sometimes ran out of the hall screaming, “The rebels are coming.” Other times, the younger ones sat weeping and telling us that nearby rocks were their dead families.

It took several months before I began to relearn how to sleep without the aid of medicine. But even when I was finally able to fall asleep, I would start awake less than an hour later. I would dream that a faceless gunman had tied me up and begun to slit my throat with the zigzag edge of his bayonet. I would feel the pain that the knife inflicted as the man sawed my neck. I’d wake up sweating and throwing punches in the air. I would run outside to the middle of the soccer field, sit on a stone and rock back and forth, my arms wrapped around my legs. I would try desperately to think about my childhood, but I couldn’t. The fighting memories seemed to have formed a barrier that I had to break in order to think about any moment before the war. On those mornings, I would feel one of the staff members wrap a blanket around me, saying: “This isn’t your fault, you know. It really isn’t. You’ll get through this.” He would then pull me up and walk me back to the hall.

Past and Present