History as thrills and perils

The 1964 Cairo Doctrine of colonial ‘’boundaries shall stay as they are’’, excluded Eritrea since Italy’s rule from 1890 to 1941 was regarded as occupation of Ethiopia’s ancient territory. Crimes of neo-genocide by Italians against Eritreans; on-going hangings of thousands of Eritrean patriots by Emperor Haile Selassie, met silence dressed as Pan-Africanism. Italy’s Fernando Martini justified […]

The 1964 Cairo Doctrine of colonial ‘’boundaries shall stay as they are’’, excluded Eritrea since Italy’s rule from 1890 to 1941 was regarded as occupation of Ethiopia’s ancient territory. Crimes of neo-genocide by Italians against Eritreans; on-going hangings of thousands of Eritrean patriots by Emperor Haile Selassie, met silence dressed as Pan-Africanism.
 Italy’s Fernando Martini justified genocide in Eritrea with ‘’biological determinism’’. In his view ’’One race must replace another….The native is a hindrance …we will have to hunt him down and encourage him to disappear, just as has been done elsewhere with the Redskins, using all the methods of civilization…’’ The use of ‘’mass killings and frenzied executions of suspected troublemakers’’ propelled Italy’s mission ‘’to depopulate Africa of its ancient inha-bitants’’, writes Michela Wrong. In the British-Italian battle for Keren, Italians lost 3,120 soldiers alongside 9,000 Eritrean soldiers. Italians robbed fertile Eritrean lands. The Cairo Declaration igno-red bitter Eritrean histories.
The triumphant British later demolished and looted investments by Italians including: a brand new hospital; ‘’the longest, highest freight-carrying cableway in the world’’ – for conveying goods from the Red Sea coast to Asmara in the mountains. Cranes and railway tracks were sold to British colonies in Pakistan and Kenya.  Eritrea was dis-developed by British victors after Italy’s terror-colonialism. British officials would, later, ruthlessly ransack Ethiopia.
 Britain plotted to yank off Somali-ethnic Ogaden region from Ethiopia to form a ‘’Greater Somalia’’; preventing Ethiopia from grabbing Eritrea; blocking Eritrea independence; enjoying a diplomatic dance with history.
In 1914 while fear of Germans troops in Cameroun pushed British strategists into uniting Nigeria’s Southern and Northern protectorates and colonies, the proximity of German-troops in Tanganyika and Ruanda-Urundi to Uganda protectorate and colony of Kenya was not followed by amalgamation into one colonial country. The shadows across the Indian Ocean of communist China after 1949 and communist-rule Russia after 1917 may have raised worries in London’s Colonial Office but a strong presence of British land-grabbers in Kenya probably promised useful local allies. As Mahmood Mamdani shows, British administration was often run with flexible genius.
One historical data used to derail East Africa was a Nubian unit of Ottoman troops moving south to control the source of River Nile in Uganda. The Nubians were stranded after Mahdi’s revolution in Sudan routed European mercenaries defending Ottoman colonialism in Sudan. Frederic Lugard used the Nubians to fight a nationalist alliance between Omukama Kabalega of Bunyoro-Kitara and Kabaka Mwanga of Buganda. When Nubian troops later mutinied, Lugard received support from India’s colonial troops to crush it. In 1972 Idi Amin, a Nubian, would claim divine instruction to deport out of Uganda immigrants of Indian and Pakistani descent. God is a sleepless historian.
 On China’s advice President Nyerere of Tanzania did not immediately send troops to topple Idi Amin and reinstate Obote. His restraint protected Tanzania as a base for several liberation movements if, as Beijing warned, Amin’s coup was NATO’s bait. History uses distant voices too.
Uganda’s politicians had played into Idi Amin’s dreams by falling into a British trick of awarding a section of Bunyoro-Kitara to Buganda Kingdom as reward for a new friendship with Britain. As investment, it nurtured a conflict which would roll into failed military coups in 1965/66. Milton Obote’s crushing of the 1966 uprising against his plot to return that territorial space to Bunyoro, threw him into the arms of Colonel Idi Amin as prime protector of his authority. He would fall, like Haile Selassie after him, from eating that military fruit.
Idi Amin got wide popularity in Nigeria probably due to his breaking up reliance on Israel whose main challenger, Egypt, has vital dependence on River Nile which flows out of Uganda. It cannot, however, explain Turkey establishing ‘’NILE UNIVERSITY’’ in Nigeria’s capital. The River Niger- not River Nile – flows from one end of Nigeria to an Ocean.  The Nile flows along the spine of Egypt from its southern border in Sudan to a delta on the Mediterranean Sea.  The Ottomans colo-nised Egypt. Turkey may dream of economic power across Nigeria. A recent television news broadcast alleged that a Turkish Airline crew chatted about carrying weapons for terrorists in Nigeria. It was probably a planted falsehood; or history urging Turkey to see Nigeria as a ‘’new Egypt’’; a turkey to roast for a national ambition. History is a seducer of minds.
Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt in 1804; probably to avenge defeat of a French naval fleet by African slaves in Haiti that same year.  Egypt’s ancient civilization was built by black Africans. The French and Germans scrambled for Egyptian ancestry and ownership of origins of the mathematics, medical sciences, architecture and religious doctrines the black African Pharaohs had created while Europeans were barbarians. The Greeks told the truth; reporting what they learnt from attending schools in Egypt. Napoleon desperately tried to deform features of the great Sphinx statue in Egypt from being distinctly black African.
When television movies; addictive video-games, carry images which seek to complete Martini’s ‘’biological determinism’’ started in Eritrea by undermining self-dignity of Black African viewers,  history lessons and video messages must constantly reclaim African origin of world civilization through  Ancient Egyptian civilization.  Eritrea, Ethiopia, South Africa, Namibia, Algeria, Zimbabwe, owe Africa thrills of teaching real History.