Kihura Nkuba
3 January 2009
column
Kampala — BARACK Obama is not the first African to hold one of the most powerful positions in the world, though the current superpower can hardly be described as dominant since it is experiencing a hasty and humiliating crumble.
Obama, who, as a black person, is described by the American constitution as three fifths of a man (Article 1, Section 2 and 3 of the US constitution), has also been described by some Johnny-come-lately geneticists as half-black. Obama is just one of the innumerable black people who have led the dominant world of their time.
The excitement caused by Obama all over Africa is justified for a people who read racist and white supremacist history (read "his story") which excludes African people and depicts them as those who swung from tree to tree like monkeys, practised cannibalism until the white man and some Arabs came to rescue them with religion and education.
Yet it has happened over and over again that an African has been called upon to rescue the dominant world, just like Obama is entering the scene at a time when the American Empire is collapsing.
Right from the days when African people populated Europe, about 4,000 years ago, they were the dominant people there. The Hottentot Venus, for example, set the standard of beauty that still stands today. African people were generals, kings and ambassadors. The Shushan Nekunta and his illustrious son Eshumunuza and the black Immortals that guarded the kings of Persia are some examples.
In Ancient Egypt, the Pharaoh Senusret (Sesostris 1878), dominated the world with a mighty army. He sent it to Europe, built forts at present-day Romania, Greece and Russia in a place called Colchia. The black population of Colchia was mentioned by Herodotus in his book, The Histories. The Black Pharaoh Rameses the Great (1293 BC) was a mighty emperor of a strong Egyptian empire. Rameses dominated the known world and fought his way up to Syria at the famous battle of Kadesh (1275 BC).
The Ethiopian King of Men, Aga Memnon, commanded Greek armies against the Trojans and was a subject of Homer's Illiad. Aesop (from Ethiopia), the wisest man of the Mediterranean and a great fabler and Lockman who was also the wisest man from the east.
After Egypt, the African torch passed to the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians. Here we have the Barca generals, Amilca and his indomitable son, Hannibal Barca, known as the father of military strategy. Hannibal (Thunder of Baal) has the reputation of being the greatest military leader and strategist of all time. Emperor Napoleon described him thus: "And this Hannibal, the most audacious of all, the most astonishing, perhaps; so bold, so sure, so great in everything, who, at 26 conceived what is hardly conceivable, executed what one may truly call the impossible."
At the time when Hannibal fought the battles of Arbocala, Saguntum, when he crossed the Alps with the Numindians, the Libyans and Ethiopians, when he defeated Rome at the battles of Trebia, Cannae and Trasimene, these stories were relished and told in Africa for hundreds of years.
Hannibal's home of present-day Mali would have been so excited about their son who only paid allegiance to Cartago or Carthage. Thus, in a time before Caesar, Augustus or Constantine, before the Gallic wars and before Rome's place in the history of the western world was assured, the empire had first to survive a devastating assault by its most formidable foe, celebrated and feared like no other figures from history, the African Hannibal Barca. His conflict between the Africans and the Roman Republic (218-202 BC) shaped the destiny of the then dominant nations.
Rome itself was so dependant on Africa, which supplied the food and energy sources of the Roman Empire, but also the intellectual, spiritual and manpower that drove it.
Africa produced some of the greatest Emperors of Rome, the most famous being Lucius Septimus Severus born on April 11, 145 AD at Leptis Magna. He was born in the Libyan part of the Roman province. That "Libia" has nothing to do with the Libya of today. Ancient maps shows that the then Libia comprised countries we now call northern Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali.
Septimus was the first Roman African emperor. He was born into a wealthy, distinguished family of equestrian rank. He was black (thus would have been of Nubian or Berber ancestry). His father was Publius Septimus Geta and he had two cousins who served as consuls under emperor Antoninus Pius. This underlines the African influence in the Roman empire: the fact that two African brothers would serve in the highest office of a Roman emperor.
Septimus' maternal cousin was Preatorian Guard and Consul known as Gaius Fulvius Pautianus. In 172 AD Septimus was made a senator by Emperor Marcus Arelius Commodus In AD 190 Septimus became consul, and the following year received the command of the legions in Pannonia. On the murder of Pertinax by the troops in 193 AD, they proclaimed Septimus emperor at Carnuntum, whereupon he hurried to Italy.
The former emperor, Titinus Julinus, was condemned by the senate and killed, whereupon Severus took control of Rome. He, however, faced opposition from another African emperor of Rome, Emperor Gaius Pascennius Niger (known as Pascennius the Black or the Negro) born in 140 AD.
Emperor Septimus Severus offered Niger the governorship of Britannia which had supported Didius against him and the rank of Caesar. Niger refused. After defeating Niger at Issus, Septimus proclaimed his son Kala Kala successor. Kala Kala also became another of Africa's dominant emperors of Rome.
Albinus, however, was claiming the throne in Galia and Septimus put an end to this claim at the battle of Lugdunum on February 19, 197 AD. He killed Albinus and became the undisputed leader of Rome
Pescennius Niger's name 'Niger' means 'Black', contrasting him with one of his rivals for the throne Cludius Albinus whose name means 'Cludius the White'. Niger was born of an Italian Equestrian family as is written in Cassius Dio's Book 75 which describes him as a black man. Dio said that a priest had prophesied that a black man would seize the throne and meet his end by violence and the citizens of Rome knew it was Niger.
General Septimus Severus, took over Rome and matched east to confront Pescennius Niger. Emperor Niger was defeated at Cyzicus and Nicea 193 AD and then definitively at Issus in 194 AD. Niger was forced to retreat to Antioch but was killed while attempting to flee to Parthia.
Thus history recalls more than four black emperors of Rome, Septimus Severus, Emperor Macrinius, Kala Kala, the son of Septimus and Emperor Pascenius Niger.
When the light dimmed on Rome, the rising imperial star was the Muslim world which got revitalised in Africa under the black leader Gibril Tarrik. The African Moors were able to cross into the Iberian Peninsula again and rule those lands (Spain Portugal and part of France) for more than 800 years.
The Black Moors built the cities of Seville, Toledo, Codorba, and Alhumbra which still stand today. Again Africans at home would relish the victories and the achievements of their sons in this peninsula.
The list of great black men in the world is lengthy. Obviously Ganga Zumba and Zumbi of Paramares would make the list, and so would Toussaint L'Ouverture, Jean Jacques the first emperor of Haiti and Dessalines the Ferocious. It is said of Dessalines that in the fight for freedom he was second to none, while in courage and daring he was inferior to none.
The writer is a Pan Africanist
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