The new meaning of the slogan: Africa for Africans

One of the most famous quotations attributed by the consensus of historians of ancient North Africa to the Numidian and Amazigh king Massinissa (238 BC – 148 BC) is: “Africa for the Africans.”

It is worth noting that the word “Africa,” before acquiring its current meaning designating the entire African continent, was originally a term used by the Romans to refer specifically to the North African region. This area constituted the only known part of present-day Africa, with the exception of Egypt, which held its own recognized designation. The name is composed of the term “afri,” the plural of “afer,” which means “Africans” in Latin, referring to the natives of Africa, corresponding to present-day North Africa. As for the suffix “-ica,” it indicates in Latin geographical origin and homeland. Thus, the word “Africa” means in Latin the land of origin of the “afri” (www.grand-dictionnaire-latin.com).

Anyone who practices and masters the Amazigh language easily notices that “afer” and “afri,” the origins of the name “Africa,” can only be Amazigh terms due to their morphology and phonetics. This is why most researchers who have addressed the issue emphasize that the etymological origin of these two terms is undeniably local, meaning Amazigh. Building on this, some academics believe that “afri” could designate the name of an Amazigh tribe, while others maintain that it retains the meaning still known today, namely “the cave” (T. Kotula, J. Peyras, and W. Vycichl, “Afri” and “Africa,” Encyclopédie Berbère, volume II, Edisud, 1985, pp. 208-217).

The purpose of this digression on the origin of the name “Africa” is to demonstrate that it geographically designated the land of the Imazighen (Tamazgha), which is North Africa, and, in terms of identity, the Imazighen populating this geographic region, who are the “afri” according to our explanation. Consequently, what Massinissa meant by his slogan “Africa for the Africans” was the liberation of Amazigh land from the foreigners occupying it.

If this Numidian sovereign allied himself with Rome, it was because he knew, strengthened by his military experience, that simultaneously facing two colonial powers—Carthage and Rome—was a reckless and suicidal act. He therefore leveraged his alliance with Rome to drive out the Carthaginians as a common enemy, so that he could subsequently, at the opportune moment, focus on confronting a single adversary: Rome. The slogan “Africa for the Africans” thus constituted a call to liberate Amazigh land, in other words North Africa, from all its foreign occupants, particularly the Carthaginians and the Romans, so that it would return to its rightful owners, the Imazighen, meaning the Africans in the sense we have explained.

Does this slogan therefore retain the same meaning and objective today, to the extent that it can be brandished to call for resistance and struggle to drive the colonizer out of Amazigh land—that is, out of Africa, or North Africa as we call it today? Yes, if there remains a foreign colonizer still occupying the land of the Imazighen, meaning North Africa, or Africa as the Romans named it. Is there, consequently, an occupant occupying the land of Morocco and North Africa that would justify brandishing the slogan “Africa for the Africans” as a call to resistance and the liberation of Amazigh land from this foreign occupation?

If this occupant manifested itself in a material, military, and human form clearly consisting of foreign elements foreign to the Amazigh country, as was the case during Massinissa’s time with the Romans and Carthaginians, the call to resist through the slogan “Africa for the Africans” would be a patriotic, imperative, and necessary act. This is what occurred in the face of the Romans and Carthaginians, the Vandals and Byzantines, the Arabs during the Umayyad era, and later the French, Spanish, and Italians in the 19th and 20th centuries. Yet today, following the departure of the last colonizer of the Amazigh country—namely France—there is no longer any reason to continue brandishing the slogan “Africa for the Africans” as a demand for the return of Amazigh land to its original owners.

However, although the Amazigh country no longer experiences a physical foreign presence in the form of a colonial military and human force, it undergoes a presence of another type: an immaterial foreign element, devoid of any overt military and human power bearing witness to the occupation and colonization of another’s land. This foreign presence is reflected in an erroneous consciousness deeply rooted among a significant portion of Moroccans who imagine themselves not to be Amazigh, but “Berber,” meaning foreigners in terms of identity compared to the Imazighen who are conscious of their identity, in harmony with the Amazigh identity of their land. These Moroccans, carriers of this false consciousness, are thus firmly convinced that their identity is not Amazigh at all, but Arab, and therefore foreign to the authentic, local, and African Amazigh identity.

These individuals constitute the new occupants of Morocco and North Africa. However, they do not occupy the land in the manner of the Romans, the Arabs under Umayyad rule, or the French in the 20th century; rather, they seize minds and consciousness, which proves far more perilous than the occupation of homelands and territories. For these “occupants” turn out to be in reality Imazighen by blood, belonging, and even racial origin, but they have fallen victim to an Arabization that has transformed them on a biological (national and identity) level from authentic Imazighen into faux Arabs. Nor does the misfortune stop at this falsification of identity, belonging, and essence. Even more seriously, this mystification has led these alienated Imazighen to persuade themselves, as faux Arabs, that they seized this Amazigh land through conquest and occupation, much like Europeans who conquered and occupied America. This is one of the striking paradoxes of the policy of identity Arabization and collective biological conversion of Imazighen: Imazighen by stock persuaded that they harbor non-Amazigh origins. And to confer a rational explanation for their presence on Amazigh land despite their purportedly foreign origins, they claim, under the effect of ideological and Arabizing brainwashing, that their Arab ancestors—who are nonetheless Imazighen by origin—conquered this land whose descendants continue to occupy the soils. Thus does falsification breed further falsification, fabrication, and distortion of the truth.

If Massinissa’s slogan constituted a call to expel foreigners occupying the land of Tamazgha, will we continue, as authentic Imazighen and not faux Arabs, to apply this watchword and advocate the expulsion of these faux Arabs on the grounds that they are occupants, as they themselves acknowledge, elevating this appeal to a national duty, especially since the legitimacy of such an expulsion knows no statute of limitations? Indeed, Muslims occupied Spain for more than eight centuries, yet this long duration did not deter the Spaniards from driving them from their lands. In this regard, it is worth recalling that the latter, after their eviction, returned to the land of their ancestors in North Africa, notably Morocco, thus regaining their starting point. Therefore, if it were possible to expel faux Arabs in the name of their status as occupants which they claim, where would they return to after being driven out of Morocco? Logically, they should return to the land of their Arab ancestors in the Gulf countries, just as the Muslims of Al-Andalus did by returning to where their forebears came from. But if the Imazighen of North Africa, and Morocco in particular, welcomed and greeted the expelled of Al-Andalus, it was because they knew that this Amazigh land remains the land of their ancestors, from where they had emigrated to Spain centuries before. These outcasts of Al-Andalus were thus not foreigners returning to a foreign land, but rather the descendants of Imazighen returning to the land of their Amazigh ancestors. As for the case of faux Arabs, the situation is vastly different. No authentic Arab in genuine Arab countries wishes to welcome or receive them, because they do not recognize them, considering them faux Arabs and identity usurpers who arrogate to themselves the quality of authentic Arabs even though they emigrated from their Arab regions centuries ago to return today to the Arab land of their Arab forebears, much like the expelled of Al-Andalus.

We have explained that the occupation linked to faux Arabs stems from an immaterial grip, devoid of colonial military and human force, since it proceeds from a false consciousness among Arabized and converted Imazighen who imagine themselves to be Arabs rather than Imazighen. Consequently, resistance to this occupation, in keeping with the spirit of the slogan “Africa for the Africans,” must match the nature of that very occupation—meaning it must take an immaterial form aimed at combating the identity false consciousness carried by faux Arabs. It is a matter, firstly, of defending their lost dignity the day they abdicated their Amazigh identity by consenting to submit to the system of the identity guarantor and to subjection toward Arabism, despite the latter’s rejection of their belonging. Secondly, it is appropriate to defend them as victims of a racist, deleterious, and Arabizing ideology. Thirdly, it is a matter of defending their Amazighness, which they disown. Fourthly, it is important to defend the truth by revealing the extent of the mystification suffered by these stray Imazighen, transformed by this deception into faux Arabs whose mendacious Arabness is rejected by authentic Arabs. What must therefore be banished as an occupying invader is this Arabizing consciousness that falsifies the Amazigh identity of these misguided Imazighen. As for the return, after this banishment, toward the land of the ancestors, it signifies the return to Amazighness and to the identity consciousness of Amazigh belonging for all Moroccans, understood as a collective belonging shaped by their anchoring on the same Amazigh land, whatever their ethnic origins, real or supposed.

If this consciousness is beginning to spread progressively among Arabized and misguided Moroccans, as we have emphasized, state intervention—through the implementation of policies reflecting the state’s own return to this sound identity consciousness as an Amazigh state, always understood in its territorial and civic rather than ethnic acceptation—will not fail to accelerate the diffusion of this consciousness among Moroccans and the return of the misguided toward their Amazighness, proud to bear this belonging as their inescapable collective identity.

In conclusion, if the slogan “Africa for the Africans” meant during the time of Massinissa, its author, the expulsion of the foreign colonizer from Amazigh North Africa, today it designates the banishment of this mendacious identity false consciousness that seizes minds and awareness, as well as the eviction of its progenitor: political, ethnic, identity, and ideological Arabization.

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