Who Are The Outsiders ?

It is not only in the West that black people are subjected to racism and abusive languages by the host nation's population as "bloody foreigners"."parasites"."aliens"."refugees",etc. but also Africans living in other African countries are grimly accustomed to the same abusive languages. Sometimes matters have been getting out of hand in recent years.


A few years ago, tens of thousands of Eritreans and Ethiopians have been expelled against their will when the two countries started war (May, 1998 - June, 2000) The Eritreans and Ethiopians who happen to be respectively living in each other's country have lived there for most of their lives, in some cases many of them don't know their country of origin. And yet Meles and Isaias after having accused each other of human rights violation. This is an irony that when many countries in Africa are busy trying to organise a Union of African States to replace the useless, that the OAU has become.

The reasons for these mass expulsions and violence are almost always the same in each country, "patriotic" citizens are quick to assert, nationalistically, that the "outsiders" have come to take over their resources, their jobs and what have you. Therefore, though the grievances of the masses may be related to economic factors, it is unreasonable to blame it on their fellow poor workers.

In order to ward off unrest various tactics are employed by governments. One of them is creating divisions among the poor workers by, for instance blaming foreigners and whipping up nationalistic feelings. In response to the official propaganda, the masses who are hungry and illiterate are taken in by the government policy.

Since anger is emotional and overpowers reason, the least provocations can result in violence often misdirected. Such violence can be vented against fellow citizens usually manifested in riots. The violence is also invariably be turned loose on the "aliens". This is the real cause of xenophobia the rich pitting the poor against the poor.

In the past when Africa didn't have artificial boundaries such as there are today, wars and hatred were not as rife.

Making up nations have taken a great deal of building. There is almost no nation-state that has not had its boundaries drawn in blood. Its foundation dug out of human flesh. America was built on the bodies of native population. It is a process that continues today in Africa. The effort, though, has to be ongoing. States have required the use of an education system, to standardise learning, spread a national history and a sense of shared culture.

Language become a factor in establishing state power, and thus it became a factor in determining a "nation", it is no coincidence that nationalism is accompanied by mania for classifying, delineating and defining people into categories. These practical considerations were made explicit by the Polish Nationalist Pilusdski, who observed that "it is the State that makes the nation, not the nation the State".

In order to enforce the new system of property over the whole range of its influence, the ruling class needed the state, and its legitimising ideas of nationalism and the nation. Culture resides in sets of ideas, values and practices that set out a sense of precedent, self and future possibility. By imposing the idea of the nation upon a culture, complete with its inherent notions territorial ownership and property on the very self-image of the people within that culture.

The idea of "the nation", functions as supreme good, beyond the physical and mechanical functionings of the State, to which any cause may appeal. It is a fantasy, which can be used to cover up for problems and contradictions in the practice of the State's daily life, its function is to legitimise both the state and class rule, and sustain a large quantity of support, through workers who identify with the ideas of nationhood and believe themselves to be the same as and have the same interests as, their masters.

Workers of course, do not share a common interest with their masters. It does not follow that if the "national wealth" increases, or if trade increases, or even if profit increases, that higher wages will be gained by workers. So it appears that workers and employers share a common interest. In fact the interest of workers is conditioned by the interest of the employer, in exactly the same manner as hostages held by a kidnapper: unless the kidnapper employer, demands are met, they will not allow the hostage workers to have what they need to live.

In the powerful nation's history becomes a means of winning popular emotions to cause of stability. An influential and well funded nostalgia industry has long been used in these nation's to persuade workers that there is something great about being the nation's subject.

The valid definition of a modern nation is a geographical and political area in which goods and services are produced for the sale on the market with a view to profit and with the general class division of ruling and ruled. And the fact that the majority of population owns little but its ability to work is evidence the working class has no common interest with the minority ruling class.

Michael Ghebre