Somali-born professor Abdi Samatar stressed on Thursday the differences between ethnic and political identity in Africa during a speech to a standing-room-only crowd in the lecture hall of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art.
After a short reception, Samatar, professor of geography and global studies at the University of Minnesota, spoke on “Beneath the Headlines: Democracy, Ethnicity and the State in Africa” as part of the Baobab Lecture series, presented by the African Studies Committee.
The Baobab Lecture, which funded Samatar’s visit, is a program aimed at encouraging teaching and scholarship in Africa, according to a University press release.
“Abdi Samatar is an expert at looking past the surface of problems in Africa,” said Stephen Wooten, assistant professor of International Studies and project director of the committee.
Using case studies from Botswana, South Africa, Ethiopia and Somalia, Samatar examined the relationship between Africa’s history of European colonialism and how it affected African identity.
“(Europeans) were considered a part of the civilized community and Africans were the barbarians,” Samatar said. “And by contrast, Africans who shared similar cultures were divided into separate tribal traditions.”
Samatar said this division created a battle between cultural diversity and ethnic politics between Africans that ultimately subordinated African tribes under European order.
“Over time, these identities generated by the colonial obstruction gained a reality,” Samatar said.
Samatar used his case studies to show how certain African countries broke free from these political and ethnic divisions and reached civic democracy. In South Africa, citizens lived under an apartheid system created by British colonists that locked citizens into homelands and divided them into separate tribes based on their cultural similarities. These areas were then ruled under similar law, based on their cultural likeness. When the apartheid system was overthrown, South Africa became a country made up of provinces not defined by any language, cultural or religious bounds.
“The moral of the story is: respecting differences as they exist in everyday life does not mean that those differences become hard boundaries where the state gets involved,” Samatar said.
Samatar contrasted his South Africa example with Somalia, his home country. While South Africa was liberated from the ethnic bounds that kept its people from political freedom, Somalia used its people’s separate ethnicities as building blocks for the progressive political product.
Samatar concluded his speech with a message to organizations and governments that wrongly link ethnicity with political identity.
“Ethnic differences do not mean political differences,” he said.
Without understanding that, countries cannot achieve a civic democracy, he said.
The speech, which lasted just less that an hour, was followed by an open question-and-answer session.
“It’s nice to get a different perspective,” said sophomore Karoline Anderson, an international studies major who described Samatar’s speech as genuine. “You feel like you can trust him.”
Freshman Aileen Tolentino said Samatar was very open in his discussion.
“You can tell that he’s very passionate about it,” said Tolentino, who attended the lecture for a class.
The next installment of the Baobab Lecture series will take place on June 1, when Stanford University anthropology professor James Ferguson will speak on neoliberalism in Africa.