Posted on 08/26/2002 7:41:34 PM PDT by gulfwarvet
A Sigh of Relief for the Somali Bantus Due for Settlement
A cause of history is being re-written lately with 300 Somali Bantu crossing the Somalia-Kenya border to start new life in a foreign land.
They are part of a group of 12,000 Somali Bantu being settled in the United States of America. The move brings to an end suffering encountered by these offsprings of some of the slaves captured in Africa by Arabs at the close of the nineteenth century.
The month of July this year (2002) will thus remain in the historical calendar as the time when the group was being moved to their new found land.
Refugees camp of Kakuma in Kenya saw the arrival of part of the 12,000 who are to undergo screening tests and security clearance to establish whether they have any connection with the Al Qaeda terrorist group or its leader, Osama bin Laden, before they can be transported to the USA.
The 300 were transported to the camp in the past first week of July on trucks, courtesy of the United Nations High Commission For Refugees (HRCK).
Most of these Somali Bantu are drawn from the tribal origins of the Ziguas, Yaos, Ngindas and Makuas, whose origins is traced to the current day Tanzania, Malawi and Mozambique.
These Somali Bantu are largely found in the Juba area of Southern Somalia and have been living in abject poverty, discrimination and segregation by other Somali clans. It was from the Juba area slightly below 2,000 kilometers from the Kenya-Somalia border that these former children of slaves were being ferried on truck loads.
According to the United Nations organisation, those found not to have any connection with the terrorist group or its leader will then earn their passage to the USA where they will be settled.
The Kakuma refugee camp was chosen as their entry point because the only other alternative camp at Daadab has a higher Somali population drawn from indigenous Somali clans that were opposed to Somali Bantu living in their country.
The Bantus are dark skinned with negroid hair whereas the "indigenous" Somalis are fair skinned and fall under the Cushites group in Africa.
Historically the African Bantu entered East Africa in three directions. One was to the North of LakeVictoria, another between Lake Victoria and Tanganyika and the third between lakes Tanganyika and Malawi.
Once in East Africa groups of Bantu split up or dispersed. Two dispersal areas were in the Taita Hills and at Shungwaya. It is thought that the first Bantu migrants entered EastAfrica around 500 A.D. , but movements continued for centuries.
It is believed that some Cushite groups may have entered East Africa before the Bantu, but this is not certain nor is it certain where this people originated. What is known is that they migrated from the Horn of Africa through Ethiopia and Somalia and then into Kenya. Between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Cushitic groups had penetrated northern Kenya.
Here they met Bantu groups who were forced to flee by the more warlike intruders. The Cushites also fought among themselves with the Galla and Borana suffering at the expense of the Somali. That was part of the Bantu and Cushite history in Africa.
In 1991 political turmoil in independent Somalia resulted in the Somali Bantu being discriminated and most of them fled to the Kenyan side of the border away from their war-torn country. They lived in refugees camps where the soil was not fertile and suffered greatly.
The UNHCR then in the recent years, tried to resettle these Bantu in their ancestral land along the coastal strip which had in the early centuries (from 1000 A.D. to 1500 A.D.) been under the domain of the Sultan of Zanzibar. But the Tanzania government did not allow them to stay .
Tanzania was already harbouring a large number of refugees from Burundi and Rwanda while the Mozambican government was also not ready to resettle these Somali Bantu.
The American government has however through the UNHCR accepted to have these Somali Bantu moved to USA where it is hoped they will start a new life with members of their families.
Notable among other factors is that whereas the indigenous Somalis are predominantly Muslims the Somali Bantu had embraced Christianity.
Now, we know very well that they won't be able to afford to sleep in Boston for very long, so they will be sent up to Lewiston and Augusta, Maine.
My question is: Will this become a dangerous situation?
From what I have read, the Bantus are not Somalis at all, and the Somalis want NOTHING to do with them:
The Kakuma refugee camp was chosen as their entry point because the only other alternative camp at Daadab has a higher Somali population drawn from indigenous Somali clans that were opposed to Somali Bantu living in their country. The Bantus are dark skinned with negroid hair whereas the "indigenous" Somalis are fair skinned and fall under the Cushites group in Africa"
Will the "real" Somali refugees resent 12,000 Bantus coming here and taking some of "their" welfare money and subsidized housing? The Somalis didn't want Bantus living in Somalia; will the want them living on the same street in Lewiston, Maine?
Somalians have discriminated against the Bantus for years and didn't want them living in their country; are they suddenly going to live peacefully together in the USA?
I couldn't get a link to the original article, but here are quotes from last Sunday's Globe article by Sasha Chanoff:
Starting early next year, Boston and other American cities will become home to almost 12,000 Somali Bantu refugees, who are a persecuted minority in Somalia...
Their slave origins, as well as their ethnic and cultural differences from native Somalis, kept them a marginalized minority.
In 1991, as civil war tore through Somalia, hostile militias descended on the Bantu farms. Isolated, without any clan affiliation or other protection, the Bantus suffered widespread massacre and rape. Thousands fled to Kenya. Since then, Dadaab has been their home, where, ironically, they have found themselves among a Somali majority and again subject to discrimination.
Dadaab, with it's own internal conflicts, is a dangerous place and is prey to gangs of marauding bandits who live nearby. IT IS MOST HAZARDOUS FOR THE SOMALI BANTUS, WHO ARE ATTACKED MORE FREQUNTLY than the Somali refugee majority...
Our people...are raped and sometimes killed here when we go out to search for firewood.
US resettlement is the holy grail of refugee life. People will cajole, bribe, threaten, and kill for the opportunity.
There are well over 120,000 Somali refugees in the United States, but virtually no Somali Bantus.
The Boston Globe article concludes:
Persecuted in Somalia and violently expelled to renewed dangers in Kenya, the Somali Bantus have begun their final exodus.
How many of you here believe that these two groups are going to live happily ever after when they discover they are neighbors in a city near you?
This is very reassuring.
Our "friends" at the UN will screen them for us.
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