Nasser’s Courage and Nkrumah’s Wisdom: Back to the Roots (2)

There is no doubt that the Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed along with his administrative staff do not know the truth behind Egypt’s role in the African Unity Movement, even though the capital of Ethiopia bear witness to this fact. We may excuse him, as he belongs to a generation that has opened its eyes to the suppression and violence of a tyrannical military regime governing the country. However, it is unacceptable that a man holding a PhD and a Nobel Prize winner falsifies the truth about Egypt's African identity and arouses suspicions about it. He is leading an outdated reactionary campaign associating the black skin color with Africanism as part of a process of political blackmail to win the support of our African non-Arab brothers in the Renaissance Dam case.

He can review the records of governance in his country or the archives in the the African Union headquarters in the capital of Ethiopia to learn about how Gamal Abdel Nasser received Ahmed Ben Bella and accompanied him on the same flight to Addis Ababa to attend the African Summit in 1963. Nasser had a specific orientation regarding the African Unity Movement, which was called Afrabia by Ali Mazrui to reflect the strength of historical and civilizational ties between Arabs and Africa.

Our embassy in Addis Ababa was known as the Arab embassy, in which Nasser met with the leaders of the African Liberation Movement, whom Minister Mohamed Fayek presented to him, as he knew them personally. One of the summit decisions was the formation of a committee to assist the national liberation movements, and obviously figured on the top of the members list Egypt and Algeria. Didn't Egyptian martyrs alongside with their Algerian brothers shed their blood in defending the land and their honor in the face of colonialism? Perhaps the return of the skull of an Egyptian martyr from France to Algeria will remind us of the close bond that the 1st generation of pioneers defended.

During the rule of President Thabo Mbeki, who promoted the New Development Initiative in Africa known as NEPAD, I was invited to attend a workshop to discuss this matter in the presence of the President himself.  When I delivered my speech, one of the attendees, sadly from the Nile Basin countries, asked me about the identity of Egypt and whether it was Arab or African. Certainly, this matter was addressed in South Africa itself with the recent African renaissance, where black people were not the only ones bearing the title of African identity; the new South Africa is a multi-ethnic country.
I remember one of the African journalists asked President Nasser whether Egypt was Arab or African, he gave a brilliant answer that Egypt was in fact both Arab and African. Egypt, whose Egyptology tells the story of its history and civilization, cannot be called into question. 

Nasser developed a unique orientation regarding the African Unity Movement, which had undergone conflicts on various levels. Some people, like James Baldwin, who was born in the diaspora and lived some of his life in Africa,  believed in the inevitability of the return of the black race to Africa, and even when he lived in Paris, he liked to be called the “Negro writer”. In contrast, Ali Mazrui, also born in Africa and has lived in the diaspora,  developed the concept of cultural determinism that is not based on color, which is a geographical, demographic, political and ideological perspective.
Kwame Nkrumah then combined the two directions: the importance of skin color and the other ideological cultural perspective. Here figures the distinct relationship between Nkrumah and Nasser, and his insistence on getting married to an Egyptian woman, and this is an important indication about the true concept of African unity.

Nkrumah tasked his friend, Major Saleh Saïd Sennari, who was one of the first Muslims of Ghana who had studied in Egypt, with finding him an Egyptian wife. Major Sennari, served in the Ghanian Armed Forces, and by chance he was also married to an Egyptian Muslim woman, Souad al-Ruby, in 1953.
Kwame Nkrumah visited Sennari at his home in a suburb of Accra. He knocked on the door for several times until Souad, Mrs. Sennari, opened the door. Nkrumah reached to shake her hands, but she was a bit nervous, she then covered her hand with a part of her hijab and greeted Nkrumah. However, she did not allow him to enter the living room without the presence of her husband. It seems that Nkrumah was impressed by Souad's behavior and this is what increased his resolve to get married to an Egyptian woman. Nkrumah told his friend: "Brother, if I get married to a woman like your wife, I will feel secured." Fathia Halim Rizk, from al-Zaytoun neighborhood in Cairo, was chosen from among five women, despite her mother's disapproval because she did not want her daughter to live away from her in a distant country.
Major Sennari indicated that President Gamal Abdel Nasser persuaded Fathia’s mother and paid the bride price on behalf of Nkrumah, and Fathia traveled to Ghana accompanied by Major Sennari and his wife Souad.

Nkrumah’s wisdom has manifested itself in this marriage, and Nasser encouraged the consummation of this marriage as a form of achieving African unity by linking the North African region to the rest of the continent.
There was anger and discontent among the women in Nkrumah’s party because of this marriage, and even his mother, Elizabeth, was annoyed by the idea of him marrying a white woman, but Nkrumah made it clear to them that her identity and affiliation was African, despite her light skin color. Shortly after Fathia has gently integrated into the Ghanian society and learned its culture, she won the admiration of the Ghanian women who wrote about their approval of her saying: “Fathia deserves Nkrumah”. 

It is also possible that Nkrumah wanted to get married outside of their tribes , as if he was to marry a woman from a certain tribe, this would arouse jealousy and sensitivity among the other tribes.

So this is how Nasser’s courage and Nkrumah’s wisdom contributed to the development of the Afrabia concept to become a living reality: an Egyptian woman becoming the 1st lady of Ghana after independence. 
For those who do not remember, this is only one page in the modern African history of Egypt. 

Written by/ Hamdy Abdel-Rahman