Where is Africa?

I spent this time last year visiting the beautiful obelisk at Axum in northern Ethiopia. I was genuinely surprised to learn that the oblisks are, in fact, tombs of ancient Ethiopian kings. Later, I flew to Lalibela to see the churches hewn out of rocks. It was at Lalibela that a young Ethiopian lady in the restaurant owned by Emperor Haile Selasie's grand-daughter, asked me: "You come from Africa?" I said, "Yes."

By now I was tired of wondering who, really, is an African. In South Africa in 2005, a young man in an Exclusive bookshop at OR Tambo International Airport told me, with a South African - probably Zulu - accent, that he had never been to Africa. I had just disembarked from an Emirates flight from Tripoli via Dubai. In Tripoli, I was treated as the guest from Africa. I was in Mauritius last month, where a young man, studying for an ACCA qualification confessed that he had never been to Africa his entire life (I forgave this one because, at least, Mauritius is an island full of Indians).

Where, exactly, is Africa?

A friend who studied with our north African brothers at a university in the United States told me that Arab north Africans at their campus chose when to be African and when not to. Whenever there was a cause for which they needed to rally greater support, they would instantly become African. During the good times, they would swear in the name of the moon and the stars that they had never been to Africa.

Colonialised thinking has made many from our continent fear to be called Africans. An African is, to many of these, a sub-human semi-primate half-gorrilla half-man. They want to associate themselves with Britain, America, France, Germany and such countries. They do not want to have their passports singled out for scrutiny at Charles de Gaulle International Airport, where they wait for you, if you are African, right at the entrance to the plane, to glean at your passport. Only Africans can be treated like that, like filth. The others do not show passports. They show the colour of their skins and pass. With such kind of treatment, many do not want to ever be called "African."

That goes even for very poor Ethiopia where, as it turns out, the headquarters of Africa is. South Africa, for which some Africans (from real Africa) gave their lives to free them from apartheid, where the headquarters for the New partnership for African Development is, says the country is not African, even when the word "Africa" is right their in the name of their nation.

I have never heard folks at the Art Centre in Accra claim they are not African. I have never heard people in Julius Nyerere Street in Zimbabwe say they are not from Africa. I have never been told in Maphatshwa Street, Francistown, by Batswana that they are not of this continent. The people of Cairo Road in Lusaka are proud to be African. The men and women of Githunguri Road, Kileleshwa, Nairobi, Kenya, happily sing songs glorifying their Africanness. In Speke Street, Kampala, Uganda, they are very glad to be African.

Where, for God's sake, is Africa?