Keep Redrawing the Map of Africa

On Saturday, South Sudan was finally born. Rather than a moment of existential peril, or an invitation to sub-regional instability, the birth of this new African nation offers a moment of celebration for the persistence of African commitment to self-determination and dignity. This is a moment to consider an alternative reading of African affairs, one that has for some 50 years co-existed alongside the conventional narrative. That long-accepted narrative says that political violence in Africa is always a tragedy and that outsiders invariably must try to reduce this violence no matter the cost in the realization of legitimate political aspirations of Africans. It also says that Africans and their ancestors have for centuries only known feudal dominance, colonial exploitation at European hands, and then finally abuse and abandonment on the part of their own elites. These Africans inherited the borders and machinery of a colonial African states, but South Sudan proves that they do not have to inherit this outdated, post-colonial narrative.