Introduction
Identity is a complex term that is built upon a linguistic, cultural, and ethnic likeness and it often shares a common history and religion (Guse, 2009). Identity is a contested term which refers to features which individuals, groups and people claim, negotiate, and use to assert their differences within specific and general ethno-cultural and political contexts. The deliberate processes of promoting socio-cultural identities within a socio-political space triggers political exclusion, alienation, tension, and conflict (Schweitzer, Skold, Ulturgasheya, Fondahl, & Larsen, 2015). Afro-Arab identity is one of many contested identities in eastern Africa. Saleh (2010) examined Afro-Arab identities using the lens of Afro–Arab states, acculturation of African culture by Arab societies in the Middle East, and the acculturation of Arabic language and Islam by Africans. Saleh observed that misunderstanding and mistrust between Africans and Arabs can be eliminated with a realization of the commonalities that the two linguistic and cultural groups share.
The concept of Afrabia provides a framework for understanding Afro-Arab relations in Kenya, specifically the role of Arab minorities within Kenya. The concept of “Afrabia” refers to an interaction between Africanity and Arab identity, essentially an amalgamation of the two. There are four categories of Afrabia; cultural, ideological, demographic and genealogical (Mazrui, 2006). Kenyan Arabs predominantly live in the ten-mile coastal strip that includes Lamu, Malindi, and Mombasa. They have Kenyan citizenship and speak Kiswahili language more than they speak Arabic. The non-Kenyan Arabs who are traders in the coastal Kenyan towns speak Swahili rather than Arabic and are described as the Shihiri by Africans. Some descendants of the Shihiri have become Kenyan citizens. Swahili who trace distant ancestry to Yemen and or Oman prefer to describe themselves as both African and Arab. The ethnonym Swahili brings out the complexity of Afro-Arab identity, since it was often a way for new migrants to mark their status as aspiring waungwana.
Pre-Colonial Period
Afro-Arab relations in East Africa and Arabian Peninsula date back to the pre-Islamic era. As early as the second century, Arab traders were sailing between the Arabian peninsula and the East African coast for commercial purposes, trading in ivory, fabrics, chewing gum, and animals. Arab traders were also coming with fabrics, food stuff, iron, weapons, and exchanged them for ivory, frankincense, Arabian gum, animals, and other goods (Alio, 2015).
As Arabs traded in East Africa, they intermarried with the coastal people. Arab traders introduced Islam to East African town dwellers and many urban dwellers converted to Islam. Afro-Arab identity sprouted as a result of intermarriage of Arabs with East African urbanites (Mwaliwa, 2018). Arab immigrants adopted the Kiswahili language as a result of the strong influence of the East African matrilineal system. Although acculturation of Arabs over time into Swahili culture and language reduced tensions in Afro-Arab relations, existing conflict is the result of the social marginalization of the laboring classes of whom the majority in the coastal towns were Africans; although Muslim, these laborers and other dependent social classes were often despised. (Lodhi, 1994).
Class hierarchy in Lamu dates much earlier than the entry of European imperialism. For instance, the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed was celebrated differently within different social classes. Originally, Mawlid Barzanji was celebrated by the aristocratic class - mainly those whose genealogy was traced to Arabs. The Mawlid Rama was celebrated by the elite Arab waungwana, while Mawlid ya Kiswahili was for the lowest class composed of descendants of the formerly enslaved or African inhabitants who had been employed in agriculture owned by the ruling class (Nkirote, 1987). Given the existence of slaves as a social class, different practices of Mawlid emerged - namely the al-Habshi and the conservative one. The al-Habshi’s Mawlid was associated with Habib Swaleh who founded the Ribat al-Riyadha and incorporated drumming in the celebration of the birth of Prophet Muhammad. The other Mawlid was the conservative type which was patronized by the Salafi oriented ulema in the coastal region of Kenya. This conservative type of Mawlid celebrations did not allow the use of musical instruments or drums in the celebrations (Ndzovu, 2021).
The Afro-Arab identity in Lamu existed across the important social distinction between Wenyeji and Wageni. Wenyeji was used to refer to town dwellers who had already settled and established a privileged social class partially based on the prestige of Arab descent. The Wenyeji could be described as Afro-Arabs in the sense that they had adopted African/Swahili culture, language, and codes of conduct (Hillewaert, 2013). Wageni represented Arab immigrant traders who came to settle for short periods in Lamu. They were also accorded privileged status by virtue of their descent, Islamic knowledge, and control of maritime capital.
Social stratification in coastal Kenya was also described by the terms Uangwana and Uastarabu. These social ideals were adopted by immigrants to the coastal towns as markers of status. After manumission, descendants of former slaves strived to adopt the culture of the aristocratic social classes of the town, to which Islam, writing, and Arabic literacy were key. Ustarabu was the social ideal of urban refinement and Arab descent together representing someone with power, authority and resources (Ray, 2014).
Colonialism
As Afro-Arab relations emerged in the 18th to 19th century, it was British colonialism and the African independent leadership that would shape and institutionalize these identities and relations (Willis, Justin, & Mwakimako, 2021). The British contributed to the nature of Afro-Arab relations in Kenya. The British colonialists assumed that Arabs were the rulers of the coastal region. British colonialism enhanced the political and geographical separation of Arabs from Africans by giving them special rights such as voting, ownership of land, and serving in the colonial civil service. They used the Arab elites from the Mazrui, Nabahani and Busaidi clans in the colonial administration. In return for administering other coastal Muslims, namely the Mijikenda and the Swahili, Arabs enjoyed financial rewards and positions of power. The Liwali was the senior most Arab administrator of provincial and colonial administration that supervised collection of taxes from the Swahili and the Mijikenda (Ndzovu, 2010). The Arab administrators were thus used by the British colonial state to oppress the Swahili and the Mijikenda, and these groups gradually developed a hostile and negative attitude towards the Arabs who were the proxies of British colonialism (Schaffer, 1979; Ndzovu, 2024). Colonial rule thus led to other coastal groups to challenge the presumed leadership by Arabs of coastal Muslims. The hostile and negative African perception against Arab administrators gradually initiated the growth of acrimonious Afro-Arab relations.
British racial policy affected Afro-Arab relations in Kenya. In1921, Arabs formed the Coast Arab Association to lobby for their economic, political, and social interests in colonial Kenya. As early as the 1920s, Arabs had successfully lobbied for direct representation in the legislative council, while Africans were represented by European missionaries. The concept of color bar was used to segregate, marginalize, and oppress darker-skinned Africans while giving preferential treatment to coastal Arabs. The Arabs of the coast clung to the small privileges they retained under colonial rule, protesting against being clustered with the “Swahili” as one homogenous group. As a result, non-Arab Muslims at the coast felt discriminated against.
In the colonial period, Arabs were able to own land and vote on a limited basis. Africans were denied the right to vote until the enactment of the Lyttleton constitution in 1954. In the colonial coastal ten-mile strip, Arabs owned and managed large plantations. Africans were inhabitants on these plantations during the colonial period. As a result, Africans developed a negative attitude against Arab plantation owners.
The Lancaster House Constitutional Conference brought these tensions to the fore. In the conference deliberations, the Arab community residing on the ten-mile coastal strip pushed for secession from Kenya, and to form their own autonomous state or be amalgamated with Zanzibar. This forced the British colonial government to organize a referendum in 1961 so that people of the coastal region and specifically the ten-mile coastal strip could vote to either remain in the Kenyan State or secede. The campaigns preceding the referendum divided the Mijikenda communities living in the towns of Mombasa, Malindi, and Lamu. The Mijikenda claimed that the Arabs were foreigners and did not come to coastal region of Kenya with soil. This phrase - that Arabs did not come to Kenya with soil - was used to symbolize that Arabs came as traders into the Eastern African coast and did not come with land and thus remained foreigners and not indigenous to the coast. The Mijikenda maintained that they were the original inhabitants of the ten-mile strip and therefore would not allow Arabs to take over the territory. In the referendum, Arabs lost the vote and the ten-mile strip remained in Kenya. African nationalists led by Ronald Ngala and Francis Khamisi mobilized Africans on the coastal strip to vote unanimously against secession.
Many coastal Arabs felt bitterness towards Africans who had betrayed their cause in the referendum. In the aftermath of the referendum there were many African and Arab oriented political parties formed in the coastal region of Kenya to champion either African or Arab interests. Arabs in Malindi formed the Kenya Protectorate Nationalist Party while their counterparts in Mombasa formed the Mombasa Political Union Party. Africans formed several political parties such as the Digo Mwambao Political Party, the Bajuni Federal Front, and the Shungwaya Freedom Party among others (Ndzovu, 2010 ).The Coastal Peoples Party (CPP) based in Mombasa was the most articulate in championing self-determination for the Arabs and Swahili in Mombasa. The CPP can be described as an Afro-Arab party for its agenda and manifesto was based on the understanding that the Swahili and Arabs are one community with common interests that have to be protected from upcountry Africans who were presumed to be the “other” (Brennan 2008, 845-846). These parties aggravated Afro-Arab relations in the ten-mile coastal region.
Arabs from Yemen retained their unique social-cultural organization throughout the British colonial administration. They had their own traditional religious leaders and took advantage of the multi-racial administrative structure in the 1950s to have their own civic and legislative representatives in organs of power. In the coastal secessionist movement, the majority of Yemeni Arabs remained aloof because their identity remained more orientated to Yemen than Kenya. After independence, Yemeni Arabs who remained were absorbed into the larger Swahili identity (Salim, 1983).
Afro-Arab Relations in Post-Colonial Kenya
The 1964 revolution in Zanzibar exacerbated already strained Afro-Arab relations in eastern Africa. The Omani monarchy in Zanzibar was seen as a proxy for an alleged Arab colonialism. The revolution stirred violent currents of Arabophobia in eastern Africa that had long lasting effects on Afro-Arab relations. The revolution rekindled African memories of Arab involvement in slave trade and the extreme violation of the rights of Africans who were forced into slavery particularly in the clove and coconut plantations in the coastal region of eastern Africa.
This Arabophobia gradually became institutionalized in post-colonial Kenyan state. In the post-colonial period, Africans were in charge of the state and thus controlled and monopolized power. They took advantage of the appeal of ethnic politics to emphasize that coastal peoples’ racial identity was tied to Arabism and thus exclude them from access to state apparatus. Kenyan leadership used the label “Arab” to justify exclusion of coastal Arabs from owning critical means of productions, such as land om the coast (Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, 2012).
Arabophobia has continued to characterize politics in post-colonial Kenya. Politicians who are identified as Arabs do not succeed in marshalling support from Swahili and Mijikenda communities who consider themselves the indigenous inhabitants of the coast. At the turn of the 21st century, politicians such as Sharif Nassir and Najib Balala were associated with the Omani and Yemeni Arabs and, as a result, could not secure support from the Mijikenda in particular and members of other African communities living at the coast. In order to penetrate the African electoral block in 2013, Hassan Joho had to nominate a Mijikenda as his running mate in his contest for the gubernatorial seat of Mombasa County. He won the elections and became not only popular on the coast but nationally. In the 1990s, Sharif Nassir had to use Karisa Maitha as a point man in his pursuit to control the politics of Mombasa and the entire coast. Sharif Nassir was both a member of parliament and a cabinet minister in the government of Daniel Arap Moi (Willis and Mwakimako, 2021).
The political mobilizing around Mwambao and a distinct separatist “Pwani” identity has emerged among the Swahili, Mijikenda, and Arab communities on the coast as an overarching category for one people who share a maritime and African culture, a people whose identity is basically Afro-Arab. The many centuries of acculturation of Arabs to Swahili language and Africans to Islam has produced a distinct group which cannot fit in the ethnonym of either Swahili or Arab or African, hence the emergence of this new category or identity of Afro-Arab. The marginalization of the majority of the people in Kenya’s coast region from mainstream governance and ownership of key economic sectors has continued to concretize the Afro-Arab identity in Kenya (Willis and Gona, 2012).
Conclusion
Afro-Arab identity is closely associated with controversies over the limits of inclusion and hierarchy within Swahili urban culture. Afro-Arab identity has been portrayed as synonymous with the struggle for the autonomy of the coastal region of Kenya. Afro-Arab identity has also been discussed in relation to racist British ideology that facilitated a divide- and-rule strategy to enable British domination and control of the Kenyan people. The British colonialists succeeded in dividing Arabs and Africans in Kenya despite the fact that these two communities had a long shared history. Since gaining independence, successive governments of independent Kenya have continued to politically and economically marginalize the people of the coastal region.
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