This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Reith Lectures.

This lecture in the series The African Condition, given by Ali Masrui,

was originally broadcast in 1979.

For more than one reason, I shall always remember the day I arrived in England to record the Reith lectures.

That day, I received a letter telling me that

one young ward of mine in Uganda, barely 20 years old, had died in the war between Uganda and

Tanzania. Michael came from one of those border communities that British colonialism had divided up

between Uganda and the Sudan.

When I first met him in Kampala, he was Sudanese, a refugee from the war in southern Sudan,

looking for a patron to pay his school fees in Uganda. He found me. I last saw Michael in 1976. Now he was a Ugandan and a detainee in a Kenyan prison

because he was a Ugandan. Uganda's relations with Kenya at the time were so bad that both

countries were locking up each other's citizens. The Kenyans said they would only

release Michael if he agreed to be repatriated to Uganda, and indeed he preferred to return there

rather than remain a political detainee in Kenya. He said goodbye to me, but never wrote again, since I was in bad books with

Amin, and it was a risk to communicate with me. Now, young Michael is dead. My young Sudanese refugee,

who had later been detained in Kenya as a Ugandan has now been killed apparently by Tanzanians.

Africa's entire identity crisis is captured in the fate of that young man.

Africa is clearly not at one with itself, and a major reason is that identity is still fluid.

Millions of young Michaels are caught up in the tragedy of changing labels of political and social affiliation.

There are some 50 different countries in Africa and about 850 ethnic and linguistic groups.

Africa is almost mortally fragmented. and about 850 ethnic and linguistic groups.

Africa is almost mortally fragmented.

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