Africans
by Zayed Gamiet
Unlike black Americans, whose migration into Canada can be traced back to the years of the Civil War in the 1860s, Africans from various parts of the African continent have emigrated to Canada and British Columbia on a significant scale only in the last 30-40 years.
The term “African” has a wider connotation than mere skin color. Africans identify themselves by nationality and not by the color of their skin, i.e., as Nigerians, Ugandans, Zambians, Ethiopians. Once they arrive in Canada they are usually identified as black, although South Africans describe themselves by their nationality, as South Africans, whether they are white, mixed-race, East Indian or black South Africans, or even Chinese South Africans, of whom there are a number in the Lower Mainland, mainly in the professions and business. Similarly do Zimbabweans, whether black or white, although there are undoubtedly hard-core white Zimbabweans who will never refer to themselves as anything but “Rhodesians.” Indeed Africans are difficult to categorize racially, as, strictly speaking, Arabs in North African states such as Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Algeria are also Africans, although they identify themselves by nationality and not by race.
Another dimension to the African identity is that many Africans in Canada are from Francophone Africa, such as Gabon, Senegal, Chad, Zaire, Ivory Coast and Cameroon, fluent in French and in their own national languages. To add further to the complexity of the African identity, Africans in the former Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique on the western and eastern coasts of Southern Africa are also fluent in Portuguese, having been ruled by Portugal for more than 400 years. Further, East Indians born and long settled in East Africa in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania have migrated to Canada for well over 30 years. Hundreds came to Canada in the 1970s to escape persecution by the repressive regime of Idi Amin in Uganda, describing themselves as Ugandans and thereby identifying themselves as Africans.
Africa is a vast continent where many different languages and dialects are spoken. Swahili, the lingua franca of Africans in East Africa and part of Zaire, is not known in Central, West or Southern Africa. Indeed it is not unusual for Africans to have to use English, French or Portuguese to communicate with one another.
A number of Africans have come to Canada to escape natural disasters, wars and ethnic or political conflicts. Ethiopia, Biafra/Nigeria, Sudan, Somalia and Rwanda come to mind. The struggles against the minority regime in the former Rhodesia of Ian Smith and against apartheid and racism in South Africa and Namibia resulted in many Africans seeking refuge in Canada as political exiles, including a number of white South Africans, persecuted and harassed for active opposition to the oppressive system of apartheid.
However, most Africans seeking entry into Canada were not political exiles or refugees facing danger from dictatorial or racist regimes but were immigrants with skills and abilities who applied through the normal immigration channels, painstaking and laborious as these procedures often were, particularly for black and mixed-race Africans. While most Africans entering Canada gravitated to Ontario and those from former French colonies to Montreal, the less rigorous climate on the Lower Mainland and more favorable economic conditions have attracted many Africans of all nationalities and ethnic identity, many of them professional or otherwise highly skilled persons. White South Africans and Zimbabweans have had little difficulty in adjusting to local conditions and finding positions suited to their professional and technical training, or starting their own practices as doctors, dentists and lawyers, after passing qualifying exams, or commencing business ventures.
Black South Africans, Zimbabweans and other Africans, however, have had to overcome resistance from private employers, government officials at provincial and municipal levels and public corporations, to secure employment commensurate with their qualifications and skills, and have faced rejection under the guise of lack of “Canadian experience,” often a convenient cover for color and racial prejudice. Africans frequently have had to accept jobs well below their qualifications and experience to survive. Africans who have made the grade are to be found as teachers in schools, lecturers in universities or colleges, in technical and professional capacities in different levels of government, Crown Corporations such as B.C. Hydro and BC Transit, and in business enterprises, banks and other financial institutions.
Africans, estimated at some 20,000 to 30,000 in the Lower Mainland, tend to organize themselves into social and cultural groups based on their national origin. However, efforts have been made to organize them under a broader, single association embracing Africans from all over the African continent without regard to their race, nationality or ethnic or cultural backgrounds. In 1983 the African-Canadian Association of British Columbia was formed.
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