Debating the terms Natives and Immigrants

The simple definition of a 'native' is someone born in a specific place. Therefore, if I am born in Birmingham, and I am African, I am a native of Birmingham.  Native in this case will not be exclusively for an Briton born in that town. I know of Sierra Leoneans of Lebanese descent. They were born in Sierra Leone and have never been to a nation state called Lebanon. They speak excellent creole, pidgin English and no word of Arabic. I will consider these natives of Sierra Leone.

Similarly, we have descendants of Boers, that is people of Dutch origin who arrived South Africa in the 16th century. The Industrial Revolution took place in Europe when they were already in Africa. To me, they are native South Africans as the Zulus and others irrespective of the color of their skins. This equally implies to Congolese who entered South Africa to work in the mines in the 1910s. They had since been assimilated and do not have a culture called Kikongo or Congolese. To me they are native South Africans, as they were born and lived and still do so in South Africa.

In the same vein, I will call African-Americans in the USA, living in the State of Missouri, natives. This may contradict the US definition or local usage.  However, for the newly arrived,  they are not natives.  What I am seeing is that people get mixed up with the prima occupantis, that is, the original inhabitants,aborigines with the immigrants and we have to be careful not to split hair.

In some localities, a native is what we call a locale, a geographical entity. In some part of the world, native signifies backwardness and that it where it can be scathingly discriminatory and politically incorrect if we do not take time to enter into the etymology of the word and its local usage.

In some former British possessions in Western Africa, we often hear of Native Authority (N.A.), as opposed to what is national. In communities as in Canada, native here may be referred to as Native American, and that is considered offensive. That appellation may be accepted in the USA but offensive in Canada and in Southern Africa where in the days of apartheid that was employed to segregate races. A native referred to an inferior person and that was not necessarily true.  Canadian authorities being sensitive came up with a tidier noun phrase, the  'First Nation People.' Perhaps this could be emulated by other communities as in Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Southern Africa, the former British Cameroons and Australia where 'native' was and is still used as a way of categorizing aborigines and the industrially educationally advanced immigrants.
Dr. Viban Viban Ngo.