The history of Africa over the past seven millennia, and this time from an African perspective.
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Transcript
Andrew Roberts: [00:00:00] The Sudanese born Zeinab Badawi is an author, broadcaster, and the president of the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University. Zeinab, you've written an African history of Africa, and the ambition of the work is clear from your subtitle, From the Dawn of Civilization to Independence. It's taking you to over 30 African countries you've spent seven years on this book and some of the countries are Places like Eritrea and Mauritania, Timbuktu even, and you've been on camels and donkey carts and so on.
What first of all what a hugely ambitious work. And secondly you through the title, make it clear that an African history of Africa is going to be different than the normal histories of Africa [00:01:00] that are Eurocentric and essentially written by white people. Tell us more about that.
Zeinab Badawi: Thank you very much indeed, Andrew. Yes, the book is called, in fact, From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence in its published form. And the reason I wanted to call the book An African History of Africa is I wanted to basically address a vacuum, which is we have had many excellent accounts of Africa's history written by the Africanists, the Western historians, and I count many of them amongst my friends.
And this is not about supplanting their good work. This is about supplementing it and bringing to the table African scholars, historians, archaeologists, paleontologists, you name it, who I felt had been denied a voice on the international public stage. So the fact that I've worked in the international media through the BBC for so many decades meant that I did have [00:02:00] that public stage, and therefore I felt that I had to really be a kind of intercessor between them and a global audience and that is why I wanted to write that book because I believe that if you have people from the region Telling their own history.
It has an air of authenticity about it. And they also bring a slightly different perspective and just feel to the whole history. And they also use sources which have been overlooked by the Western historians. For example, they draw on Africa's rich oral tradition. There is a tendency to think that Africans didn't always write and therefore they have no history.
But just because Africans didn't always write doesn't mean they didn't record their history. You just have to get at it in a different way, which is what these historians do. And they also look at sources, Arabic, Persian, and so [00:03:00] on. So that is why I felt I wanted to embark on this project.
Andrew Roberts: And you start, of course, with the origin of humanity.
You've actually met Lucy the, who many consider to be the first human who was, of course, African. She she originated in Africa. Tell us a bit about about that side of things, about the way in which humanity started in Africa and the way that it expanded throughout the rest of the globe.
Zeinab Badawi: Sure. I start off by saying everybody is from Africa. Therefore, this book is for everyone because the site
Andrew Roberts: marketing slogan, by the way, fantastic. As soon as I saw that, I thought, well done, you, your publicity people must be thrilled with you, by the way.
Zeinab Badawi: Even, flaxen hair, blue eyed, pale complexion humans today.
all originated in Africa. That debate is settled. The science is settled. There may still be a debate about which part of Africa we originated from, but there's no question that there's nobody on earth today who can't say that [00:04:00] Africa is their mother continent. And yes, I did see Lucy. Lucy is an important part of our story.
She's not, from the line that we directly descended from, but she's an important part of our lineage. And I call her Dinkanesh, which is her name in the local Ethiopian language, the Amharic language, which means you are marvelous. And indeed it was marvelous to see her bones. And what is remarkable about Lucy is that, about 40 percent of her skeleton, was found intact.
And she gives us really good insights into our humanity. She would have used her hands. She was not habitually bipedal, but she did use her hands to make tools and to kill small animals like termites and so on. She would have lived in a tree. So ironically, we believe she died falling from a tree. So peril lay in her refuge.
And we all began in Africa. Charles Darwin was the first person who made that observation, the great Victorian scientist, [00:05:00] biologist. He said, since we are so like the African gorilla and chimpanzee, our DNA varies really by a few percentage points from them, that And since these only existed in Africa, therefore we came from Africa.
And Andrew, there has been a bit of reticence over the centuries and even today by the creationists who just feel that, no, we couldn't have come from Africa. And even until the early part of this century, the Chinese paleontologists were really determined to try to show that they at least defend descended, if not all of humankind from man.
But even they have now accepted that the human story begins probably in Eastern Africa and my knowledge and inspiration draws from my very good late friend Richard Leakey, the great Kenyan paleontologist. And, there, it's like a big jigsaw puzzle, maybe 600 pieces, we've only got about 24. But I was very much a kind of pupil of Richard Leakey's, and [00:06:00] I use his interpretation.
So he says things, for example up until between 8 to 12, 000 years ago. Everybody was dark skinned. And we began in our modern form, Homo sapiens about 100, 000 years ago, by about 90, 000 years ago, as we had populated the whole continent of Africa, about a million strong at that time, living in communities, about 150, 000, between 60, 000 to 90, 000 years ago, a few of those.
Early pioneers migrated out of the continent, went first to Arabia and then Europe and Asia, and that's how, and then they met other hominins like the Denisovans, like the Neanderthals, and they bred them into extinction, which is why still Eurasians have residual DNA. Markers from Neanderthals or Denisovans and the rest of it.
But that's pretty much, in a nutshell, the origins of humankind.
Andrew Roberts: And you mentioned DNA. Your own [00:07:00] DNA is African, Arab and of Muslim heritage. And it's Promise me to ask, to what extent is race a sort of modern artificial phenomenon? Because it seems from what you just said, and also from your statement in the book, that Africa is more racially and ethnically diverse than any other continent, and it's impossible and needless to reduce Africanness to race.
To what extent is it worthwhile reducing anything to race?
Zeinab Badawi: I agree with you. I really do, Andrew. I think that it's, nonsensical to think that there is a kind of identikit. African and that somebody who qualifies as a true African has to look a certain way. Like everywhere else in the world, continents neighbor other continents.
There are coastal people, North Africa has a Mediterranean coast. Africa has an Atlantic coast. coast. Africa has a Red Sea coast. So inevitably people on the Red Sea are going to [00:08:00] be mixing with people from across the seas from Arabia. North Africa is going to be exposed to Western Asia, Southern Europe.
So through the millennia, people everywhere have been mixing. So this idea that an authentic African can only look a certain way, I think really is a bit of a sterile debate. It's a very reductionist one. And I use that observation talking in particular about ancient Egypt, because I've developed a bit of a party trick.
Now I say to people, name me an African king or queen, and they almost invariably say Tutankhamun. And then they almost invariably say, But were the ancient Egyptians real Africans? And I think that's very telling that people still say that today. There's still a debate, even in Egypt itself, we've seen recent controversies and that's because the Arabs conquered Egypt.
And so a lot of people in Egypt subscribe to the Arab ideology. And so I think that for me we need [00:09:00] to redefine. our definition of what an African is, and it shouldn't be ascribed to people of a certain race.
Andrew Roberts: It's interesting, isn't it, that African history is pretty much the, sorry, Egyptian, ancient Egyptian history is pretty much the only part of African history that's taught in schools or at least was when I was growing up.
To what extent is that I want to ask you about essentially the role of the West in deciding what's important to study in Africa, because Napoleon, of course, created the modern. Egyptomania, which more of in 1922 at the time of the Tutankhamen excavations. I, how much is the West responsible for what we find interesting in Africa still?
Zeinab Badawi: Yeah, yes, it's still today. I think that using the long lens of history, people will say to me, oh sinners have a very, set view of what Africa is like, and they have [00:10:00] on the whole fairly negative stereotypes, the coups, the wars, the famines, and that kind of thing. And I always think that you can't jump on the train as it's, been embarked on this long journey.
You've got to reach right far back into history to see that actually it's the continuation of a pattern that Africa has been globally seen through the eyes. Of its Western conquerors, the conquests, which were carried out by the European imperial powers. They had their chroniclers, their writers, their missionaries, their explorers, their colonial officers, who would write through their perspective.
And I think that has informed a great deal of the debate. I mentioned in my book, how the terms. Animism and ancestor worship were coined in the 19th century by two British writers, and those are theories which have persisted, although you will find that [00:11:00] African academics reject the term animism and say no way does that make sense.
This actually defined traditional African beliefs, same with ancestor worship. They venerate their ancestors. They call on them to intercede on their behalf for their families on earth, but they don't actually worship their ancestors. These kinds of theories and ways of seeing Africa, I think have.
Influence the way we see Africa today, the missionaries who went on their civilizing mission to Christianize these, backward people there is a tendency to African see Africans today still as underdeveloped Europeans and the infantilization of African people, I think, is quite unique compared to other people.
I think people understand that Asia, China, India, whatever, these are countries that may not know very much about them, but they'll know that they had a magnificent past and wonderful art and so on, but Africa, I think, is uniquely infantilized, its [00:12:00] people are, and it's often seen as history denigrated, or they've been told they don't have any history, or it's been written by outsiders.
Andrew Roberts: Actually, as a member of the House of Lords, I come across Ancestor Worship pretty much every week. Can I talk about the Kingdom of Kush? Is it Kush? Kush? Kuch. In Northern Sudan. It lasted 3, 000 years, and I have to admit, I'd never heard of it. And this is a terrible admission, especially from somebody who claims to be an historian.
Yeah. Yeah. But what it proves, I think, is is a little bit of what you were saying earlier, that we jump really from ancient history, hundreds of years forward. But this, I want the, this is your family comes from the Kush region of Sudan. And it was, it's clearly much more than an offshoot of Egypt.
If it, and it's pottery predates Egypt by 3000 years. Anyhow tell us about the first kingdom of Cush, which starts [00:13:00] around 2, 500 BC. And and how does a civilization last for 3, 000 years? None of the modern Western civilizations the Romans were lucky to get up to 1, 000 years, let alone 3, 000 years.
Zeinab Badawi: Yeah, absolutely. In its earliest iteration at the city of what's today Karima, but it was Kerma. This is about 2500, perhaps even 3000 years ago, which means it predates ancient Greece and Rome, the kingdom at Kerma flourished. There are two edifices which is still standing today, one extremely high, I forget its exact dimensions, but you can see that it was, an edifice that was probably used either as a very substantial residence there, there's a necropolis nearby Sudanese archaeologists such as Dr.
Shadi Ataha, who informed a lot of the work I did on that chapter Believes that the [00:14:00] enameling of pottery, which we associate so much with the ancient Greeks and the the ancient Egyptians, was something that could really have originated in the first iteration of the Kingdom of Kush at Kma.
Even the dying of material. And we know very little about it. We know about the way their burial practices and so on, but the problem with trying to uncover ancient Sudan is that it is such a vast country. It was the biggest in Africa until 2011. After the South seceded, it fell to number three, but it's a huge country.
The searing heat of the Sahara desert means it's very difficult to excavate there. I am confident that in time pseudonology will be as well known as Egyptology and we'll find out more about the kingdom of ancient northern sudan and then I focus mostly on the heyday of the kingdom of Cush, which is around the 7th, 8th century BCE, when the kings of [00:15:00] Cush governed Egypt for the best part of a century.
And it was basically a regional superpower at that time. And one of its kings is actually mentioned in the Bible. Such was this, such was his significance. So what I think is interesting about the story of Cush is that Today, if you look at the Sudan, this awful conflict in which thousands of people have died, maybe 13, 14, 000 people starving, blah, blah, blah, all that terrible stuff going on.
But it shows you how kingdoms rise and fall, the Gibbon story, the rise and fall of empires and so on. And I think that is one which is a very good illustration of that. A thousand pyramids. In northern ancient northern Sudan about 300 preserve their superstructure that you can still see today the treasures, a lot of them have been pillaged obviously over the years, as so much of Africa's art, 90 percent of it is held outside the continent.
I think it has its story has been [00:16:00] eclipsed by its more glittering neighbor as it were to the north, Egypt.
Andrew Roberts: And let's talk about another civilization, that of Axum which has been described as one of the four great civilizations of the ancient world. And that also has fallen, as you say, into the footnotes of global history.
That lasted a thousand years in roughly where Ethiopia and Eritrea are today. And they had their own castles and monasteries and churches and so on. Tell us about that and also about their Christianity.
Zeinab Badawi: Yeah, absolutely. So the kingdom of Axum, as you rightly say the Persian mystic Manu, from whom we get the term Manichean, when we talk about the Manichean view of history, that's where it comes from said Axum was one of the four greatest civilizations of the world.
It lasted from the first of the 10th centuries, common era, and in the 300s, early 300s, One of its kings, King Azana, [00:17:00] made Christianity the official religion of his kingdom. And that means that the Kingdom of Aksum was one of the top three kingdoms in the world to adopt Christianity officially. So it was Armenia, some people say it was Axum second, others say it was Georgia, but anyway it's in the top three.
And he converted from his pagan beliefs to Christianity and the royal family in the court all became Christians and then it gradually just spread to the hinterland. And until 1975, Christianity was the official religion of Ethiopia, which of course is where the kingdom of Axum was based in. what is now Ethiopia and also Eritrea.
So that again is an example of somebody whose name is not known and yet he was, a significant Christian player. He could read ancient Greek, he probably conversed in [00:18:00] it. The, Aksumites had their own script, their own, they started writing their language around the second, late second century.
And they, built monuments and castles and stela where they buried their, royals. So again it's a kingdom about which people don't know very much. And again, It was situated in a country which has become a bit of a byword for famine, Ethiopia, obviously, from the 1970s.
So that's another character. And, I tried, Andrew, very much in the writing of my book to focus on characters because it was Macaulay, the historian, who said history is best understood when it's seared into the imagination. And I interpreted that to mean through personalities, because I think it's through personalities that you can best see a history into the imagination, we all know about the Reformation in England because of Henry VIII wanting to divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn and all the rest of it.
It's, I think, a [00:19:00] very powerful tool for communicating history, which is why it is quite a character led kind of book, I use the character. personalities to explain the key events that were taking place at that time in that region.
Andrew Roberts: Oh, absolutely. No, that is very much the way to to keep the reader's attention.
You say it's not an academic book, but it is fully footnoted and is to all intents and purposes one. You also say it's not a contested history as in you're not going out of your way to try and make a, some kind of, propaganda point, which brings me on to the next question. About Islam and Christianity because very, you're very optimistic, should one say, about the idea that there's nothing inevitable about the conflict between the two in Africa.
Tell us more about that because, obviously they they have roughly equal amounts of of worshippers there, don't they?
Zeinab Badawi: Absolutely. The three monotheistic religions all originated in what we would now call the Middle East and obviously Africa, particularly East Africa's proximity [00:20:00] and North Africa to what we would now call the Middle East was there.
So all these three major religions have very deep roots in Africa and until recently, all three religions had a very flourishing communities there. Obviously, the Jewish communities in North Africa and also in Ethiopia did depart in the modern era, but Islam and Christianity have proved remarkably durable and are half of the people, more or less 15 percent still practice their traditional beliefs.
And I think this idea that they are in conflict is not one that's borne out by reality. You'll go to so many African Countries south of the Sahara, and you'll see that there are mixed marriages galore. Somebody's mother might be Muslim, the father might be Christian and vice versa. So within even a family, first cousins might have different religions, sometimes even brothers and sisters, siblings have different religions.
So I do think that [00:21:00] this idea of the inevitable clash is not one that's Shown on the whole, you can't see it on the whole in the in the continent and often what are termed wars of religion in Africa even historically tend to be, wars or fighting over resources or control of land or power and religion just becomes one factor of many, but at their heart, there isn't really conflict based on religion.
Of course, we have the phenomenon, which we've had in the last few decades of extremism, Boko Haram, and the militants we see in the Sahel. And, periodically in other parts of the continent. But these are part of a global phenomenon. They're not peculiar to Africa. They often have links with movements outside of the continent, and they're not to be minimized in any way, and they must be [00:22:00] dealt with, but I would say that on the whole, historically speaking, and even in the present day, the Muslim and Christian communities co exist peacefully.
In Africa,
Andrew Roberts: You mentioned the sort of struggle for resources. You point out 20, 000 years ago, North Africa was green and humid and the Sahara wasn't a desert. And obviously was, we see climate change and so on. The prospect of what Africa is going to be like 20, 000 years From now struggles over water and so on are likely, aren't they?
And obviously it leads to mass immigration as well. What's maybe this should be the question I asked right at the end, but I'm going to ask it now what do you see as the future of Africa, especially with regard to these struggles over resources?
Zeinab Badawi: The struggle over the resources are real.
The water one that you mentioned, obviously, we see that manifested with the building of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, [00:23:00] whereby they want to, harness the power of the Blue Nile. It's its origins, its source is at Lake Tana in Ethiopia, and it flows through Ethiopia and goes into Sudan. It meets the White Nile at Khartoum and they flow together as a single Nile into Egypt.
And it's the waters of the Blue Nile that are very fertile on which Egypt absolutely depends for its agriculture, always has done and always will. And historically, Ethiopia has had very little benefit from having the Blue Nile. And you can see that, there have been fairly bellicose statements on both sides.
They're trying to find a way of, peacefully resolving the conflict. But that's just one example of how, the struggle over water has been bubbling is, is apparent in Africa. In terms of the impact of climate change, we know that Africa is the continent which is disproportionately affected by global warming.
Even though it has [00:24:00] contributed least of all, continent as a whole contributes about 3 percent to global carbon emissions. The United States, by comparison, for instance, is about just one single country, 25, 26, 27%. So when you see a whole continent, it's only 3%, and if you strip out the industrial north from that figure, South of the Sahara, Africa accounts for half a percentage point of global carbon emissions.
So you can see that when we debate in the West about mitigation is important mitigation. The question many people in Africa ask is how do you mitigate that half a percentage point of global carbon emissions? In Africa, the debate shows how it's different from the one in the West. It's very much about adaptation.
You can't will the sky to rain. You can't make the, drought stricken land fertile again. So it's all about adaptation. The Africans are immensely good at adaptation. That's what they've done all their lives. Their resilience is remarkable. And that is why [00:25:00] When I look at Africa and think about its future, if I think about it in the short term, then it's a fairly pessimistic picture.
We can see what's going on across the continent at the moment, the lack of good governance, the conflicts, the coups, the food insecurity, and all the rest of it. I'm not starry eyed about the continent, but I believe if you take the long term view of Africa and by that possibly even 20 to 25 years, then I think you really have cause to be optimistic about the continent.
And I say that for two reasons really. The first reason being In terms of resources, Africa has got a huge amount of the minerals that we need for our technological revolution, the green revolution, lithium, cobalt, which you need for batteries for green cars bauxite, all sorts of things.
We, for instance mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo of cobalt accounts for 70 percent of global mining in the world of [00:26:00] cobalt. Africa has a very strong ace. to play if its natural resources are properly exploited for the benefit of its people. You need good government for that, but you also need responsible partners who will help you do it in the West.
So you need both sides of the equation for that. And if that's done, then Africa really, Could, be a kind of superpower in the future for our green revolution. The second reason I'm super optimistic is a lot of people see Africa's demography as a curse. I think it's actually a boon. It's a very young continent.
The average age is 18 or 19. If you think of the rest of the world, Japan, 49, Italy, 47. The United Kingdom is 41. France, 42. The US and China, 38. These are aging populations. Africa is young by, by 2040, 25 percent of the [00:27:00] world's consumers, producers, workers will be African. Young people want to achieve their productive, they're strong, they're healthy, they're digitally savvy, increasingly becoming well educated.
And so Just as we all, yearn for our youth and think, oh, those were the days when I could just jump over this and that and had stacks of energy. It's a continent with stacks of energy and surely therefore it will be productive and achieve.
Andrew Roberts: I think if we could talk about this you mentioned Southern Sahara.
Historically it is, sorry, historians think that it was cut off from the global economy for centuries, but you argue that it wasn't at all. And that kings like Mansa Musa I, the 14th century king of the Mali Empire, who was the richest man in the world, 400 billion in today's money this you, you argue strongly that actually that That it wasn't [00:28:00] in any way cut off from the global economy.
Tell us more about that.
Zeinab Badawi: Yeah. That was part of the idea that, there are those people who think that there are those who make history and those who remain on the sidelines of history with Africa very much being Africans being put on the sidelines of history. So the story of Mansa Musa, who was born in 1280 and he died in 1332 is a good illustration of how Africans South of the Sahara were actually integrated into world affairs.
And I say this because if you look at the pilgrimage that he embarked on in 1324 to 1325, when he went with a household of 12, 000 people a poor 500 personal servants, 60, 000 porters, a hundred elephants, each bear, a hundred, sorry, a hundred camels, not elephants, camels, Bearing between 10 to 20 tons of gold, a fantastic amount of gold that he took, up to [00:29:00] 20 tons.
And on his way back from the pilgrimage in Mecca, he stopped off at Cairo and he spent so much money and gave away so much gold that the price of gold plunged by 25 percent and did not Receive, regain its previous value for more than a decade. And that's the global price of gold. And, this at a time when England was being plagued by the black death, like other parts of Europe and so on this man, clad in silk and wearing a golden crown and carrying a golden orb in his hand and all his servants, also clad in silk and all the rest of it.
And the fact that he basically controlled the price of gold through his wealth shows you how Africa was part of the global economy. And in 1375, a Catalan cartographer drew a map of the world and there was Mansa Musa as one of the four or five regions that was depicted on that map. So important was he.
Andrew Roberts: Let's talk about the [00:30:00] slave trade. What you do very sensibly in my view is in your two chapters of the slave trade, you break them down with one concerning the Indian Ocean and and that slave trade and another the Atlantic Ocean. And you don't you, you acknowledge that the whole role of Africans in buying and selling fellow Africans in the Arab and the later European slave trade is a very difficult subject, but you do tackle it head on.
And you point out that there are 14 million Africans who were sold by Arabs and their allies from the seventh to the 19th century. It's a, although overall, of course especially in the West, we concentrate on the Atlantic slave trade and the undoubted monstrous horrors that took place there. Do you think that it's a when you say it's a difficult subject, do you think that we are approaching the subject in the right way in the West?
Or is it now it's [00:31:00] toxic a subject essentially, that that it's beyond being discussed in an objective manner?
Zeinab Badawi: Yeah, I do say that I hope there aren't tin ears on all sides and that The debate has started. It's not going to be, we're not going to be able to put it back at all, and therefore we should have a reasonable and reasoned debate about the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade, what we think of the issue of reparations, restitution, and statues.
These are all three pillars of the current debate we have. Also the teaching of history is the other aspect of it, focusing as a lot of people have on colonial history and how that should be taught. And my view is that we should have a debate and that people should listen to other opinions with respect and advance their own point of view.
But first of all, if I look at the restitution debate, [00:32:00] That really has almost been settled. There are discussions about the modalities, the process, how you actually do it. Is it a loan? Is it a short term loan, a long term loan? Is it an open ended loan and all the rest of it, but that debate in a sense about restitution has happened.
Andrew Roberts: So long as, can I just butt in, so long as they actually do go on a show in the Benin bronzes is the classic example of this in Nigeria where they seem to have wound up in the king's palace and aren't being shown to the public, let alone anything like the numbers would see them in the British museum.
Zeinab Badawi: Yeah. This is the German government who returned some artifacts from the Benin kingdom to the British. Benin and the Oba or the king of Benin has put them on show in his either in his own palace or in a museum which he is building. There are three museums which are being built in Benin at the moment.
But I think that the debate that [00:33:00] everybody will see them in the British Museum is one that has to be examined because a lot of the things that the British Museum keeps are actually not on display. I forget what the figure is but it's usually one
Andrew Roberts: in 14, I think, is the is the
Zeinab Badawi: in storage. And I think that, I spoke to the King of Benin, the Oba of Benin, about this.
And he said, look, and this is a man who was a, Benin of course is, I'm talking about southern Nigeria, not the Republic of Benin, the country. And he was a former Nigerian ambassador to Italy. So he's very aware of the power of culture. And he said, look, I'd like to A lot of them return, but I want a lot to stay in museums, such as the British Museum, to act as ambassadors for our culture, because we feel that we are part of global history, global story, so we want them there, and this is what he said to me, personally, I have it on record.
I think that there are those perhaps who want to see fought with the principle and will clutch at stories like this [00:34:00] and say, Oh, they're not being displayed. And actually, he is, as I say, building a museum, I, there's another one being built with the help of the British Museum, but I think you know Andrew.
When the French government carried out a study in 2018 and found that 90%, in fact, at least 90% of Africa's artifacts and treasures are kept outside of the continent. I think that's far too much. Far too much, and these are countries that want to build up their tourism. I have visited dozens and dozens of museums right across Africa.
I went to more than 30 African countries for the research, for the TV series and the book. And they are pathetic, the exhibitions they have, where they're good, they have replicas. And for, especially for Africans who record their history through their art, carvings on furniture, which may depict a battle or whatever.
This is more than art. This is their culture, their tradition, the soul of their [00:35:00] people or their nation. And to have it, For the most part outside of the continent, I think is not right. And that debate, as I say, has really been You know, has been, it's finished really. Very few people would argue, if you're just hanging on to everything and not sending it.
It's just a question of how can we be sure that they'll be kept, in the right conditions and that they're secure and so on and so forth. And it's correct that these checks must be made. So everything should be taken on a case by case basis. But it's not the same as the Italian saying, Oh, why have the French got the Mona Lisa?
It was made by one of us. Italians have got so much else there, bursting at the seams with art in their own country, but the Africans have barely nothing and just very quickly on reparations, again, I think that that's happening piecemeal, you've got, like my father. acquaintance Laura Trevelyan from the Trevelyan family who made a lot of money from the slave trade in the Caribbean.
They're trying to have some form of [00:36:00] reparations themselves. Some companies have done that and so on, the Church of England or whatever. So that is also already happening. Should we have a debate that we have a more coherent way of doing it or what is the best way? I think that's a good idea.
And in terms of statues, I think The money
Andrew Roberts: isn't going to Africans in Africa though, is it? It's going to Africans in, in, in British Africans in Britain.
Zeinab Badawi: I think it's the descendants of the enslaved people. So the Caribbean in America, the descendants of enslaved people and also, wherever they are in the diaspora, there are those who argue that Africa is the continent itself should receive some form of reparations.
Nana Akufa Addo, the president of Ghana, is one of those who argues for that because he says if you take 12 and a half million, mostly men across the Atlantic, you're taking the strongest and the best, and you are depriving the continent. Of productivity, [00:37:00] and it's had a detrimental effect on development.
So people like him argue for, some reparations for Africa. But I think the Caribbean countries have got a very clear 10 point plan through CARICOM, the Association of Caribbean Nations, which says, we are middle income countries, we qualify for no aid whatsoever from the United Kingdom, no development aid, we might get a bit of humanitarian here and there.
But as middle income countries, we get nothing. And our health and education systems are, in need of some assistance. And this could be a neat way of us receiving some development aid by having it come to us in the form of reparations, specifically to address education and health needs. There are different ways.
I think this idea that some Americans have that, every black American should, turn up on Monday morning with a bag of money, courtesy of reparations, regardless of whether you're, multi billionaire Oprah Winfrey is a bit of a non starter and has given the whole debate a bit of a bad name.
And then just very quickly on [00:38:00] statues, I think, again, we've already seen. Things like, the Colston statue being relegated from a very prominent position and put in a museum. We've seen that happen right across Africa. King Leopold, his statue which overlooked the main square has been put in the museum.
So it's not about destroying, countries renamed Zimbabwe was Rhodesia, Rhodes, Jan Smuts International Airport become as Oliver Tambo Airport. These are all. I think the right things to do and people have the right to do that. It's but I don't like contested history and I didn't set out to write a book that puts the boot into colonialism.
There are many books that have been written about colonialism and I really wanted to just write a book about the occluded history of Africa, the pre colonial history. 18 chapters, I don't get to the transatlantic slave trade till chapter 14. That was my purpose.
Andrew Roberts: Did you find it difficult to to cover the role of women, considering [00:39:00] how few sources really look at women as women, as opposed to women in other situations, usually vis a vis men.
Zeinab Badawi: That's a problem for every country or region's history, isn't it? I think people take that. HIS and history a bit too seriously, his story. And because history is often a history of conquests and it's men who go into battle and lead armies. And so inevitably the focus has been all over the world more on the male figures and African history extols the virtues and the courage and the vision of, their strong leaders and so on.
So women do get slightly overshadowed. And I tried where I could to focus on strong female personalities or to explain how even if a woman couldn't rule in her own right who your mother was as a king or a chief is very important. I also included, facts where I could [00:40:00] about powerful queen mothers like Queen Edea of Benin, whose fame.
has eclipsed that of the son she protected for so long because of that beautiful. Benin bronze in the British Museum. So where I could, I tried to feminize the history as it were, and it's not difficult because of course women were part of history and mass disobedience campaigns at the time of independence in Africa, there were many women.
And even in 2019, when the, when the people of Sudan rose against Umar al Bashir in the uprising, women were very much in the vanguard and they styled themselves as Kandakas, which is the ancient name for the queen or queen mother from the kingdoms of Kush.
Andrew Roberts: Now, there's a question that I ask all my guests two questions, in fact, the first one is what history book or biography are you reading at the moment?
Zeinab Badawi: I adore. I love historians. I admire you, Andrew, but I have to say I adore Professor Sir David [00:41:00] Canadine.
Andrew Roberts: No we all admire David. He's wonderful historian. Of course
Zeinab Badawi: he's no, so I said, I thought, oh, shall I name one of Andrew's? But I, no,
Andrew Roberts: No. Don't do they all do that, frankly but what, which book of David's the, are you reading at Moment?
Zeinab Badawi: I had read it a while ago, but I'm now reading The Undivided Past by David Cannadine, which is a wonderful book because it is exactly what I believe in, history beyond our differences, and this Manichean view of the world is one that he refutes.
And, David writes as beautifully as he speaks, and he just shows that it's fun to read, but he just shows how throughout history, humanity has defined itself by The, mutually exclusive and adversarial identities of nationhood race or civilizations religion as we've been talking about, but David just shows that this is.
misleading and often wrong. So I just love reading this book because it underscores a belief I have, which is, let's remember our [00:42:00] common humanity. Like I said, let's remember that we all came out of Africa.
Andrew Roberts: We all came out of Lucy. Tell me about your, what if. What's your counterfactual?
Zeinab Badawi: Oh dear, now this is a difficult one.
I will have to go back to the kingdom of Cush and I would go to look at the story of one of the kings of of Cush, and that would be Shabako, who very nearly drove the Assyrians out of the Middle East. The Assyrians, of course, very powerful, warlike army. He engaged as his predecessors did in armies, in, in fierce battles.
Assu Bal he fought with, and then, oh, sorry. Assu Bal was the Assyrian King who finally defeated him in the six hundreds. But I think that what if he hadn't, then I think the cites would've gone on to perhaps be. The regional superpower of [00:43:00] Western Asia and history might have been quite different.
And the kingdom of Kush might have lasted for another thousand years. Who knows?
Andrew Roberts: Actually, the way you tell these stories really is marvelous. There's another king who I wanted to mention, Lali Bela. Of the zag way 1162 to 1221. We knew he was going to be a great man because he, when he was born, there was a swarm of bees.
There's an extraordinary sort of cross between Oedipus and lots of Shakespeare going on in his life. There's a point where he drinks poisoned beer despite going it. poisoned. His brother, Harbe, tried to flog him, but he was unmarked by the flogging. It's a tremendous story. And and then out of guilt gives up his throne to to his brother, who then goes on to build 11 fabulous churches, many of which are still in existence today.
All of them are still in existence today.
Zeinab Badawi: [00:44:00] Really, really an amazing wonder.
Andrew Roberts: Yeah. So it's stories like this that make this book a an African history of Africa, a real must read for my listeners. Thank you very much indeed, Zeinab. That's it has been a really fascinating conversation.
Zeinab Badawi: Thank you, Andrew. Really enjoyed it. Pleasure to be with you. Thank you, Andrew.
Andrew Roberts: Thank you, Zeinab. On my next Secrets of Statecraft, my guest will be Dan Hannan. Lord Hannan is a British writer, journalist, and politician, and advisor to the Board of Trade, and he was a member of the European Parliament from 1999 to 2020.
Speaker 3: This podcast is a production of the Hoover Institution, where we generate and promote ideas advancing freedom. For more information about our work, to hear more of our podcasts, or view our video content, please visit hoover. [00:45:00] org.
