0:09

The Sudanese born Zeinab Badawi is an author, broadcaster, and the

0:14

president of the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University.

0:20

Zeinab, you've written an African history of Africa, and the ambition of the work

0:24

is clear from your subtitle, From the Dawn of Civilization to Independence.

0:30

It's taking you to over 30 African countries you've spent seven years on

0:35

this book and some of the countries are Places like Eritrea and Mauritania,

0:40

Timbuktu even, and you've been on camels and donkey carts and so on.

0:45

What first of all what a hugely ambitious work.

0:49

And secondly you through the title, make it clear that an African history of Africa

0:56

is going to be different than the normal histories of Africa that are Eurocentric

1:01

and essentially written by white people. Tell us more about that.

1:04

Thank you very much indeed, Andrew. Yes, the book is called, in fact, From the Dawn of Humanity to

1:09

Independence in its published form.

1:12

And the reason I wanted to call the book An African History of Africa is I wanted

1:18

to basically address a vacuum, which is we have had many excellent accounts

1:25

of Africa's history written by the Africanists, the Western historians, and

1:30

I count many of them amongst my friends.

1:33

And this is not about supplanting their good work.

1:36

This is about supplementing it and bringing to the table African

1:41

scholars, historians, archaeologists, paleontologists, you name it, who

1:46

I felt had been denied a voice on the international public stage.

1:52

So the fact that I've worked in the international media through the BBC for

1:56

so many decades meant that I did have that public stage, and therefore I felt that

2:04

I had to really be a kind of intercessor between them and a global audience and

2:11

that is why I wanted to write that book because I believe that if you have people

2:18

from the region Telling their own history.

2:22

It has an air of authenticity about it.

2:24

And they also bring a slightly different perspective and just

2:29

feel to the whole history.

2:32

And they also use sources which have been overlooked by the Western historians.

2:38

For example, they draw on Africa's rich oral tradition.

2:42

There is a tendency to think that Africans didn't always write and

2:45

therefore they have no history. But just because Africans didn't always write doesn't mean they

2:50

didn't record their history. You just have to get at it in a different way, which is what these historians do.

2:55

And they also look at sources, Arabic, Persian, and so on.

3:00

So that is why I felt I wanted to embark on this project.

3:05

And you start, of course, with the origin of humanity.

3:08

You've actually met Lucy the, who many consider to be the first

3:12

human who was, of course, African. She she originated in Africa.

3:17

Tell us a bit about about that side of things, about the way in which humanity

3:21

started in Africa and the way that it expanded throughout the rest of the globe.

3:26

Sure. I start off by saying everybody is from Africa.

3:29

Therefore, this book is for everyone because the site

3:32

marketing slogan, by the way, fantastic.

3:35

As soon as I saw that, I thought, well done, you, your publicity people

3:39

must be thrilled with you, by the way. Even, flaxen hair, blue eyed, pale complexion humans today.

3:47

all originated in Africa. That debate is settled.

3:51

The science is settled. There may still be a debate about which part of Africa we originated from,

3:56

but there's no question that there's nobody on earth today who can't say

3:59

that Africa is their mother continent. And yes, I did see Lucy.

4:04

Lucy is an important part of our story.

4:06

She's not, from the line that we directly descended from, but she's

4:10

an important part of our lineage.

4:13

And I call her Dinkanesh, which is her name in the local Ethiopian

4:17

language, the Amharic language, which means you are marvelous.

4:21

And indeed it was marvelous to see her bones.

4:24

And what is remarkable about Lucy is that, about 40 percent of

4:28

her skeleton, was found intact.

4:30

And she gives us really good insights into our humanity.

4:34

She would have used her hands. She was not habitually bipedal, but she did use her hands to

4:39

make tools and to kill small animals like termites and so on.

4:43

She would have lived in a tree. So ironically, we believe she died falling from a tree.

4:49

So peril lay in her refuge.

4:51

And we all began in Africa.

4:54

Charles Darwin was the first person who made that observation, the great

4:58

Victorian scientist, biologist.

5:00

He said, since we are so like the African gorilla and chimpanzee, our DNA varies

5:06

really by a few percentage points from them, that And since these only existed

5:11

in Africa, therefore we came from Africa.

5:13

And Andrew, there has been a bit of reticence over the centuries

5:16

and even today by the creationists who just feel that, no, we

5:20

couldn't have come from Africa. And even until the early part of this century, the Chinese paleontologists

5:27

were really determined to try to show that they at least defend descended,

5:32

if not all of humankind from man.

5:35

But even they have now accepted that the human story begins probably

5:40

in Eastern Africa and my knowledge and inspiration draws from my very

5:45

good late friend Richard Leakey, the great Kenyan paleontologist.

5:49

And, there, it's like a big jigsaw puzzle, maybe 600 pieces, we've only got about 24.

5:56

But I was very much a kind of pupil of Richard Leakey's,

5:59

and I use his interpretation.

6:03

So he says things, for example up until between 8 to 12, 000 years ago.

6:08

Everybody was dark skinned. And we began in our modern form, Homo sapiens about 100, 000 years ago, by about

6:16

90, 000 years ago, as we had populated the whole continent of Africa, about a

6:21

million strong at that time, living in communities, about 150, 000, between 60,

6:26

000 to 90, 000 years ago, a few of those.

6:29

Early pioneers migrated out of the continent, went first to Arabia and then

6:33

Europe and Asia, and that's how, and then they met other hominins like the

6:39

Denisovans, like the Neanderthals, and they bred them into extinction, which is

6:44

why still Eurasians have residual DNA.

6:48

Markers from Neanderthals or Denisovans and the rest of it.

6:53

But that's pretty much, in a nutshell, the origins of humankind.

6:58

And you mentioned DNA. Your own DNA is African, Arab and of Muslim heritage.

7:05

And it's Promise me to ask, to what extent is race a sort of

7:09

modern artificial phenomenon? Because it seems from what you just said, and also from your statement in

7:15

the book, that Africa is more racially and ethnically diverse than any other

7:20

continent, and it's impossible and needless to reduce Africanness to race.

7:25

To what extent is it worthwhile reducing anything to race?

7:29

I agree with you. I really do, Andrew.

7:31

I think that it's, nonsensical to think that there is a kind of identikit.

7:38

African and that somebody who qualifies as a true African has to look a certain way.

7:44

Like everywhere else in the world, continents neighbor other continents.

7:48

There are coastal people, North Africa has a Mediterranean coast.

7:53

Africa has an Atlantic coast. coast. Africa has a Red Sea coast.

7:57

So inevitably people on the Red Sea are going to be mixing with people

8:01

from across the seas from Arabia. North Africa is going to be exposed to Western Asia, Southern Europe.

8:08

So through the millennia, people everywhere have been mixing.

8:13

So this idea that an authentic African can only look a certain way, I think

8:19

really is a bit of a sterile debate.

8:21

It's a very reductionist one. And I use that observation talking in particular about ancient Egypt, because

8:27

I've developed a bit of a party trick. Now I say to people, name me an African king or queen, and they

8:32

almost invariably say Tutankhamun.

8:35

And then they almost invariably say, But were the ancient Egyptians real Africans?

8:41

And I think that's very telling that people still say that today.

8:44

There's still a debate, even in Egypt itself, we've seen recent

8:48

controversies and that's because the Arabs conquered Egypt.

8:52

And so a lot of people in Egypt subscribe to the Arab ideology.

8:56

And so I think that for me we need to redefine.

9:01

our definition of what an African is, and it shouldn't be ascribed

9:06

to people of a certain race.

9:10

It's interesting, isn't it, that African history is pretty much the, sorry,

9:14

Egyptian, ancient Egyptian history is pretty much the only part of African

9:18

history that's taught in schools or at least was when I was growing up.

9:22

To what extent is that I want to ask you about essentially the role of the

9:26

West in deciding what's important to study in Africa, because Napoleon,

9:30

of course, created the modern.

9:34

Egyptomania, which more of in 1922 at the time of the Tutankhamen excavations.

9:40

I, how much is the West responsible for what we find interesting in Africa still?

9:48

Yeah, yes, it's still today.

9:50

I think that using the long lens of history, people will say to me, oh sinners

9:55

have a very, set view of what Africa is like, and they have on the whole fairly

10:00

negative stereotypes, the coups, the wars, the famines, and that kind of thing.

10:04

And I always think that you can't jump on the train as it's, been

10:09

embarked on this long journey. You've got to reach right far back into history to see that actually it's the

10:15

continuation of a pattern that Africa has been globally seen through the eyes.

10:24

Of its Western conquerors, the conquests, which were carried out

10:29

by the European imperial powers. They had their chroniclers, their writers, their missionaries, their

10:34

explorers, their colonial officers, who would write through their perspective.

10:39

And I think that has informed a great deal of the debate.

10:43

I mentioned in my book, how the terms. Animism and ancestor worship were coined in the 19th century by two British

10:52

writers, and those are theories which have persisted, although you will find that

10:59

African academics reject the term animism and say no way does that make sense.

11:03

This actually defined traditional African beliefs, same with ancestor worship.

11:09

They venerate their ancestors.

11:11

They call on them to intercede on their behalf for their

11:14

families on earth, but they don't actually worship their ancestors.

11:18

These kinds of theories and ways of seeing Africa, I think have.

11:24

Influence the way we see Africa today, the missionaries who went on their civilizing

11:28

mission to Christianize these, backward people there is a tendency to African see

11:34

Africans today still as underdeveloped Europeans and the infantilization

11:39

of African people, I think, is quite unique compared to other people.

11:44

I think people understand that Asia, China, India, whatever, these are

11:49

countries that may not know very much about them, but they'll know

11:51

that they had a magnificent past and wonderful art and so on, but Africa,

11:56

I think, is uniquely infantilized, its people are, and it's often seen

12:02

as history denigrated, or they've been told they don't have any history,

12:06

or it's been written by outsiders. Actually, as a member of the House of Lords, I come across Ancestor

12:12

Worship pretty much every week. Can I talk about the Kingdom of Kush?

12:19

Is it Kush? Kush? Kuch.

12:21

In Northern Sudan. It lasted 3, 000 years, and I have to admit, I'd never heard of it.

12:28

And this is a terrible admission, especially from somebody who

12:31

claims to be an historian. Yeah. Yeah. But what it proves, I think, is is a little bit of what you were saying

12:37

earlier, that we jump really from ancient history, hundreds of years forward.

12:41

But this, I want the, this is your family comes from the Kush region of Sudan.

12:48

And it was, it's clearly much more than an offshoot of Egypt.

12:51

If it, and it's pottery predates Egypt by 3000 years.

12:56

Anyhow tell us about the first kingdom of Cush, which starts around 2, 500 BC.

13:02

And and how does a civilization last for 3, 000 years?

13:06

None of the modern Western civilizations the Romans were lucky to get up to

13:11

1, 000 years, let alone 3, 000 years. Yeah, absolutely.

13:14

In its earliest iteration at the city of what's today Karima, but it was Kerma.

13:21

This is about 2500, perhaps even 3000 years ago, which means it

13:26

predates ancient Greece and Rome, the kingdom at Kerma flourished.

13:34

There are two edifices which is still standing today, one extremely high, I

13:38

forget its exact dimensions, but you can see that it was, an edifice that was

13:43

probably used either as a very substantial residence there, there's a necropolis

13:49

nearby Sudanese archaeologists such as Dr.

13:52

Shadi Ataha, who informed a lot of the work I did on that chapter Believes

13:59

that the enameling of pottery, which we associate so much with the ancient

14:03

Greeks and the the ancient Egyptians, was something that could really have

14:07

originated in the first iteration of the Kingdom of Kush at Kma.

14:12

Even the dying of material.

14:15

And we know very little about it.

14:17

We know about the way their burial practices and so on, but the problem

14:21

with trying to uncover ancient Sudan is that it is such a vast country.

14:26

It was the biggest in Africa until 2011.

14:28

After the South seceded, it fell to number three, but it's a huge country.

14:34

The searing heat of the Sahara desert means it's very

14:37

difficult to excavate there. I am confident that in time pseudonology will be as well known as Egyptology and

14:44

we'll find out more about the kingdom of ancient northern sudan and then I focus

14:52

mostly on the heyday of the kingdom of Cush, which is around the 7th, 8th century

14:57

BCE, when the kings of Cush governed Egypt for the best part of a century.

15:03

And it was basically a regional superpower at that time.

15:07

And one of its kings is actually mentioned in the Bible.

15:10

Such was this, such was his significance.

15:13

So what I think is interesting about the story of Cush is that Today, if you look

15:18

at the Sudan, this awful conflict in which thousands of people have died, maybe

15:22

13, 14, 000 people starving, blah, blah, blah, all that terrible stuff going on.

15:27

But it shows you how kingdoms rise and fall, the Gibbon story, the

15:32

rise and fall of empires and so on.

15:34

And I think that is one which is a very good illustration of that.

15:38

A thousand pyramids. In northern ancient northern Sudan about 300 preserve their superstructure

15:46

that you can still see today the treasures, a lot of them have been

15:50

pillaged obviously over the years, as so much of Africa's art, 90 percent

15:54

of it is held outside the continent. I think it has its story has been eclipsed by its more glittering

16:02

neighbor as it were to the north, Egypt.

16:05

And let's talk about another civilization, that of Axum which has

16:09

been described as one of the four great civilizations of the ancient world.

16:13

And that also has fallen, as you say, into the footnotes of global history.

16:18

That lasted a thousand years in roughly where Ethiopia and Eritrea are today.

16:23

And they had their own castles and monasteries and churches and so on.

16:29

Tell us about that and also about their Christianity.

16:33

Yeah, absolutely. So the kingdom of Axum, as you rightly say the Persian mystic Manu, from whom we get

16:41

the term Manichean, when we talk about the Manichean view of history, that's where

16:45

it comes from said Axum was one of the four greatest civilizations of the world.

16:49

It lasted from the first of the 10th centuries, common era, and in the

16:54

300s, early 300s, One of its kings, King Azana, made Christianity the

17:01

official religion of his kingdom.

17:04

And that means that the Kingdom of Aksum was one of the top three kingdoms in the

17:10

world to adopt Christianity officially.

17:13

So it was Armenia, some people say it was Axum second, others say it was

17:18

Georgia, but anyway it's in the top three.

17:20

And he converted from his pagan beliefs to Christianity and the royal family in the

17:27

court all became Christians and then it gradually just spread to the hinterland.

17:32

And until 1975, Christianity was the official religion of Ethiopia,

17:38

which of course is where the kingdom of Axum was based in.

17:42

what is now Ethiopia and also Eritrea.

17:45

So that again is an example of somebody whose name is not known and yet he

17:52

was, a significant Christian player.

17:55

He could read ancient Greek, he probably conversed in it.

18:00

The, Aksumites had their own script, their own, they started writing their language

18:06

around the second, late second century.

18:09

And they, built monuments and castles and stela where they buried their, royals.

18:15

So again it's a kingdom about which people don't know very much.

18:19

And again, It was situated in a country which has become a bit

18:24

of a byword for famine, Ethiopia, obviously, from the 1970s.

18:28

So that's another character. And, I tried, Andrew, very much in the writing of my book to focus on characters

18:34

because it was Macaulay, the historian, who said history is best understood

18:38

when it's seared into the imagination.

18:41

And I interpreted that to mean through personalities, because I think it's

18:47

through personalities that you can best see a history into the imagination,

18:50

we all know about the Reformation in England because of Henry VIII wanting

18:54

to divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn and all the rest of it.

18:58

It's, I think, a very powerful tool for communicating history, which

19:03

is why it is quite a character led kind of book, I use the character.

19:08

personalities to explain the key events that were taking place

19:12

at that time in that region. Oh, absolutely.

19:15

No, that is very much the way to to keep the reader's attention.

19:18

You say it's not an academic book, but it is fully footnoted and is

19:22

to all intents and purposes one. You also say it's not a contested history as in you're not going out

19:27

of your way to try and make a, some kind of, propaganda point, which

19:31

brings me on to the next question. About Islam and Christianity because very, you're very optimistic,

19:37

should one say, about the idea that there's nothing inevitable about the

19:40

conflict between the two in Africa.

19:43

Tell us more about that because, obviously they they have roughly equal amounts

19:47

of of worshippers there, don't they? Absolutely.

19:50

The three monotheistic religions all originated in what we would now call

19:54

the Middle East and obviously Africa, particularly East Africa's proximity

19:59

and North Africa to what we would now call the Middle East was there.

20:03

So all these three major religions have very deep roots in Africa and until

20:09

recently, all three religions had a very flourishing communities there.

20:13

Obviously, the Jewish communities in North Africa and also in Ethiopia

20:17

did depart in the modern era, but Islam and Christianity have proved

20:22

remarkably durable and are half of the people, more or less 15 percent still

20:28

practice their traditional beliefs. And I think this idea that they are in conflict is not one

20:34

that's borne out by reality.

20:37

You'll go to so many African Countries south of the Sahara, and you'll see

20:42

that there are mixed marriages galore.

20:45

Somebody's mother might be Muslim, the father might be Christian and vice versa.

20:49

So within even a family, first cousins might have different religions,

20:53

sometimes even brothers and sisters, siblings have different religions.

20:58

So I do think that this idea of the inevitable clash is not one that's Shown

21:03

on the whole, you can't see it on the whole in the in the continent and often

21:09

what are termed wars of religion in Africa even historically tend to be, wars or

21:16

fighting over resources or control of land or power and religion just becomes one

21:24

factor of many, but at their heart, there isn't really conflict based on religion.

21:32

Of course, we have the phenomenon, which we've had in the last few

21:36

decades of extremism, Boko Haram, and the militants we see in the Sahel.

21:43

And, periodically in other parts of the continent.

21:46

But these are part of a global phenomenon.

21:49

They're not peculiar to Africa. They often have links with movements outside of the continent, and they're

21:56

not to be minimized in any way, and they must be dealt with, but I would say that

22:02

on the whole, historically speaking, and even in the present day, the Muslim and

22:07

Christian communities co exist peacefully.

22:12

In Africa, You mentioned the sort of struggle for resources.

22:17

You point out 20, 000 years ago, North Africa was green and humid

22:20

and the Sahara wasn't a desert. And obviously was, we see climate change and so on.

22:26

The prospect of what Africa is going to be like 20, 000 years From now struggles over

22:32

water and so on are likely, aren't they?

22:34

And obviously it leads to mass immigration as well.

22:39

What's maybe this should be the question I asked right at the end, but I'm going

22:42

to ask it now what do you see as the future of Africa, especially with regard

22:47

to these struggles over resources?

22:50

The struggle over the resources are real.

22:52

The water one that you mentioned, obviously, we see that manifested with

22:56

the building of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, whereby they want to,

23:01

harness the power of the Blue Nile. It's its origins, its source is at Lake Tana in Ethiopia, and it flows

23:10

through Ethiopia and goes into Sudan.

23:12

It meets the White Nile at Khartoum and they flow together

23:15

as a single Nile into Egypt. And it's the waters of the Blue Nile that are very fertile on which Egypt

23:23

absolutely depends for its agriculture, always has done and always will.

23:27

And historically, Ethiopia has had very little benefit from having the Blue Nile.

23:32

And you can see that, there have been fairly bellicose statements on both sides.

23:36

They're trying to find a way of, peacefully resolving the conflict.

23:41

But that's just one example of how, the struggle over water has been

23:46

bubbling is, is apparent in Africa.

23:49

In terms of the impact of climate change, we know that Africa is the

23:53

continent which is disproportionately affected by global warming.

23:58

Even though it has contributed least of all, continent as a

24:02

whole contributes about 3 percent to global carbon emissions.

24:06

The United States, by comparison, for instance, is about just one

24:09

single country, 25, 26, 27%.

24:13

So when you see a whole continent, it's only 3%, and if you strip

24:16

out the industrial north from that figure, South of the Sahara, Africa

24:20

accounts for half a percentage point of global carbon emissions.

24:24

So you can see that when we debate in the West about mitigation

24:29

is important mitigation. The question many people in Africa ask is how do you mitigate that half a percentage

24:34

point of global carbon emissions?

24:37

In Africa, the debate shows how it's different from the one in the West.

24:40

It's very much about adaptation. You can't will the sky to rain.

24:44

You can't make the, drought stricken land fertile again.

24:49

So it's all about adaptation.

24:51

The Africans are immensely good at adaptation.

24:54

That's what they've done all their lives. Their resilience is remarkable.

24:58

And that is why When I look at Africa and think about its future, if I

25:03

think about it in the short term, then it's a fairly pessimistic picture.

25:07

We can see what's going on across the continent at the moment, the lack of good

25:11

governance, the conflicts, the coups, the food insecurity, and all the rest of it.

25:16

I'm not starry eyed about the continent, but I believe if you take

25:19

the long term view of Africa and by that possibly even 20 to 25 years,

25:26

then I think you really have cause to be optimistic about the continent.

25:30

And I say that for two reasons really.

25:33

The first reason being In terms of resources, Africa has got a huge

25:38

amount of the minerals that we need for our technological revolution, the

25:42

green revolution, lithium, cobalt, which you need for batteries for green

25:47

cars bauxite, all sorts of things.

25:50

We, for instance mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo of

25:55

cobalt accounts for 70 percent of global mining in the world of cobalt.

26:00

Africa has a very strong ace.

26:02

to play if its natural resources are properly exploited for

26:08

the benefit of its people. You need good government for that, but you also need responsible partners

26:13

who will help you do it in the West. So you need both sides of the equation for that.

26:18

And if that's done, then Africa really, Could, be a kind of superpower in

26:23

the future for our green revolution.

26:26

The second reason I'm super optimistic is a lot of people see

26:30

Africa's demography as a curse.

26:33

I think it's actually a boon. It's a very young continent.

26:36

The average age is 18 or 19.

26:38

If you think of the rest of the world, Japan, 49, Italy, 47.

26:43

The United Kingdom is 41.

26:47

France, 42. The US and China, 38. These are aging populations.

26:52

Africa is young by, by 2040, 25 percent of the world's consumers,

27:00

producers, workers will be African.

27:04

Young people want to achieve their productive, they're strong, they're

27:07

healthy, they're digitally savvy, increasingly becoming well educated.

27:13

And so Just as we all, yearn for our youth and think, oh, those were the

27:17

days when I could just jump over this and that and had stacks of energy.

27:23

It's a continent with stacks of energy and surely therefore it

27:26

will be productive and achieve.

27:30

I think if we could talk about this you mentioned Southern Sahara.

27:34

Historically it is, sorry, historians think that it was cut off from the

27:39

global economy for centuries, but you argue that it wasn't at all.

27:42

And that kings like Mansa Musa I, the 14th century king of the Mali

27:50

Empire, who was the richest man in the world, 400 billion in today's money

27:56

this you, you argue strongly that actually that That it wasn't in any

28:00

way cut off from the global economy. Tell us more about that.

28:03

Yeah. That was part of the idea that, there are those people who think that there

28:07

are those who make history and those who remain on the sidelines of history

28:12

with Africa very much being Africans being put on the sidelines of history.

28:17

So the story of Mansa Musa, who was born in 1280 and he died in 1332 is

28:23

a good illustration of how Africans South of the Sahara were actually

28:28

integrated into world affairs.

28:31

And I say this because if you look at the pilgrimage that he embarked on in 1324 to

28:36

1325, when he went with a household of 12, 000 people a poor 500 personal servants,

28:44

60, 000 porters, a hundred elephants, each bear, a hundred, sorry, a hundred camels,

28:51

not elephants, camels, Bearing between 10 to 20 tons of gold, a fantastic amount

28:58

of gold that he took, up to 20 tons. And on his way back from the pilgrimage in Mecca, he stopped off at Cairo and he

29:05

spent so much money and gave away so much gold that the price of gold plunged by 25

29:12

percent and did not Receive, regain its previous value for more than a decade.

29:18

And that's the global price of gold. And, this at a time when England was being plagued by the black death, like

29:24

other parts of Europe and so on this man, clad in silk and wearing a golden

29:28

crown and carrying a golden orb in his hand and all his servants, also

29:33

clad in silk and all the rest of it. And the fact that he basically controlled the price of gold through

29:40

his wealth shows you how Africa was part of the global economy.

29:44

And in 1375, a Catalan cartographer drew a map of the world and there was

29:51

Mansa Musa as one of the four or five regions that was depicted on that map.

29:56

So important was he. Let's talk about the slave trade.

30:00

What you do very sensibly in my view is in your two chapters of the slave trade,

30:06

you break them down with one concerning the Indian Ocean and and that slave

30:11

trade and another the Atlantic Ocean.

30:13

And you don't you, you acknowledge that the whole role of Africans in

30:18

buying and selling fellow Africans in the Arab and the later European

30:22

slave trade is a very difficult subject, but you do tackle it head on.

30:26

And you point out that there are 14 million Africans who were sold

30:29

by Arabs and their allies from the seventh to the 19th century.

30:33

It's a, although overall, of course especially in the West, we concentrate on

30:39

the Atlantic slave trade and the undoubted monstrous horrors that took place there.

30:45

Do you think that it's a when you say it's a difficult subject, do you

30:51

think that we are approaching the subject in the right way in the West?

30:57

Or is it now it's toxic a subject essentially, that that it's beyond

31:04

being discussed in an objective manner?

31:07

Yeah, I do say that I hope there aren't tin ears on all sides

31:10

and that The debate has started.

31:13

It's not going to be, we're not going to be able to put it back at

31:17

all, and therefore we should have a reasonable and reasoned debate about

31:23

the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade, what we think of the issue of

31:27

reparations, restitution, and statues.

31:31

These are all three pillars of the current debate we have.

31:33

Also the teaching of history is the other aspect of it, focusing as a lot

31:38

of people have on colonial history and how that should be taught.

31:42

And my view is that we should have a debate and that people should listen

31:49

to other opinions with respect and advance their own point of view.

31:56

But first of all, if I look at the restitution debate, That

32:00

really has almost been settled.

32:02

There are discussions about the modalities, the process,

32:07

how you actually do it. Is it a loan?

32:09

Is it a short term loan, a long term loan?

32:11

Is it an open ended loan and all the rest of it, but that debate in a

32:15

sense about restitution has happened.

32:18

So long as, can I just butt in, so long as they actually do go on a show in the

32:23

Benin bronzes is the classic example of this in Nigeria where they seem

32:27

to have wound up in the king's palace and aren't being shown to the public,

32:32

let alone anything like the numbers would see them in the British museum.

32:35

Yeah. This is the German government who returned some artifacts from

32:40

the Benin kingdom to the British.

32:42

Benin and the Oba or the king of Benin has put them on show in his

32:49

either in his own palace or in a museum which he is building.

32:53

There are three museums which are being built in Benin at the moment.

32:57

But I think that the debate that everybody will see them in the British Museum

33:02

is one that has to be examined because a lot of the things that the British

33:06

Museum keeps are actually not on display.

33:10

I forget what the figure is but it's usually one

33:12

in 14, I think, is the is the

33:15

in storage. And I think that, I spoke to the King of Benin, the Oba of Benin, about this.

33:21

And he said, look, and this is a man who was a, Benin of course is, I'm

33:25

talking about southern Nigeria, not the Republic of Benin, the country.

33:29

And he was a former Nigerian ambassador to Italy.

33:32

So he's very aware of the power of culture.

33:34

And he said, look, I'd like to A lot of them return, but I want a lot to stay

33:39

in museums, such as the British Museum, to act as ambassadors for our culture,

33:44

because we feel that we are part of global history, global story, so we want

33:48

them there, and this is what he said to me, personally, I have it on record.

33:53

I think that there are those perhaps who want to see fought with the principle

33:57

and will clutch at stories like this and say, Oh, they're not being displayed.

34:02

And actually, he is, as I say, building a museum, I, there's another one being

34:07

built with the help of the British Museum, but I think you know Andrew.

34:12

When the French government carried out a study in 2018 and found

34:16

that 90%, in fact, at least 90% of Africa's artifacts and treasures

34:22

are kept outside of the continent.

34:24

I think that's far too much. Far too much, and these are countries that want to build up their tourism.

34:30

I have visited dozens and dozens of museums right across Africa.

34:34

I went to more than 30 African countries for the research,

34:37

for the TV series and the book. And they are pathetic, the exhibitions they have, where

34:43

they're good, they have replicas. And for, especially for Africans who record their history through their

34:50

art, carvings on furniture, which may depict a battle or whatever.

34:54

This is more than art. This is their culture, their tradition, the soul of their people or their nation.

35:01

And to have it, For the most part outside of the continent, I think is not right.

35:06

And that debate, as I say, has really been You know, has been, it's finished really.

35:12

Very few people would argue, if you're just hanging on to

35:15

everything and not sending it. It's just a question of how can we be sure that they'll be kept, in the

35:20

right conditions and that they're secure and so on and so forth.

35:23

And it's correct that these checks must be made.

35:26

So everything should be taken on a case by case basis.

35:28

But it's not the same as the Italian saying, Oh, why have

35:31

the French got the Mona Lisa? It was made by one of us.

35:35

Italians have got so much else there, bursting at the seams with

35:39

art in their own country, but the Africans have barely nothing and

35:44

just very quickly on reparations, again, I think that that's happening

35:48

piecemeal, you've got, like my father. acquaintance Laura Trevelyan from the Trevelyan family who made a lot of money

35:55

from the slave trade in the Caribbean.

35:58

They're trying to have some form of reparations themselves.

36:01

Some companies have done that and so on, the Church of England or whatever.

36:05

So that is also already happening.

36:07

Should we have a debate that we have a more coherent way of

36:10

doing it or what is the best way? I think that's a good idea.

36:13

And in terms of statues, I think The money

36:16

isn't going to Africans in Africa though, is it?

36:19

It's going to Africans in, in, in British Africans in Britain.

36:24

I think it's the descendants of the enslaved people.

36:27

So the Caribbean in America, the descendants of enslaved people

36:32

and also, wherever they are in the diaspora, there are those who argue

36:37

that Africa is the continent itself should receive some form of reparations.

36:42

Nana Akufa Addo, the president of Ghana, is one of those who argues for that

36:47

because he says if you take 12 and a half million, mostly men across the Atlantic,

36:52

you're taking the strongest and the best, and you are depriving the continent.

36:58

Of productivity, and it's had a detrimental effect on development.

37:02

So people like him argue for, some reparations for Africa.

37:06

But I think the Caribbean countries have got a very clear 10 point plan

37:10

through CARICOM, the Association of Caribbean Nations, which says, we are

37:14

middle income countries, we qualify for no aid whatsoever from the United

37:19

Kingdom, no development aid, we might get a bit of humanitarian here and there.

37:24

But as middle income countries, we get nothing. And our health and education systems are, in need of some assistance.

37:31

And this could be a neat way of us receiving some development aid by

37:36

having it come to us in the form of reparations, specifically to

37:39

address education and health needs. There are different ways.

37:42

I think this idea that some Americans have that, every black American should,

37:47

turn up on Monday morning with a bag of money, courtesy of reparations,

37:51

regardless of whether you're, multi billionaire Oprah Winfrey is a bit

37:55

of a non starter and has given the whole debate a bit of a bad name.

37:58

And then just very quickly on statues, I think, again, we've already seen.

38:02

Things like, the Colston statue being relegated from a very prominent

38:06

position and put in a museum. We've seen that happen right across Africa.

38:10

King Leopold, his statue which overlooked the main square

38:14

has been put in the museum. So it's not about destroying, countries renamed Zimbabwe was Rhodesia, Rhodes,

38:22

Jan Smuts International Airport become as Oliver Tambo Airport.

38:26

These are all. I think the right things to do and people have the right to do that.

38:31

It's but I don't like contested history and I didn't set out to write a book

38:36

that puts the boot into colonialism.

38:40

There are many books that have been written about colonialism and

38:42

I really wanted to just write a book about the occluded history of

38:45

Africa, the pre colonial history.

38:48

18 chapters, I don't get to the transatlantic slave trade till chapter 14.

38:53

That was my purpose. Did you find it difficult to to cover the role of women, considering how

39:00

few sources really look at women as women, as opposed to women in other

39:07

situations, usually vis a vis men.

39:10

That's a problem for every country or region's history, isn't it?

39:15

I think people take that. HIS and history a bit too seriously, his story.

39:20

And because history is often a history of conquests and it's men

39:23

who go into battle and lead armies.

39:26

And so inevitably the focus has been all over the world more on the male

39:31

figures and African history extols the virtues and the courage and the vision

39:36

of, their strong leaders and so on.

39:39

So women do get slightly overshadowed.

39:42

And I tried where I could to focus on strong female personalities or to explain

39:49

how even if a woman couldn't rule in her own right who your mother was as

39:54

a king or a chief is very important.

39:56

I also included, facts where I could about powerful queen mothers like

40:01

Queen Edea of Benin, whose fame.

40:05

has eclipsed that of the son she protected for so long because of that beautiful.

40:10

Benin bronze in the British Museum. So where I could, I tried to feminize the history as it were, and it's not

40:16

difficult because of course women were part of history and mass disobedience

40:21

campaigns at the time of independence in Africa, there were many women.

40:26

And even in 2019, when the, when the people of Sudan rose against Umar al

40:32

Bashir in the uprising, women were very much in the vanguard and they

40:36

styled themselves as Kandakas, which is the ancient name for the queen or

40:41

queen mother from the kingdoms of Kush.

40:44

Now, there's a question that I ask all my guests two questions, in fact,

40:48

the first one is what history book or biography are you reading at the moment?

40:52

I adore. I love historians.

40:55

I admire you, Andrew, but I have to say I adore Professor Sir David Canadine.

41:01

No we all admire David. He's wonderful historian.

41:03

Of course he's no, so I said, I thought, oh, shall I name one of Andrew's?

41:07

But I, no, No. Don't do they all do that, frankly but what, which book of David's

41:12

the, are you reading at Moment? I had read it a while ago, but I'm now reading The Undivided Past by

41:17

David Cannadine, which is a wonderful book because it is exactly what

41:21

I believe in, history beyond our differences, and this Manichean view

41:26

of the world is one that he refutes. And, David writes as beautifully as he speaks, and he just shows that

41:32

it's fun to read, but he just shows how throughout history, humanity

41:36

has defined itself by The, mutually exclusive and adversarial identities

41:42

of nationhood race or civilizations religion as we've been talking about,

41:47

but David just shows that this is. misleading and often wrong.

41:52

So I just love reading this book because it underscores a belief I have, which

41:58

is, let's remember our common humanity.

42:01

Like I said, let's remember that we all came out of Africa.

42:04

We all came out of Lucy. Tell me about your, what if.

42:08

What's your counterfactual? Oh dear, now this is a difficult one.

42:11

I will have to go back to the kingdom of Cush and I would go to look at the story

42:17

of one of the kings of of Cush, and that would be Shabako, who very nearly drove

42:24

the Assyrians out of the Middle East.

42:27

The Assyrians, of course, very powerful, warlike army.

42:31

He engaged as his predecessors did in armies, in, in fierce battles.

42:38

Assu Bal he fought with, and then, oh, sorry.

42:43

Assu Bal was the Assyrian King who finally defeated him in the six hundreds.

42:49

But I think that what if he hadn't, then I think the cites

42:54

would've gone on to perhaps be.

42:57

The regional superpower of Western Asia and history might

43:02

have been quite different. And the kingdom of Kush might have lasted for another thousand years.

43:10

Who knows? Actually, the way you tell these stories really is marvelous.

43:16

There's another king who I wanted to mention, Lali Bela.

43:20

Of the zag way 1162 to 1221.

43:24

We knew he was going to be a great man because he, when he was

43:27

born, there was a swarm of bees. There's an extraordinary sort of cross between Oedipus and lots of

43:33

Shakespeare going on in his life.

43:35

There's a point where he drinks poisoned beer despite going it.

43:38

poisoned. His brother, Harbe, tried to flog him, but he was unmarked by the flogging.

43:43

It's a tremendous story.

43:46

And and then out of guilt gives up his throne to to his brother, who then goes

43:50

on to build 11 fabulous churches, many of which are still in existence today.

43:57

All of them are still in existence today. Really, really an amazing wonder.

44:01

Yeah. So it's stories like this that make this book a an African history of Africa,

44:07

a real must read for my listeners.

44:10

Thank you very much indeed, Zeinab. That's it has been a really fascinating conversation.

44:15

Thank you, Andrew. Really enjoyed it. Pleasure to be with you.

44:18

Thank you, Andrew. Thank you, Zeinab.

44:21

On my next Secrets of Statecraft, my guest will be Dan Hannan.

44:24

Lord Hannan is a British writer, journalist, and politician, and advisor to

44:29

the Board of Trade, and he was a member of the European Parliament from 1999 to 2020.

44:43

This podcast is a production of the Hoover Institution, where we generate

44:47

and promote ideas advancing freedom.

44:50

For more information about our work, to hear more of our podcasts, or view

44:54

our video content, please visit hoover.

44:57

org.