[Salon] An African History of Africa - ArabDigest.org

An African History of Africa Summary: for too long Africa has been seen through a Eurocentric lens that denies Africans their rich history; a new book puts the lens in the hands of Africans. Today’s newsletter is a transcript of our 29 May podcast, edited for length and clarity, with the broadcaster, journalist and author Zeinab Badawi, president of SOAS University in London. Her book An African History of Africa; From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence has just been published by W. H. Allen. You can find the podcast here. An African History of Africa shot right to number 1 on the Sunday Times bestseller list so let me begin by congratulating you on a tour de force. It is a page turner, rich in characters and in a history that begins 7 million years ago. What drove you to take this extraordinary journey from the very beginnings of life on Earth for all of us humans - because we all emerged out of Africa - to the present? I really wanted to focus on the history of Africa, before the arrival of the Europeans. I think there is a tendency for world history to look at Africa through that lens, which implies that Africa had little history to speak of before the arrival of the Europeans. So 18 chapters in my book, I don't get to the transatlantic slave trade till chapter 14, and it's that history that is occluded, that I wanted to focus on. But moreover, I also wanted to bring the perspective of the African historians, archaeologists, cultural experts, themselves, so that I could accord them the respect of telling their own history. And that goes for all parts of the continent, North, South, East, West, Central Africa. I don't really accept the division that people often impose on Africa, which is there's the so-called Arab north and Sub Saharan Africa. What I say goes for all four corners of the continent. And as you say it was occluded. Do you look at that and think this was a deliberate policy to erase Africa’s history? Was it a deliberate policy? I think it was a by-product of Western imperialism. And I think that we know that generally, history is the history of the conquerors. And there is a lovely Southern African saying, I know that when you talk about Africa, one always has to drum up some kind of proverb, but this one is fairly apt: ‘when the lions have historians then the hunters will cease to be heroes.’ So I think that history generally does tend to glorify the actions of the victors. And because all of Africa, really even the Ethiopians who say they were never colonised - it's true they were not colonised in the true sense of the word but they were occupied by the Italians, and also they had many battles with imperial forces - so all of Africa was vanquished by the Europeans. And that is why I think that Africa’s own history and own interpretations and visions and perspectives have been overshadowed by the account of the victors who would see the history through their own lens, through their own values systems, seeking to glorify the actions of their generals and their soldiers and their colonial officers. So inevitably, you get a history which has been forgotten or overlooked. And in particular, those parts of Africa that did not write their history and always relied on oral tradition to hand down accounts. And this has also, I think, led to a tendency for people to say, look, Africa has no history until the Europeans arrived, because it was we Europeans who wrote down what we saw, and therefore, we believe that Africa didn't really have any history. But fortunately the arrival of Islam in Africa very early meant that there were many Africans who could write in Arabic. And so we have vast libraries of work of African literature and scholarship written in Arabic. You recount the story of the Mahdi, the Sudanese leader who defeated the British General Charles Gordon in Khartoum. You flip the story around from the accepted British imperialist hero narrative and in doing so you provide fresh insights. Can you talk about the Mahdi, who he was and what his victory represented? To give him his full name, Muhammad Ahmad ibn Abdallah, or the Mahdi was born in 1844 and died in 1885. And he was a very charismatic religious leader who proclaimed himself the Mahdi, or the chosen one, that is a divinely appointed guide. He was born in northern Sudan near Dongala, going towards the border with Egypt, and was the son of a boat builder. But later he moved to just south of Khartoum, and the Mahdi received a religious education and was a member of a Sufi order. And for many years he lived as an ascetic. He spurned material goods and led a very simple life governed by religion. He wanted to set an example to others and he commanded huge followings. So by 1881, the Mahdi now in his late 30s, had gained a reputation as a really superior religious thinker. And he attracted many adherents from across the Sudan. And the account I give of just how he attracted followers is very much from the memoirs of Sheikh Babikr Bedri, who, in fact, was my great grandfather. And he wrote his memoirs, including accounts of the Mahdi. And it's really the only written insight from the Sudanese side about the Mahdi’s encounter with General Gordon, at the Battle of Khartoum in 1885 when the Mahdi defeated Gordon who had failed to get any relief, And it was a victory which resonated all over Africa, because it was a spectacular defeat of this great imperial power.This was at the same time that the Berlin Conference had taken place,1884 to 1885, when the European powers were beginning to carve up Africa into different spheres of influence. So, it was very much an iconic victory against imperial powers. And why I like it is because it gave rise to a very famous British epic feature film in 1966, called Khartoum starring Laurence Olivier as the Mahdi and Charlton Heston as Gordon. And it was a very popular movie at the time. And it, of course, depicts right being on the side of General Gordon and the Mahdi as this demonic fanatic. And in fact, the movie was described by the Arab writer and intellectual Edward Said as a piece of pro-colonial propaganda that cast a despotic violent Arab masculinity against a noble, rational Western one. And so it's a chapter in Africa's history that in some ways is still relevant in the way that Edward Said described it. The history of Africa, as it is in every other continent, is a history of warfare, punctuated by times of peace. You are Sudanese and the country of your birth is embroiled in a terrible war that's receiving so little coverage in the international media. And so little concern from the leaders of the global north and elsewhere in the world. What needs to happen to bring this awful war to an end? It is an awful war. It's the largest internally displaced and refugee problem in the world now. I think something like 14 million have been forced to flee their homes, including many members of my own family. There are 5 million who are on the brink of famine, maybe 25 million food insecure, 14,000 killed, and what some people describe as a genocide taking place in Darfur, which, of course, has had a running conflict since the early 2000s. I wish I could say that we can find a way out of this. I think, earlier this year with the appointment of US Special Envoy Tom Perriello, we hoped that would breed some momentum, would perhaps lead to a coordination of the various disparate paths of negotiations. So one important step would be to bring greater coherence, coordination, and consistency. I think that the outside players ,who have made a bad situation worse, also need to really account for their actions and explain why they are fuelling this conflict by providing arms and support. There are players from as far as Russia, Ukraine even and obviously the Arab world on opposing sides and that of course perpetuates the conflict. So we're all in despair. I think it's got to the stage where ordinary Sudanese are saying a plague on both your houses, on the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF). It seems that most human rights organisations and the United Nations have condemned both sides for atrocities but more are laid at the door of the RSF, who have very ill-disciplined forces fighting on their behalf, including non- Sudanese mercenaries who don't have any stake in the country. And yet, on the other hand, the SAF is so desperate for support it is looking at the forces of the former President Omar al-Bashir, including Islamist militias and so on. The Sudanese are really caught between a rock and a hard place. In a penultimate paragraph to your book, you write. “We should celebrate what is right with the continent, just as we condemn what is wrong. I believe that future belongs to Africa and its youth.” From whence springs your optimism? I think for anybody who either has children or knows young people well or comes into contact with them, it's a no brainer. Young people are productive. They have youth, they have vigour, they have energy, they have ambition, they have a desire to succeed, to acquire, to build, to procreate. And so if you have a continent with such a large proportion of young people, then you just know that the direction of travel has to be one which is optimistic, because I think if you take the short term view of Africa, you will get pessimistic. There are lots of conflicts going on. There aren't responsible governments and all the rest of it. We know the myriad challenges that it faces. But the fact that when you look at the demography, there are 1.4 billion Africans, that number is projected to almost double by 2050. The average age on the continent currently is between 18 and 19. Some countries as young as 15, like Chad, and if you look at Europe, it is ageing: Italy, 47, France, 42, the UK 41. And this is a trend which is going to continue. China, and the United States 38. Africa is a young continent; by 2050, a quarter of the world's workers, producers, consumers are going to be African. And that is why I say the future will be African.