In Conversation

This week we spoke to Zeinab Badawi about telling stories from the past, advocating for pan Africanism and finding history close to home.

Interviewed by Nancy Adimora.

NA: I first came across you and your interest in African history because I was a part of the TEDxEuston team. I was in the audience when you were giving your talk and it was fantastic. There were a lot of different parts of that talk that really struck me. I love how you set the scene, starting with your great-grandfather, then talking about your parents and all the educated women in your family. When you think about your decision to become a storyteller, through journalism, do you think it had to do with the family and specifically the women you were surrounded by? 

ZB: Yes, I grew up with very strong women around me. My grandmother could read and write in a time when there would have been around 99% illiteracy for women. My great aunts and then my aunts had degrees and so on.  I can't say that they were massive storytellers, but it certainly made me aware, as the lovely late Ghanaian writer Ama Ata Aidoo once said to me, that this idea of African women being “downtrodden wretches” is just completely not true. 

She didn't need to tell me that because I had grown up with very strong women around me.

NA: So where do you think your storytelling gene came from? 

ZB: Probably my father. He wrote books in Arabic and he was a great storyteller. He was the one who would tell us stories when we were children and he was also a man who was given to anecdotes. He loved anecdotes.

I think that's what I brought to my book. Where I could, I focused on micro-history, trying to convey the history of a particular period in a particular region through a character or characters. I always say, history is best understood when it's seared into the imagination and I think personalities and stories about people help you grasp the history in a much more ready fashion. 

 NA: Absolutely. I completely agree. That's why I feel like history needs a rebrand. When we hear that word, we immediately think of school and heavy textbooks, but actually it is just a collection of stories. History is just a collection of stories that we have taken to be true. 

ZB: Could you give me that as my quote? 

NA: Haha I’d be more than happy to because, I’m on the same wavelength as you. When I was reading your book, I kept looking out for the stories and my favourite by far is Mansa Musa's story. 

ZB: That lovely, lovely guy. I like him too, especially the fact that he was so generous. I think generosity is such a nice virtue to have, isn't it? He gave away so much gold - he must have been a man who was generous of spirit as well. He set up these schools and built these mosques. What a great guy he was. 

I also like the story of Mansa Musa because, as I said, it tells you more than just his own story. It tells you how Africa, even in the so-called medieval period in the 1200s and the 1300s was plugged into the global economy. He was born in 1280, he did this pilgrimage in 1325, and he died in 1334 so it was a very long time ago. 

Africa was so plugged into the global economy that the actions of this one man had a huge impact on the price of gold.

NA: That was really refreshing to read, and this book is full of similarly fascinating stories. Were there any other stories that stood out to you?

ZB: There are so many. I think the women of Nder in 1819 in what is modern day Senegal. It’s in chapter nine, I believe. That’s the chapter about the Eastern slave trade that was perpetrated by the Arabs and their partners across the Indian Ocean for the most part. People often talk about the Transatlantic slave trade but it was predated and outlived by the Eastern slave trade. By that time, 14 million enslaved Africans fell victim to that; 10 million across the Indian Ocean and the other 4 million across the Red Sea to Arabia or from south of the Sahara to Arab families in the north. 

In 1819, the women of Nder in a Wollof village in what is today Senegal had an encounter with some of the Arabs and their partners. There were a small group of them, and they fought the Arabs off because they knew they came to take the women. But the slave traders came back.

The men were out in the field. The women were in the village. One woman ran back and said, “Look, I can see them coming back, and there are lots of them. There's no way we'll be able to fight them off.” 

So one older woman said to the other women in the village, and I quote, “All of you, do you want us to go and become slaves to these Arab families in the north of Africa? Or do you want our descendants to know that we died as free women with our pride and our dignity?” 

They all agreed, so they went into the biggest hut and enclosed it. They were singing and they set fire to the hut so that they would all die before the Arabs could capture them. 

There was one woman who was heavily pregnant, and she was coughing and coughing from the smoke. She obviously had a maternal instinct so decided she didn't want to die and wanted to save her child. She made a dash to exit, and at first they thought, “Well, let's stop her.” Then one of the women said “No, let her go so that she can tell our story about the brave women of Nder and how we preferred death and dignity to being enslaved.”

The pregnant women did survive. She hid. The slave traders came, found the village all burnt and they went away. 

To this day in this Wollof region of Senegal, the villagers pick one Tuesday in November where they all stop what they're doing. They don't hunt, they don't farm. They don't do any activity in honour of the memory of these women. One woman who survived handed the story down, so that story was told to me several times, mostly by women. I like it because pride and dignity is very much part of the psyche of the African and it is something which people have tried to steal from the African over the centuries by dehumanising them through the the slave trades and seeing them as subhuman, and obviously also to this day through the existence of racism and so on. 

I mean, I'm not in any way encouraging self-immolation, but I like that story because it shows that even in adversity, those women were not robbed of agency. 

NA: Absolutely. It’s amazing that the present-day community are still honouring the memory of their ancestors and the sacrifice they made in such a deep way. 

ZB: Exactly. I’ve just found the story, It’s on page 226. Here is the portion where the older woman rallies the other women. 

“Answer me instead of standing and crying. What would we say later to our grandchildren and their children? Do you want people to say that their grandmother left the village as a slave, or that she was brave until death? 

Yes, my sisters. We need to die as free women and not live as slaves. Whoever agrees with me, follow me into the Great Hut where the council of the wise people takes place. We will all go in there and set fire to it, so it will be ash that meets the enemy. Let us live as the proud women of Wollof.” 

NA: Wow. I can almost see the scene playing out in front of me, which brings me on to my next question. In the past, you explored African history through an extended documentary. I am so used to the pipeline of ideas starting from books and then moving into TV and film - but you went in the opposite direction. Once you had told the story in one form, what drew you to the idea of also writing a book - beyond getting an email from Tom (literary agent) one day, saying “Have you ever thought about writing a book?” 

ZB: Even before Tom got in touch with me, I had thought of writing a book mainly because I hadn't done justice to the fine African scholars I had met on my journeys. I felt that I hadn't told the stories and the history that they told me sufficiently. In a TV series where the picture dominates, somebody might give me an interview for a couple of hours and I could only use clips of it. That’s why I felt I needed to do them justice and that’s why I decided to embark on the book. 

Obviously, transcripts from interviews are not enough research but what I hope I've encapsulated is the vision, perspective and inspiration of the people I talk to in each particular part where they're quoted. 

I also put in more names of African scholars. The final book had maybe half a dozen taken out. Some remained. I suppose you can't keep them all, but they're all in the index and it’s a very extensive index. 

NA: A very extensive index. When I picked up this book, felt its weight, and saw all the different areas you were covering, my first question was, how the hell did you do that? So that’s what I want to ask you next. When you sat down to actually write this book, what was the process like? Did you have a clear vision of the stories you wanted to tell? What was it like in a practical sense?

ZB: The TV series took me the best part of seven years to make. I started it in very late 2014 and the last episode was broadcast on the BBC World Channel in mid-2020. Therefore, in terms of looking at it as a body of work for a book, I had the luxury, which probably a lot of writers don't have, of a protracted process of thinking. 

Before I set off on a journey to any country, I would be surrounded by books because I did all the research myself. I wanted it to stay in my head, so I would be staying up until one or two in the morning before I set off to Zimbabwe or wherever, reading everything I could. 

That process of sifting through the material that appeared in those books helped me to have a very protracted writing process. When it came to actually writing An African History of Africa, I only had to put flesh on the bones of ideas and places and histories that I had already researched for the TV series, which, as I said, was done over a very long period. 

I think if you went to a publisher and said to them, “I want 10 years to write a book and I want a budget to go to 34 African countries to talk to dozens and dozens of people and I want to take my time and think about it,” they'd say no. That is why in this case, it worked much better to have the TV series first and then the book. 

It meant that I could focus. I did all that sifting there. Of course, I can't do justice to a whole continent in one book but I feel that I prioritized history that was not so well known. Ethiopia and Eritrea, for example, get two chapters; four and five. I don't really do any more Ethiopia after that, yet Ethiopia's story is still very interesting in the 1800s with Emperor Tewodros and his battle at Magdala with the Brits and so on and so forth. I had to omit that because I couldn't do yet another chapter on Ethiopia but I also kind of felt people might know a bit about the Emperor Tewodros, because it's a bit more recent. It's 19th century history. We know that his shield and his sword were returned to Ethiopia from Britain a few years ago. We know that his son, the prince, came to England and became Queen Victoria's godson. These are not as hidden as the story of King Azana of Axum or Lali Bella or Ahmed the left handed. People often say to me, “Oh, but you didn't talk about this. You didn't cover that.” and it’s because I really wanted to go more for the hidden histories. 

NA: You did such an exceptional job and as we’ve been speaking, one thing that I've been struck by is the fact that everything is in your head. I was talking about Mansa Musa, and you were giving me dates - “he was born on this date and this is when this and that  happened.” it’s all in your head, do you feel like the information needs somewhere else to go? What else do you feel like you can do with all this information beyond a book? 

 ZB: I'm being an advocate. I have been doing so many interviews and book festivals for this book that I really see myself in an advocacy/ambassadorial role for Africa. Really, that's how I see it, and it is not only in Britain. I'm going to Italy as well as Holland later this year. You can see how the Far Right have done relatively well and increased their vote in countries like France. That encourages me to want to embark on this advocacy role, to give visibility to a people who are seen only in a certain way, as sometimes a nuisance factor or not really wanted or, as I said, as underdeveloped Europeans who need to get their act together and do this or that. 

I feel that in telling a history of the people of Africa, I'm not only narrating stories but also giving a history of hope and saying to people, “Look, you may not think this is the case, but the whole of the continent of Africa- North, South, East, West and Central-has a history, traditions customs and institutions that are worthy of respect and study.”

I would hope that in some small way, it might just try to shift mindsets. That's how I see my role today. 

NA: When I think about your book, the thing that I love more than the cover (which is stunning!), is the fact that your book was a Sunday Times bestseller. Having worked in publishing, I’ve seen incredible books sell less than 100 copies. Your book was not only published, it was published so well that it became a bestseller for two consecutive weeks. A lot of people who have read this book may be reading about the continent for the first time - how have you found the reception to this book so far? 

ZB: I've been to a lot of festivals now where the audience is practically uniformly white. I have to say that I am very, very encouraged. The turnout is always huge, and the interest is huge and the questions just keep on coming. There is a lack of knowledge and the lines of people who want to buy the book when I finish is also very, very encouraging. 

It has hit a nerve, which is exactly what I wanted it to do because it's not easy to write a simple book. I mean, I hope it's simple. It's as complex as it needs to be because it's a complex continent, but it's very readable. I hope it's readable, and it's not easy to write a readable book because it can seem quite simple but I've been very heartened by the reception. 

As you say, when it actually hit the Sunday Times bestseller list, I was really pleased. Not so much for myself, but just to see a book about African history being on top of the list. I was so happy about that. There has also been a lot of interest from the foreign publishers, it's been translated into eight languages, so I'm very pleased about that. 

I am very encouraged, and I think that it's building on the interest in the whole debate about reparations, restitution of art objects, statues and decolonizing curriculums. I think that people want to get an idea so it's tapped in. I hope the zeitgeist is with it. 

NA: Amazing, final question. I feel like there might be a few people who are starting to discover parts of their family history, and they feel like they might want to capture it in a book. What would be your one piece of advice to someone who is thinking about getting started? 

ZB: A family is obviously large. You have great grandparents who you may have never heard of or seen, then grandparents and parents. I would say, pick a generation in your family who were active at a very interesting time or the most interesting time in that country or region's history. A bit like Abdullah Gurnah, the Tanzanian Nobel Prize winner who wrote about the story of a young man in Zanzibar against the backdrop of the Germans. Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is the typical one. He obviously was of an age where he would have remembered what his grandparents said about the arrival of the Europeans and how it just completely created mayhem within their traditions and so on. 

My advice would be, look to your family. Find the most interesting part of your family’s history, find out what was going on in that particular time, and then tell that story through their eyes or through their experiences.

Zeinab Badawi is an award-winning broadcaster, journalist, and filmmaker. She is President of SOAS University of London and is an honorary fellow of her alma mater St Hilda’s College, Oxford. Born in Sudan, she has worked in the British media for several decades. Zeinab is a recipient of the President’s Medal of the British Academy, a Patron of the United Nations Association UK, and is on the boards of the Arts, Humanities and Research Council, MINDS (the Mandela Institute for Development Studies), the International Crisis Group and Afrobarometer. She was previously Chair of the Royal African Society. An African History of Africa is her first book.