Zeinab Badawi at Marlborough LitFest

Zeinab Badawi is not only an attractive person, she has an attractive persona. She is highly articulate and intelligent. She is a renowned international broadcaster and has achieved great academic distinction. The Gods have showered her with their gifts promiscuously. Thus it comes as something of a surprise to discover that it has taken her until the age of 65 to publish her first book. Perhaps she waited to find a subject close to her heart. An African History of Africa is certainly that. She takes issue with the late Oxford historian, Hugh Trevor-Roper who, in the 1960s proclaimed that pre-colonial Africa had no history. That of course, was nonsense. Everywhere has history.

Zein’s point that there are forms of expression other than the literary hit home with me since I’m writing a history of the Elizabethan theatre and a great deal of the material comes from oral tradition. I recalled meeting a member of the griots in The Gambia, These were the troubadours who would record the doings of Kings and happenings in local communities. I asked him about the abolition of the slave trade locally. He broke into a kind of high-[pitched chant. There were some Arab merchants who had slaves in their possession who were linked by chains around their necks. Suddenly men in uniforms with red faces appeared. There was an exchange of fire: one Arab was killed and the slaves were freed. There you have a 200 year-old eye-witness account. You can’t get much better history than that.

Zeinab’s deep commitment to Africa does not cause her to overlook the less-than-happy past. She recognises slavery as an indigenous institution and acknowledges the presence of corrupt dictators. Modern African nations were largely created as a result of a carve up of the continent by the colonial powers at the Congress of Berlin in 1884. Zeinab sees history as playing a vital role in the recovery of a sense of cultural identity. ‘History informs our past, shapes our future’, she says. That’s surely a lesson for us all.