In Our Time - Africa

Episode Date: July 8, 1999

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Africa. It could be seen as the great test of the West; economically, intellectually, spiritually. The "dark continent" was seen as a source of power for the West through its natural resources, a place of harvest for western religious missionaries, a prize area for anthropologists - a dark continent to be illuminated by our western lights. Now, darker, all but extinguished some think, by the attentions of its invaders, Africa is outside the take-up of the twentieth century it seems. But is this received view is merely clichéd and too easily pessimistic. With Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr, Chair of the Afro-American Studies Department, Harvard University and presenter of the BBC 2 series Into Africa; Anthony Sampson, writer, journalist and author of Mandela: The Authorised Biography.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio four. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, in the spring of last year, President Bill Clinton glad handed his way across the continent of Africa and taking up Tarbon Becki's theme and phrase,

he told the world about an African Renaissance. He said that from Cape Town to Campala, from Darius Islam to Dakar, democracy was gaining strength, business was growing, and peace was breaking out. A little over a year later, war ravages the continent from Sudan to Ethiopia, chaos and corruption undermine the rule of law from Liberia to Somalia, and men like Laurent Cabela in the Democratic Republic of Congo, once held by the West as the new breed, have turned out to be just as selfish, divisive and disastrous as their ignoble forebears.

A fortnight ago, the instability and the threat of terrorism in Africa meant that Britain closed its embassies in Gambia, Madagascar, Namibia, Senegal and the United States ceased its operations in Liberia and Tonga. With me to discuss Africa's future is Professor Henry Lewis Gates Jr., chair of the Afro-American Studies Department at Harvard University, and one of Time Magazine's 25 most influential Americans, and the presenter of a new BBC series into Africa in which he explores the continent and attempts to unearth its forgotten history. I'm also joined by the distinguished writer and journalist Anthony Sampson, who's had a long

association with South Africa in particular and is the author of Mandela, the author of authorised biography. Is there any sense, Anthony Sampson, in which we can look on Africa as a test of Europe? We've written all over it in various ways. We've invaded it. We've given and taken and taken more than we've given. In what way could Africa speak for what we have been? Well, I think, of course, Africa in some ways is a kind of extrapolation of European problems, which are exaggerated and then soft and confused by conflicts which exist elsewhere in the world too. But the fact is that in the last 30, 40 years, mainly I think because of the Cold War and the aftermath of the Cold War, Africa really hasn't had the opportunity to express its own systems effectively. And it's very difficult in those problems that you mentioned of those particular countries.

It's very difficult to sort out how much of that is still the residue of the appalling corruption and devastation of the Cold War and how much is part of an endemic African problem, which is to do undoubtedly with a lack of communication. in the past and being cut off from other trends. Given what has been poured into Africa, by the West, what does the State of Africa today say about the West? Well, you use an interesting phrase that we've written all over Africa for centuries. I mean, a millennium. Europe has been projecting its worst fears,

but also its deepest aspirations onto the tabular rise of that was Africa. And the effects have been quite telling, actually. One of the reasons I was excited about making my film series was because how many people in the West know anything at all about African history about the truly great ancient African civilizations, which in their day were just as splendid and just as glorious as any on the face of the earth? I mean, let's face it, when we think of Africa, what comes to mind.

Poverty and flies, famine, war, and disease. But Africa is a sight of great cultures, great civilization, great attainments. And in effect, what I was the fact, what I was in fact, trying to do was to unwrite the history of Europe in Africa. European projections of all of its worst fears and deepest anxieties onto the continent. Taking up the point about discovering Africa's past, Anthony Sampson, do you think that what Henry Lewis Gates is called the forgotten history of a continent? Do you think once that is uncovered, that will bring something to Africa today, which it needs? Well, I have some doubts about that. I mean, of course, quite a lot of that

history has emerged over the last 20 or 30 years, and it's very important that it should have done. But I think if you look at the actual process of African nationalism and African-African awareness in different countries, and this particularly true in South Africa, of course, where the Western presence is so much stronger, there comes a point when that looking back at the great old traditions of tribal history and old civilizations doesn't take you very much further. It becomes a kind of dead end, I think. Of course it is true that in the actual society, there were very important elements which Mandela has always been stressing since his early childhood as a son of a chief.

He was very well of it. And certainly that respect for a certain kind of what Mandela and other South Africans called Ubuntu, the idea that a person exists only in relationship to other people, that has got something to teach Europeans and Americans, and the whole tension between a certain kind of collectivism, in African tradition and the individualism of America, that is, I think, going to be a tremendously important relationship for some time to come. But I think the actual looking back to the details of the civilization

only goes up to a certain point. And I think it's a mistake to stress that too far. It's the interaction, I think, of the two kinds of society, which has been the most fruitful, particularly creatively. I mean, the great moments, I think, of, for instance, of Harlem in the 20s, in America, which was then echoed by Johannesburg in the 50s, which was where Mandela first became aware of the excitement of urban life. The strength of both of those was the fact that it was a conference.

It was the coming together of two different societies. But England has made a culture industry based on its knowledge and marketing of its past. And what I'm advocating is not return to a mythical Never, Neverland, and certainly not the misuses of the past that say Mobutu. tried to put it to, romanticizing this, you know, glorious African communal sensibility, which he was the epitome of,

so he could have all the money that would come in from AID, et cetera, et cetera. No, I'm talking about just telling the truth, just being able to narrate a history and celebrate it and teach it in the schools. For example, in South Africa, in South Africa, as everyone knows, and you know much better than I, the Europeans claim that there was nobody there, that it was an empty land until 1652 when Jan von Rebek showed up. In fact, I'm in Petersburg filming with the film crew,

and we're walking through a museum with school children, black and white, half a dozen, ranging in ages from 12 to 15. So I said, who's the first man to come to South Africa? And a little girl happened to be white and very charming, said, I know, and I said, yes, and she said, Jan von Rebeck, until Mr. Mandela was released from prison. But I think it's saying it's true, you've got to get that history straight, But, of course, on both sides, the history is actually quite confused still,

because the fact is, of course, that a great deal of Africa was semi-migratory. People were moving around, and the Afrikaners, the white settlers in South Africa, were moving around too. And it was fairly unclear who actually owned or controlled the territory in each case. Can I come back to the history, Henry? Throughout the series, you say you want to believe the evidence of great black civilizations. In Timbuktu, you're shown books which you call, quote, evidence of a grand civilization untranslated and unknown, unquote,

but you don't translate them and we don't know them. Are you prepared to take evidence of these great civilizations more on trust than we take evidence of great civilizations elsewhere? We arrived in Timbuktu, and a man approached us and said that he was a protector of some books, some volumes from the great library, the Sanctuary Mosque, at what we would call a university at Timbuktu, which thrived between the 14th century and the 16th century when Morocco invaded what is now Mali in 1591

and basically sent all the scholars into exile, the most famous of which was a man called Ahmad Baba. Well, I walked into this little room in this man's house, and in these chunks, he is protected volumes owned by the 12 dominant families of Timbuktu. 50,000 volumes written by black men in Arabic, obviously by hand, between the 14th century and the 16th century. Why is that important?

It's important because Hume, writing an essay at the height of the Enlightenment called of National Character, said that you could look from top to bottom, from Cape to Cairo in Africa, and there were, as he said, no arts, no sciences. Kant repeats that allegation. Ten years later in 1764, Jefferson says it, and Hegel says there's no history in Africa, so there's no writing. Here we had evidence that that was a lie. These were people who wrote.

These were people who were intelligent. I don't read Arabic. I don't know what they... Maybe they say Mary had a little lamb, but at least it's better than nothing. So what I did, when I got back, I approached the Mellon Foundation. And as you know, I'm the director of the Du Bois Institute for African and African-American research at Harvard. And they gave us $50,000, and we're cataloging those volumes, even as we speak. And then we'll translate them.

So we'll know exactly of what the black mind consists. But do you think that the high stakes involved in African identity politics allow for more latitude in historical analysis? Well, I think it is important to get the real fact straight. And of course it is true, as Henry says, that the culture and the civilization is much more sophisticated and much more elaborate than people ever realized before. But I think the issue of what has been called backwardness, which perhaps one still has to call backwardness in global terms, of Africa being behind the rest of the world in its development in other respects, that also has to be faced, I think,

because so many of the problems of Africa today are to do with the difficulties of catching up or connecting up with the rest of the world. And that is true culturally as well as economically. I was interested that Adam Smith, also in the 18th century, he wrote how it was the lack of rivers in Africa that he thought was the basic problem they had because it was rivers into the interior, which were the key to connecting it up with trade inside. Of course, the coast of Africa was always much more developed than the interior. And it's the countries like today, like the Congo, ex-Saire, which have these huge interiors, which of course were devastated in the first place by King Leopold and others, which are. and then so cut off from other world influences, it's those that present some of the greatest problems today.

So I think we still have to look at that question of interaction. And I was struck that to go back to Clinton for a moment, that Mandela, when Clinton came to South Africa, was particularly impressed by what Clinton said about Americans mustn't think what they will do for Africa but with Africa, because that's what they long for now in South Africa, as well as elsewhere, is the sense of equal collaboration

in which Africans are giving out and connecting up with the rest of the world as opposed to simply being the recipients of aid and charity. I think that's very important. I think the cancellation of the debt which we're beginning to see an impossible burden to overcome so that Africa will have a chance. We talk about catching up. I've been visiting the African continent since I was 19 years old. I worked in a mission hospital in the center of Tanzania,

in one of the poorest regions of one of the poorest countries. And I went back there making a film for the BBC with my daughters a few years ago for the Great Rail Journey series. And I looked around and thought, it'll take a thousand years for this place to catch up. I mean, how's the continent going to catch up without massive intervention and creative programs that we haven't even begun to understand,

including acceptance of responsibility for the society's fate from the Africans themselves? But in other respects, after all, I mean, in the South African story, there's no doubt that what South Africa's achieved in the last 10 years has been in many respects ahead of what's been achieved, certainly, in the Balkans and certainly in Northern Ireland. And both, certainly, the Northern Irish have actually accepted the fact

they can learn a very great deal from the black South African experience and the thinking on reconciliation, particularly, but also on the actual institution of the Truth Commission and the whole concept of bringing out conflicts and enabling a settlement to a resolution to be produced by coming clean and accepting history as it really is. But to go back to what Henry is saying about going to Tanzania and saying take a thousand years to catch up,

that's quite a statement. So what do you think, why is it so obdurate in that sense as a problem? Well, I think that the inheritance of corruptness, I mean the corruptness of slavery, the corruptness of colonialism, the corruptness of the excesses of the Cold War, as you put it so well, Anthony. this you become what you behold

as McClun said I think that what happened was Africa became independent there was so much excitement in 1960 19 African nations became independent I remember I was 10 years old I memorized the names of all the countries and the leaders and as Wally Sheryenko my dear friend and great mentor at Cambridge said

by 1965 it was the vision was corrupt it was tarnished The Toad Kings Yes and now At the end of the century We have hope from presence of an emergence and thriving of democracy in South Africa. If anyone had said 10 years before,

that South Africa would be the largest black democracy in the world. They would have been laughed out of this room. Let's go to South Africa then for the moment, Anthony. It's a country about which you've written and which you now intensively. And well, do you think that South Africa, via Mandela, is going to offer an example and leadership for the whole of Africa? Certainly I think it's acquired quite a lot of influence. over the last five years since Mandela became president,

more by example than actually by direct diplomatic pressure. Certainly there have been very serious setbacks, and of course the relationship between Kabbala and Mandela went pretty sour, not surprisingly, because Kabrilla simply didn't have either the intelligence or the integrity to stick to anything very firmly. And it has to be accepted that, as a South Africans put it now, Congo, ex-Sahier, is when he appears

to be going back to being the heart of darkness again, and that's a terrible prospect, a terrible limitation. But at the same time, South Africa, Southern Africa, has got a very different history from almost other parts further north. You've mentioned the different history of the black people in Southern Africa, haven't you? It's very different. They were not, of course, they were not really afflicted by slavery in the sense that we talk about it. And at the same time, their whole experience of industrialisation, urbanisation,

was far greater and deeper, I think, and produced a much more discipline, society in the Western sense in terms of being accustomed to disciplines of industry. And I think that very often when people talk about Africa in just in the same breath, including all the countries, it's rather like saying in view of what's happening in the Balkans, how can you expect to give the Scots to be able to rule themselves. I mean, it's as different as that, and the experiences are different. And, of course, the tragedy of many parts of Africa is that they have been subjected to a kind of Balkan type of fragmentation.

and bitter rivalries, which is very difficult to get out of. But that is not true of South Africa, which I think has achieved a kind of stability as a state in the last few years, which was shown in the inauguration of Tabur and Beki two weeks ago. Do you think the example, just to repeat the question, I said Tranted, do you think South Africa will be an example that others can follow, or is its history in Africa so distinctive that others simply won't be able to go that route? No, I think that it's a great beacon of hope at the turn of the century.

And I think Nigeria wouldn't have happened without South Africa. I think the Nigerians were so embarrassed by this thug, Sania Bacha, you know, who spent his time killing his enemies, trying to kill Shoyinka, for goodness sake. I think that they were humiliated. Their leadership position of the continent had been completely abandoned and overturned by the corruption of the military, manifesting itself in this evil petty thug. and that's why I think that they killed them.

And then certainly the elections were not ideally democratic in Nigeria, but they were better than anything that we've seen for a long time there. And I think that between the example of South Africa and between the example of Nigeria, both free market economies, both embracing democracy, embracing the free enterprise, I think that other states will imitate their examples, and they can only be good. In your program on the slave kingdoms, you sir, I'm quoting now, I have often thought that Africa has suffered so much in part

because of its own curse for selling its people away. Do you still think that's true? Well, I think that what I meant by that was that it's what Freud would call the return of the repressed. There was this terrible thing that happened that people would actually sell people that we would call now at the end of the 20th century. They're African brothers.

Of course, they didn't see it that way. They saw themselves selling captives of war, people who weren't their brothers or people who weren't their sisters. But it is, I was trying to say in a metaphorical way, that until the continent deals with the fact that they were not passive in the slave trade, that they were complicitous, they were active in the slave trade. And that led to, by our count, by the best count of scholars, 12 to 13 million Africans being shipped to the New World. had horrendous effects on the continent. And you can't get rid of 13 million people between 1519 and 1867, and that not devastate, obviously, the population,

but the human resources, and with implications of devastation of the natural resources, the growth of the economy, the growth of the society. It had a terrible, terrible impact. And for a long time, we've just pretended that the Africans were victims, that Europeans came and threw huge fish nets, over the Africans and it swept them away,

but it was much more complex than that. I think there is a, my impression is that Africans are facing up much more now to the awareness of their own involvement. And the phrase African predators, I've noticed I've seen, has been coming up quite a lot, not just in South Africa, but elsewhere. And of course, this is relevant not just to the slave trade, but, of course, to the role of the African leaders themselves in the corruptions that,

took part in which were the origin of the Cold War problem. And I think what, of course, so often happens in any isolated or settled society, if you put a pot of gold in the middle of it, it causes tremendous chaos. And in effect, the kind of corruptions that built up the empires of Mobutu or Savimbi or the great anti-comodist leaders who were chosen by the West as being their kind of favorite Cold War heroes, the kind of corruption, money-making that followed from that had something in common with the old slave trade problem, that if you offer somebody limitless or a great deal of extra money in return for favors which damage their own people, that it's quite difficult for them

to resist. Precisely. Precisely. If you look at the kingdom of Dahomei, look at Ashanti, they grew rich from the slave tree. I mean, there wouldn't have been at Dahomey. There wouldn't have been to Shanti without the slave trade in the forms that they manifested themselves. And that's what I mean by the return of the repressed. It's as if these demonic empires manifested themselves after 1960. They had historical precedence. And unless we deal with that, admit it, critique it, we can't get rid of it. The end of the Cold War seemed to leave Africa with a great opportunity.

Do you think, in the sense, 10 years on, it's missed its chance in terms of this idea of the African Renaissance? Do you think the release of a Renaissance? You think it has missed that opportunity? I think it's... I don't think it is going to miss that chance. After all, the Cold War only ended in 1990. And a great deal has happened since then.

Certainly in the whole arc of Southern Africa, really a great deal that's happened. Not just South Africa has got its act together in the most impressive way. I think that Mozambique, which was ravaged by the Cold War, almost destroyed by it, is now, looks like being seriously recovering. Namibia is a perfectly viable state. Botswana is really quite prosperous. And you've got the makings of a quite substantial economy,

as well as a stable political system there. So I think one shouldn't expect a sudden change after the Cold War. And if you look at, for instance, what's happened in Angola, which is one of the most tragic facts, which really was totally split and divided by Cold War politics, which is potentially such a rich country, that continues to see the consequences in a tragic way. They're back to Civil War, and the Civil War ready is based on that old Cold War division. but that will take some time

and personally I think the West should not interfere in the sense of being involved in the diplomacy but they damn well should interfere in stopping the kind of arms dealing and the kind of buildup of that civil war which is making it continually a crisis Henry Lewis Gates you think there's something that could be called African values

and if so how would you describe them? I wouldn't know what that means I mean if Africans are fundamentally different than Europeans or Chinese people? The answer is no. I mean, they're fundamentally human like everyone else. They're good people and bad people and corrupt people and idealistic and noble people. We used to talk perhaps overgibly,

but I was putting in relation to people have said about the Asians who came to this country that Asian family values, one of the aspects of their lives, which enabled them to get on so quickly. Many of them succeed so well, many of them and so on. I was wondering if there's any comparative statement one could make in that sense, in a limited sense, about Africa. I'll yield to Anthony on that. I thought about this, the time when about 30, 40 years ago,

people talked about not about negritude and the whole concept of the black soul and the African personality in Africa. And I must say I was rather attracted myself to some of the writing and poetry that came up. I remember there was a poem which always stuck in my mind by, was it Cesar, who wrote New York, New York, let the black blood flow in your vein.

I remember that. And feeling that there was something, there was no doubt in my mind at the time. and I spent a great deal of time with black South Africans then. There was no doubt that there was quite a lot that those kind of people had, the people I knew best, that they had to contribute not just to South Africa, but white South Africa, but to the rest of the world.

Because there was, I mean, I suppose most obviously, it was in the term of creativity. It was in the terms of music, of a rhythm, of general, a different view of life and a different approach to creativity. And this reflects itself, I think, in Britain and I also, I believe, in America, in the fascination that the two sides have with each other, if you're thinking about sides. I mean, if you look at the intermarriage, for instance, in Britain, which has made enormous advances in the last few years, there's no doubt to my mind that reflects the mutual fascination that the whites and blacks have for each other in this country. and that itself must have something to do with values and different views of life.

So we are getting some sort of answer, Henry. Well, as far as the Negritude movement is concerned, you're right, it was based on the claim that there was an Africanity, as it were, that was somehow different than the European conscience of the European soul. But I happen to believe that the poetry, which you rightly praise, was considerably more sophisticated than the philosophy upon which it was based. I think the philosophy was a load of rubbish. the idea that Sengor claims, I feel, therefore, I am, and you think, therefore you are.

What have I just done? I've deceded logic and reason to you, to Europe? I don't think so. I think I'll pass on embracing. If that's African values, I don't want any of those values as part of my culture. Well, another idea. It ignores poetry at once peril, because parrots remain the unacknowledged legislatures to the world. I mean, the influence of poetry on other people's thinking or other people's feeling, if you insist on that.

remains terribly important. And music, above all, I mean, let's not forget the right of music, because one thing has always struck me in the history of not just South Africa, but other parts of Africa, is the way that music provided a kind of metaphor for politics. At the time when black politics was almost banned in South Africa, the music, which became increasingly interesting in many respects, was in fact what kept the black protest,

the black dignity and self-awareness going, I think. So one can't write off that part. Oh, not only do I not write it off, I teach it, I collect it, I celebrate it. But that's very different than embracing a philosophical claim that African people lacked reason, that they had feeling, more feeling than Europeans, and therefore they were special for that reason. I understand the attempt to appropriate feeling and sensibility, but it was very short-sighted. There are cultural patterns from all peoples, from all ethnic groups. People claim in Nigeria that the East,

Ebo or particularly great business people. But we're on dangerous ground when we're engaged in a discourse of race that attempts to associate certain characteristics with the people. So I guess my answer is, no, I don't think that there are peculiar values that Africans have that other people don't have. But there are particular characteristics, aren't there? Oh, of course, as manifested in music and in art. And if you look at actually what resolved the South African crisis,

the part of it, in my view, in a way, was the realization of the Afrikaners and other white South Africans that as they got to know more about the Black South Africans, who they've been kept apart from, they became more and more aware there was something there that they actually needed to have in themselves. There's that kind of the separation of the races, the same thing that happened in India, for instance, before, tends to produce an absurd dichotomy that the contempt that the ruling group has for the others then excludes the ruling group from understanding a large part of their own culture

as well as the culture they've been suppressing. Are you optimistic about Africa, Henry? The problems afflicting the African continent are fundamentally economic, and I'm optimistic about the urge toward democracy, and I'm optimistic about the embrace toward democracy, and I'm optimistic about the embrace of the marketplace. But I'm not sure yet that I'm optimistic about the redistribution of wealth.

South Africa's politically free, is not economically free. It's going to take a long time before the fruits of democracy, the fruits of transition from apartheid, or reach the poorest people in the society. And I think that the leadership has every good intention of achieving that end, but it's not quite sure yet, and I don't think anyone is, about how we actually go about that massive distribution of wealth

without affecting the fabric of the society. That is a challenge facing Tabo and Becky. That is a challenge facing the African continent. I'm optimistic about the basic resurgence of African self-respect and self-determination, which I think is before the economic solution. It's the escape from their sense of domination and dependence on the West for good or for bad. I think that is happening certainly in southern Africa. and in parts of West and East Africa.

Well, Henry Lewis Gates and, Anna Samson, thank you very much, and thank you for listening. We hope you've enjoyed this Radio 4 podcast. You can find hundreds of other programmes about history, science and philosophy at BBC.com.com.uk, forward slash radio 4.