YouSaid · the spoken record

Zeinab Badawi

lines on the record: 59
first: 2024-12-22
most recent: 2024-12-22
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Lot of these problems that we're looking at now hopefully will be more consigned to the past. I mean, even the spate of coups in the Sahel and so on. You know, elections have become the norm. And even if they're rigged, they're much harder to rig and young people with phones that can take pictures of atrocities and vote rigging and so on. So I think that, you know, in narrating the history of the continent and trying to tell the truth of the history as it's seen by the people themselves, I don't think you can just be a truth teller. I think you have got to give a history of hope as well.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I mean, I think so. I mean, look, I'm not starry eyed about Africa. There are myriad challenges and myriad problems, and nor are the people themselves there, but there is a vitality. I just got back from Lagos last week after a week there. And, you know, the vibrancy, the entrepreneurial spirit, I mean, yes, it is a very overcrowded city and so on, but I would put my money on the youth, because, you know, youth is about vigour, wanting to achieve, wanting to buy. And the population will double by 2050. It's 1.4 now by 2050 it will be 2.8, which means a quarter of the world's workforce, its producers, it's consumers will be African, and by the 21st end of this century, it will be about 40%. So, I mean, I don't know if I had to, I'd give Africa maybe 20 years and you start seeing that.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know Yeah. I mean, I've had four children, and this feels like a fifth one already. And the labour was much longer.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In Jingo was very, you know, she was in her late 40s and pursued by Portuguese soldiers, gets to a rocky precipice and just grabs this vine and just vaults over to the other side with greater plom and the Portuguese who try to do the same all just fell to their deaths. I think maybe in Jinga.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Quite like Kim Pavita, who again Congolese is a bit of a Joan of Arc figure. You know, she was a Christian, but she didn't like the fact that there were no African saints in the Catholic Church. And, you know, kind of set up her own antonine movement after St. Anthony Padua, which still exist to this day. And she was burnt as a heretic, like Joan of Arc was.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She was born in, I think, in 1583. She died in her 80s just very quickly why I like her. She had some issues because she did actually deal with enslaved people that she had to supply to the Portuguese, but there was that demand. But when she went to meet the Governor General of Luanda and he received and she was dripping in all her jewelry and finery and he was sitting on a velvet chair embroidered in gold and expected her to sit on the floor she sort of looked around and thought I'm not going to do this and told one of her tall female attendant to go on all fours and she sat on her for the whole duration of the negotiations for hours poor woman”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, look, you know, I think that you need confidence to operate as a citizen in your country or as a global citizen. And we all know, particularly living in a country like the United Kingdom, which is very attached to its history and its symbols and its identity and so on, that these are important in forging a confident nation.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's a part of the year where the waters just don't mix and it's like a line has been drawn between these two parts of the Nile and that they combine at the confluence in Khartoum and continue all the way into Egypt. So of course the Nile is abundant with fish but the ancient Kushites, the Kushites believed it was an abomination to eat fish. We don't know why maybe because of its rotting potential so they didn't touch it. Can you imagine this source of protein that they never touched? The ancient Egyptians did eat fish. And to this day the average consumption of fish in Sudan is minute compared to Egypt and there are lots of people who don't like eating fish to this day in Sudan including my brother. So I say to him it must be a genetic memory at play.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, very funny. So, yes, I mean, I said that history can't just be consigned to the past. So the ancient northern Sudanese, the Kushais, and that's a part of Sudan I'm from, although the two river Niles run through Sudan, the blue and the white Nile, they combine.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A sentence to tell me, so I had to go and do a lot of research. So she kind of knew about her, but not an awful lot. So I think that's what it is. Because, you know, Africans who've been educated in the West or whatever, you know, we I'm president of SOAS and we're trying very hard in our African history to try and get sources from Africans. And we all know about the decolonize movement that started in South Africa in 2015, that you've got to have a range of perspectives. It's not about supplanting. It's about supplementing. There's some very good Western historians. Some of them are very close friends of mine. But it's about supplementing and adding.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was my mother. I said, to what do you know about the pyramids in Sudan? She says, Oh, I saw them once upon a time. So, this is an educated woman, and even she, you know, she'd struggled to give you a date as to when these pyramids were built or who built them or, you know, what you could learn, you know, what she knew about them. And I think that it's patchy. It's patchy. I mean, they do derive pride from it, from their ancient past. You know, even Queen Kahina, who was this great Berber queen in the 600s who fought the Arabs when they invaded North Africa, and when they said to, look, you know, convert to Islam or die. She told her sons, you convert so you can survive, but I will not. And they beheaded her. You know, very brave Berber Queen. So she was, a lot of people talk to me about her, the Moroccan ambassador, who was a woman at the time, said to me, oh, you must do something about Kahina. I said, tell me about her.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wasn't easy. So I think that was the thing that I came away with, which is. There has to be something that is, I hope, written in an accessible way that shows you that Africa has got a magnificent history before the colonial era and that it had institutions and individuals who are worthy of respect. And that's, I suppose, what I came away with.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which were marvellous, but they're quite turgid to read, and they've got lots and lots of editors, so they don't read very smoothly. So the GHA, some of you may not know in that period of rapid decolonization in Africa in the 1960s, the newly independent leaders of Africa, at least some of them said, look, we've decolonized our countries, we want to decolonize our history. So they appeal to UNESCO to help them. And UNESCO said, fine, we'll do that. If you pay for it, and they scoured the continent of Africa for the best archaeologists, historians, musicologists, and whatever, and they compiled volume after volume of Africa's history written from an African perspective, used in, as I said, non-written sources like oral tradition, dance, archaeology, and so on. And that's why it was very much my inspiration, the GHA. But 10 volumes that I had to wade through,”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean I'm very grateful. I think it has been a real eye-opener because, I mean, I've been educated in the UK, you know, all my life. And I think the level of ignorance about African history, including mine actually, before I embarked on this journey, is really staggering. It really, really is. I mean, I started writing the book because in a way I say it's the kind of book I wish it sounds grand, but I wish it was a book I could have read before I started on my journeys. I mean, you know, there was not a kind of easily accessible book that gave me an overview of the continent. It was very, you know, patchy. I use the general histories of Africa, GHA, which was these 10 volumes compiled by UNESCO at the behest of African leaders.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, absolutely. I mean, in 1899, Rwanda became a German colony, and then after Germany was defeated in the First World War, it was given to the Belgians. And both under the Germans and then afterwards under the Belgians, they favored the Tutsis. But, you know, there were no ethnic differences. You could have a brother who was a Tutsie and a brother who was a Hutu. It was more an economic class designation, the Tutsis were the cattle owners and so on. But the fact that the Hutus were used almost as slave labor with the Tutsis as overseers, you know, really created the problems that we saw that came to a head finally in 1994.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that's the one thing that I think unifies the whole continent. You know, when Nelson Mandela was released in February 1991, was it 1990 or 91, one or the other? One of the first countries he visited was Algeria to thank them for their support during the apartheid struggle. You know, from the bottom south of Africa, all the way to the northern tip. So there is that unity really within the continent, I think.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sorry to digress here slightly, but a lot of people say, well, can you talk about the continent of Africa as a whole? I would say that the experience of colonialism really does unify the continent. And people say, well, Ethiopia was never colonized and look at it. It's had a lot of civil strife, it's had a lot of food insecurity. Liberia also a country created for the emancipated African Americans. That's been relatively impoverished, had the terrible violence in the 90s and so on. So it's nothing to do with colonialism. I mean, Liberia didn't really enjoy sovereignty as such. It was very much in hock to corporate interests like Firestone. And Ethiopia had a lot of struggles, a lot of fights and wars with the British and the Italians. It was occupied for five years under the Italians.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was relatively peaceful protest, and it's not really had. I mean, when Jerry Rawlings came to power in the 70s, some generals and judges were executed. But, you know, by and large, compared to something like the Algerian War in the 90s when it was a very vicious war between the National Islamic Front, the Islamic Salvation Front and others, it became, and the security forces, it was very, very, vicious tens and tens of thousands of people were killed. So those countries that gained their independence in a violent way, because they learned that violence was the language of political discourse, you had to fight in order to get your freedom. So that is one thing that's very, very evident.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the north of Africa being by far the worst southern Africa obviously South Africa didn't really get black majority rule until very recently 30 years ago in 1994 and those countries that became independent through violent means continued on a violent trajectory.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For the British, and then found that he had nothing, so he became very embittered by that. So yes, it stiffened the resolve of the nationalists, those two wars. They really did. It started with the First World War and then with the Second World War. And there were other things happening in the world, you know, India, the jewel in the crown of the empire got its independence in 1947, wasn't it? Various other things. America became fairly anti-imperialist and so on. But I think that what is interesting about the independent struggle for independence is actually it has to be said that most of Africa gained its independence relatively peacefully through campaigns of civil disobedience and obviously protests and so on, but there were some countries that really experienced the most awful violence.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. I mean, people like David Onus Shogu have written very well about the role of British soldiers in Africans in World War I or Black Britons, World War I and World War II. So, I mean, I really look at Africa. I don't look at outside of Africa. But what happened was that in both wars, not only Africans have fought with the British but also Senegalese who'd fought with the French, you know, they'd fought side by side with their fellow white European soldiers. And then when they went back to say, for example, Kenya, the white soldiers were rewarded with lots of land and the British soldiers, the African soldiers were given nothing. including Barack Obama's grandfather who became a member of the Mau Mau because he had fought in the war.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I think you could say, yeah, female education is a family business in a way. And so I grew up with these very powerful female role models thanks to my great-grandfather. So he was given an OBE, in fact, by the Governor General in 1949, and he said, oh, well, tell Mr. Churchill, I fought against him in the Battle of Omderman, but I won't hold that against him. And he took it. I mean, and that's when the British avenged the death of Gordon, and it became a British colony.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And naming countries and divvying it up. So his victory against Gordon in 1885 came at a very critical time in Africa's history. And that's why I decided to include him. But yes, he was a remarkable man. He died in 1954 at the age of in his mid-90s. But he was also well known because he was the pioneer of female education in Sudan. So at the turn of the last century, once the Brits were there, he decided he wanted to see girls educated up until then there were only schools for boys.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because of the influence of the Arabs, the arrival of the Arabs over a certain number of centuries, my mother tongue is Arabic, and so he wrote in Arabic. And it's the only Sudanese account of that particular war. So I mention him because he was a follower of the Mahdi. And it was a very, very significant victory in 1885, you know, the Battle of Khartoum, the siege of Khartoum when General Charles Gordon was defeated, and it was seen as a huge, you know, the victory reverberated around Africa because there was a lot of nationalism by then. Because until 1870, funnily enough, most of Africa was nominally, at least in African hands, but when you had the Berlin Conference of 1884, 85, that's when the European powers started, you know, just arbitrary lines.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I seem a bit biased again here, didn't I? I put it in the footnotes that he was my great-grandfather. Look, so he Sheikh Babikad Badri was the reason I put him in in one of the later chapters is he fought with the Mahdi against General Gordon and it is the only written account because he wrote in Arabic obviously the northern Sudanese like me.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Said, bring us the golden stool. It was nowhere to be found. Some accounts say a fake one was presented to them. So even though she'd been defeated, the symbol, this spirit, the soul of the Asanti kingdom still lived because of her. But sadly, she was sent into exile in the Seychelles with King Prempe I, who was already there, and she died in 1920. But, you know, when Kwame Nkrumah became the first president of a newly independent Ghana, it was the Gold Coast, he called it Ghana, in 1957. He made YA a Santiwa, although she was a Santi and he wasn't a Santi, but he made her a symbol for the whole nation of Ghana. She featured on postage stamps. There's a Yara Santiwa secondary school for girls which tries to inspire young women in Ghana. So she's become a real national icon for all Ghanaians. Of whether they're Asanti or not.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“By those in those days was fairly elderly, and she fought very valiantly against the British and it was months long fight. It's known as the Yah Assantiwa War in Ghana, but in Britain it's called the War of the Golden Stool because the Golden Stool is what the kings of the Asanti, the Asantahini, the King of Kings, is not enthroned, he's installed on this golden stool, which when the kingdom was founded in the early seventeen hundreds, the people of Asanti were told if this golden stool is ever, if you're ever defeated and the stool is taken away, it's the spirit of the Assanti and your kingdom will just perish. So even though Yat Asanti Wa was defeated in the end in that war, she was one step ahead because she took the golden stool and got people to hide it in a forest. And so when the British evicted...”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She's an incredible figure, isn't she? Yeah, she was. So, yeah, was a member of the Asanti royal family in what is today Ghana. And so she was born around the mid-19th century. And when the Brits, when the British went in and defeated the Asanti in 1879, I think anyway, their first foray, she was so affronted by this and admonished the men because they were kind of like, okay, we give up. And she said, how could you, you men of Vassanti, where's your courage? And she said, you know, you've got to fight, otherwise you can swap your loincloths for my undergarments. So she managed to raise an army of 20,000 and got her rifle and said, I've not loaded this gun for nothing and actually was seen fighting. She was in her late 60s.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Other tombs, and so it hadn't been plundered like the others. But yes, his fame far outstrips his historic significance. I mean, he was just a footnote really in ancient Egyptian history. Queen Hatshipsut is much more significant. But anyway.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, what was it? Very, very small. I mean, you know, if you say to most people, name me an African king, they'll usually say Tutin Carmen, and then they'd be hard-pressed to give him a date, and then they'd probably say, but was he really African? So, you know, that, I think, is generally speaking, what most people would say. But yeah, I mean, he became king at nine. And the only significant thing about him was his father, King Akhenaten, had attacked ancient Egyptians ways of religion. Some people claimed that his father, Hinaten, was the first monotheist. So the court was very relieved when Akhinaten died in Tutin Karm and came on the throne. And because he was so young, he was malleable so they could resort, you know, revert to their old ways of worship. And then he died in his late teens. And that was it, really. His tomb was found because it was buried behind.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or manga suitibuta lazy, who, despite his checkered past, the late prince of the Zulus, his mother, Princess Umgogo, was a very famous oral historian in the Zulu culture. So, you know, he gave me their account of”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it just shows you obviously accounts were slanted at the Romans wrote about her and Shakespeare for his anti-nucleopatra play also used these as their sources but it does just show you the question of whose history is it and that's very pervasive throughout the whole book is whose history is it you know later on when I look at southern Africa there's King Shaka of the Zulus you know he if you read stuff about him by a lot of Western historians he's depicted as this you know despot really bloodthirsty you know is one account of him killing a woman who was heavily pregnant and you know slitting open her stomach and so on you talk to Zulu historians like Tulay Simpson I think he was Cambridge University educated too and you know he'll say to you well you know we've got a slightly different account”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Always killing one another, yes, including Cleopatra was quite bloodthirsty herself. But this idea of the seductors, as Bahir says to me, you know, the busts and the kind of, you know, reliefs that we have of her show that she wasn't what you would describe as a conventional beauty is what she said, or whatever a conventional beauty is.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, you know, Dr. Bahio Shaheen at Alexandria University, who I was talking to about Cleopatra, was giving me a lot of my information. You know, she was a great scholar, she was fluent in ten languages. She was one of the few in the Ptolemies. They were the Ptolemies by then in the Ptolemaic dynasty who actually wrote and spoke ancient Egyptian fluently. She was, you know, very well briefed and studied geography and mathematics and science and surrounded herself with intellectuals. I mean, I have to say that Ptolemies were a particularly bloodthirsty lot. Oh, yes.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, there was Egypt, Romania, and so on, you know, but it's always been the Romans were interested in Egypt and its art and so on. But I think, yes, this idea has persisted. And I think that we need to redefine what we mean by an African. It's not that the ancient Egyptians or the Egyptians even today. And of course they mix with the Arabs once the Arabs conquered Egypt in the 640s common era. But the ancient Egyptians at various times the pharaohs would have had different appearances. So we have to redefine what we think of as an African. I mean, you know, we shouldn't have this idea of what an African looks like or how they should sound and so on.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, very much part of Africa, not the Mediterranean coast. So, this idea that Egypt is something separate is something that I think for me is not right. Ancient Egypt was and always will be part of African history.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“portray the party of Cleopatra, Cleopatra, it's true, was a Greek Macedonian origins and wouldn't have looked like Adele James. So I think there is a bit of resistance, I think even to this day, for various reasons, which I delve into, to sort of see ancient Egypt as apart from the rest of Africa. And I don't buy that, really, because ancient Egypt has always been part of Africa. And if you visit it, you'll see that its greatest monuments apart from the pyramids, Karnak, the Valley of the Kings and so on, very far south, a thousand kilometers from the Mediterranean coast, you know, going towards the border with Egypt. That's where they buried themselves, the valley of the kings, that's where the Karnak temple is in modern-day Luxor. These Abu Simbel is practically on the North Sudanese Egyptian border.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Black kings and queens had this thriving civilization and it became very, very important for the intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance to assert themselves and say, look, you know, we had this great civilizations. It's led to an argument between them and the Egyptians, as we saw last year when Adele James, the black British actress, was cast by Jada Pinkett-Smith as Cleopatra. And they said, how could you have somebody of dual heritage?”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, completely. So, Sudan obviously borders Egypt, and I think there has been a tendency in the ancient world and probably also in the modern era where it's been eclipsed by its more glittering northern neighbor, ancient Egypt. But Dr. Shadia Taha, the Sudanese archaeologist who is actually teaching currently at Cambridge University, you know, tells me that the two cultures learned from each other. It wasn't just, you know, Sudan wasn't just an offshoot in northern Sudan of what was going on in ancient Egypt. And also, you know, when the kings of Kush governed”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I've seen Queen Amani renance and Mani Shahito's pyramid is absolutely in the royal city of Merui. I mean, Sudan has got a thousand pyramids. There are about 100 in Egypt. The ones in Sudan are much smaller, and they didn't always bury inside the pyramid. They bury in a tomb adjacent to the pyramid. About 250 have preserved their superstructure. The others you can just see the basic remnants on the ground. But yeah, that many pyramids, and they're still quite a good collection of them that you can see.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Women were very much in the vanguard of those protests, and they were dubbed Kandakas. So you see then how the ancient name of the ancient queens of northern Sudan became revived in this revolution.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So they got what Marvelous Kings like to hardco and so on. To hardco actually features in the Bible, named as a king of Ethiopia, which is a bit of a misnomer because there's a modern-day country called Ethiopia, but this is really northern Sudan always what became Sudan. It was in that part. It wasn't in the Ethiopian bit. And the Queens of Kush, unlike many women in ancient societies, had a very powerful role to play, like Queen Amani Rens, who fought the Romans in 30 BCE because by now the Romans were governing Egypt and she actually went into battle with her sons and lost an eye fighting the Romans and forced them in the end to sign a peace treaty with them in 22 BCE. And they were known as Kandakas. And when we saw the revolution in Sudan in April 2019 to remove Amur al-Bashir from power,”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So many. I mean, look, I was born in the Sudan, although I've lived in England since I was two years of age, so you forgive me for a bit of bias. So I suppose I would choose the kings of Kush and the queens of Kush. And Kush was a kingdom in ancient Sudan various stages. But the one I focus on is in the period of the 8th and 7th century BCE before Common Era, when the kings of Kush were really a regional superpower, not only in Africa, part of Africa that they were in, which of course borders Egypt, they governed Egypt with the best part of a century, but they were also a power in Asia and protected the princes of Biblos and King Hezaikah of Judea and so on. So I think I liked the kings of Kush because people don't really know about this kingdom and it was really such a significant one.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She did, yeah. I mean, she stood about a meat at all and she, but she looked more ape-like than modern humans, but she would have sharpened tools. She was bipedal, by that we mean she walked on two legs. She wasn't habitually bipedal, but she would have used sharpened twigs to go into termites, nests and to kill small animals, and she would have foraged and so on. And she would have slept in a tree for safety, so it was perhaps a bit ironic that peril lay in her refuge because she probably died falling off a tree.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, I did. And thank you, Kate, for calling her Dinkanesh first before Lucy, because that's how she's referred to in Ethiopia. Amharic name. Yeah, I mean, I hate to disappoint people if you do go to the National Museum in Addis Ababa, you'll see a kind of skeleton because that's what was so remarkable about Lucy. 40% of her skeleton was found, which is quite a lot. But it's just a replica because the real bones are kept under lock and key in a special climatically controlled room. But I was taken, I even touched her bones. Yeah, I know. So Lucy lived about 3.2 million years ago. And in fact, she's not actually, we didn't descend from her line, but she is sort of part of our common lineage. And she's just captured everybody's imagination, I think, as the song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was playing on the camp radio when she was discovered in Harar in eastern Ethiopia.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, absolutely. Broadly speaking, modern humans really were formed as we are today about 200,000 years ago by about 90,000 years ago we had inhabited all of Africa. We're about a million people by then living in about communities of about 150. And then, as I said, between 60,000 to 90,000 years ago, people started to migrate from the continent of Africa first to the Arabian Peninsula and then to Europe and Asia, where they encountered other hominins, people like Neanderthals and so on, which is why Eurasians still have some To the east of Africa, although now there is growing evidence that maybe people developed in different parts of Africa at the same time, particularly in the north.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As part of the family of humankind and that they are part of it and in some way, I know it sounds a bit pathetic, but sort of try to build bridges and to try to counter the notion of racism and so on that we see today.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. I mean, you know, I wanted to start the book there. I thought about it, and anybody who picks up might think, you know, why has she started about paleontologists and that kind of thing? But I just really did want to impress upon everybody that this is a book for everybody because, you know, go back, well, I mean, Homo sapiens sapiens, that's us modern humans, started leaving the continent of Africa between 90 to 60,000 years ago, which is not really that long ago. And, you know, up until between 8,000 to 12,000 years ago, everybody was dark-skinned, which is not really that long ago either, you know, racial differences only, physical features only changed, hair, color, irises and so on as people acclimatized to their new habitats. So I wanted to start it there because I just thought I want everybody to really see”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A bit of denial. I mean, yeah, you know, everybody here, you're either African or African descent or you're an African export. So, you know, everybody is. There is a bit of pushback. I mean, I think I mentioned in the book the most prominent example was Peking man who was discovered in 1929, a skull and the Chinese paleontologists were very, very keen to try to show that the Chinese people were descended from Peking man or human beings, Homo sapiens sapiens were descended from this chap in China. And they only abandoned these efforts in this century, you know, quite early on. And then, of course, you've got some of the conservative creationist Christians in the Deep South, in America who perish the thought that they emerged from Africa. But I think scientifically the debate is settled. Human beings did emerge from Africa of that there's no question.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, I mean, I wanted to really experience Africa's history because for me, history doesn't just explain the past. It also informs the present and shapes the future. And I really wanted to see for myself the relics of that history. I mean, I don't think we should judge history by who builds the best monuments or whatever, but there are monuments to see, you know, Great Zimbabwe built in the 11th century, which is the largest sprawling stone complex in outside ancient Egypt, you know, remarkable. People didn't believe it could have been built by the Africans. So there is so much to see. I mean, it's such a beautiful continent. And so, yeah, I wanted to try to do it justice.”
2024-12-22 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT