Leyla Reynolds
Ririkumutima, Makobo Modjadji VI, Labotsibeni Mdluli, Abla Pokou... Do any of these names sound familiar to you? They didn’t to us, prior to getting our hands on historian Paula Akpan’s debut book, When We Ruled.
Akpan’s non-fiction puts to paper many long-preserved local histories of pivotal African figures. Through a rigorous process of interviewing local storytellers and experts, Akpan situates a groundbreaking conversation about power, loss, history, and the the importance of telling these stories across the diaspora and beyond.
Naked Politics: The first thing that struck us about your book was the dedication, which reads, "For Elianne Andam, for Shakia Ama Bonsu Asamoah and for the numberless Black women and girls taken from us too soon".
What did it mean for you to include this dedication in relation to the themes of the book?
Paula Akpan: For me, so much of history work involves encountering loss: the loss of names and locations, the loss of languages, tongues and dialects, the loss of physical source material, the loss of Black life. As much as this is a book about queens and warriors, it's also about power and loss. I wanted to foreground the losses that have shaped the book, and continue to shape me: Elianne, a 15 year old schoolgirl who was stabbed in Sept 2023 about 20 minutes away from my house because a teenage boy couldn't accept a break up, and Shakia, one of my brilliant interviewees for the book who unexpectedly passed away at 31 in June 2023.
Naked Politics: We know you have a background as a historian. What was your journey into this particular area of history?
Paula Akpan: Historicising Black life has always been core to my work and how I make sense of the world, even when I was a fresh-faced journalist. I care about how Black people make ourselves legible to one another, to our descendants and generations to come. So, when my publisher approached me with this idea, I thought it could be a really exciting way of engaging figures who are either lionized or feel relatively unknown to those of us in the diaspora, while also giving insight into the societies they ruled over.
Naked Politics: Can you tell us about the experience of taking these histories down? How did you go about planning your 2 month long trip around Africa, and how did you select the countries you were going to go to?
Paula Akpan: I did a lot of research into different African women and genderqueer rulers, going off the source material I could source and heritage centres and museums that I could visit, for example. I whittled the list down to twelve (wish I could've done more but no one wants to read a book that big and I'm not strong enough to write it!) and then selected countries based on the regions they ruled over. I researched institutions, local experts and organisations and potential interviewees. However, you can only plan so much! A lot of the people and places I was able to visit across my trip were through word-of-mouth and recommendations I was given while travelling.
In full, I travelled to Côte d’Ivoire (Abidjan), Bénin (Abomey, Cotonou), Ghana (Kumasi), Nigeria (Ile-Ife, Ibadan), Angola (Luanda), South Africa (Polokwane in Limpopo, Durban), Madagascar (Antananarivo), eSwatini (Manzini), Rwanda (Burera, Kigali), Burundi (Bujumbura, Gitega). I unfortunately couldn't travel to Ethiopia because of the unrest that has continued since (and preceding) the Tigrayan Genocide.
Naked Politics: Something we noticed when reading was your clarity in the acknowledgement and deconstruction colonial gender binaries that were brought into the continent, often by Christian missionaries - such as in your reference to Kimbandas (people assigned male at birth who lived as women) & Nzinga of Ndongo and Matamba (modern day Angola) who defied gender norms.
Why are these stories of ongoing significance right now?
Paula Akpan: So much of what we're told about our trans siblings is revisionist and ahistorical, particularly when bigots argue that their existence is new or novel. How can it be when people have been living fluidly or presenting as different genders for centuries? Plus, these are just the communities we have traces of today. How Njinga chose to present themselves - at times as a 'queen', other times insisting on being referred to as 'king' - is part of their history, as is their society which included kimbandas. These are all African histories.
Naked Politics: You mention Benin in particular and the Kingdom’s only woman ruler, Tassi Hangbé, whose existence is debated by scholars internationally to this day. Did you find that speaking to other scholars on the topic of African women rulers, you were met with skepticism?
Paula Akpan: Great question. In colonial sources, you find a lot of question marks around figures like Hangbe and Muhumusa, for example. However, while researching in Benin and Rwanda respectively, I was only met with surety for local historians and storytellers, as well as people I was meeting in taxis, at hotels, and on tours. These rulers existed, and while you might not find them in written documents, they are sustained through the spoken word, sculpture, dance, the movements they were integral to, the buildings erected in their honour and so much more. By the time I returned to London, it was laughable that colonial source material had ever ushered in such doubt.
Naked Politics: Teachers and academics alike have criticised a narrowing eurocentrism of curriculums over the years across the humanities. What action, if any, would you like to see this government or other grassroots organisations take in combating the erasure of black women-led stories?
Paula Akpan: I don't think I'm the best person for this question! I just have nothing to say re. the political theatre of it all. I would just say to tap into grassroots initiatives that are doing such incredible work led by Black creatives like House of Dread, WAYWAAD Collective, DTA (Decolonising the Archive) and Black Curatorial.
Naked Politics: What do you hope readers will take away from this book?
Paula Akpan: I hope they'll question every colonial source they encounter and disassemble every colonial lie they hear.
When We Ruled publishes with Trapeze on 8th May and is available to pre-order now.