Exclusive Interview with Author Luke Pepera
Merchants, rulers, navigators and diplomats – Africa and its peoples. Image: Rachel Sloan Photography
The colonial era can dominate our thinking about Africa’s past. Luke Pepera’s book Motherland presents a much greater reality. It’s the story of humanity’s birthplace, a continent which gave rise to a multitude of kingdoms and peoples, and where today’s travellers experience rich, varied and compelling cultures and identities.
I’m grateful that the Wigtown Book Festival has invited me to this year’s event and excited to talk to attendees about my book Motherland.
In essence, Motherland is an explanation of what it means to be African. For most people, the Transatlantic Slave Trade and colonialism are the events that loom largest in Africa’s history. As such, their view of this history is restricted to the most recent five hundred years encompassing these events and they see Africans primarily as their victims.
But archaeological, linguistic and genetic evidence demonstrates emphatically that Africa is the continent that human beings have inhabited the longest. Homo sapiens emerged some 200,000 years ago in Ethiopia and remained solely in Africa for a further 100,000 years. The tail of Africa’s history extends back all the way to the beginning of our species. Of course, by the time of the Romans, William the Conqueror and the Tudors, notable events, movements and accomplishments had occurred on the continent.
One of the world's oldest continuously Christian states
Ethiopia adopted Christianity in the fourth century AD, making it one of the world’s oldest continuously Christian states. Ethiopian sailors travelled as far as India where they exchanged wine for brass lamps. The rulers of the eighth-century kingdom of Ghana (which was once in Mauritania, in West Africa) adopted Islam only about 100 years after it was founded. In the twelfth-century Mali empire, which superseded Ghana, the nobles continued the practice, aiding their society’s global influence. In 1324 AD, a Mali emperor called Mansa Musa travelled to the Muslim holy city of Mecca (in today’s Saudi Arabia) and spent so much gold on the way that he disrupted the economies of Africa, Asia and even Europe, two-thirds of whose gold originated in West Africa.
In the fifteenth century, Swahili diplomats sailed to China’s Ming Dynasty court. Akin to the Three Wise Men, they bore gifts of frankincense, gold and, instead of myrrh, ivory. Just as West Africa was the medieval world’s primary source of gold, which was used to mint coins in almost every continent, East Africa was its primary source of ivory that French, Indian and Chinese artisans carved into religious sculptures, dagger hilts and sword scabbards. A king of the Swahili city-state of Malindi, in today’s Kenya, made the same voyage to China as the diplomats, but died in the south-east of the country before he reached the court. China’s emperor had him buried with ceremony and decreed that every year his grave be given a sacrifice.
Rulers, navigators and diplomats
Beyond victims of slavery and colonialism, Africans are merchants, rulers, navigators and diplomats. To grow up in, travel round and speak to those in Africa today is to be exposed to yet other parts of Africans’ rich heritage that makes up their multifaceted identity.
Recording and telling histories orally is a unique aspect of many African cultures. So, too, is a past that is a deliberate blend of myth and factual events that gives the clearest picture of a culture’s values, beliefs and practices. In Africa, the dead continue to live as spirits that inhabit a world connected to our own. Various rituals enable us to communicate with and honour them. In treating ailments, African doctors prescribe remedies that soothe not just the body, but the mind and even the spirit, too.
I look forward to sharing the details of some of these stories with the audience at Wigtown, hopefully introducing a more filled-out picture of African history, culture and identity!
The PDF of the 2025 Wigtown Book Festival programme can be downloaded here, or book your tickets online.