Njinga of Angola: Africa’s Warrior Queen

"There is a rich scholarship on male leaders in African history. We know a lot about kings and chiefs who ruled in different parts of the continent. In Njinga of Angola , Linda Heywood reconstructs the biography of a woman who ruled over Ndongo and Matamba during the 17th century. Heywood reconstructs Njinga’s life, from her birth to her death. It’s incredible to imagine that we have rich information about a 17th-century African woman who achieved immense political and economic power. As Heywood shows, there was nothing that prevented women from achieving political leadership. In fact, Njinga was quite skilled in diplomacy and warfare, attracting the attention of foreign merchants and missionaries. Heywood combined colonial records, missionary accounts and even letters signed by Njinga in her study. Njinga is remembered today as an important historical figure both in Angola and in the diaspora. In many ways, Heywood problematizes the romantic memory of Njinga as an early anti-colonial figure, a proto-nationalist heroine. Heywood shows that Nijinga was a ruler of the 17th century, involved in slave raids and enslavement. Njinga’s concerns were related to her political survival, the protection of her relatives, and the economic gain of her elite. It’s a very powerful book, showing how one individual can transform a society. Heywood examines gender identity, woman’s access to political leadership, and commercial skills. It is a very important and accessible book on 17th-century Angola."

"Yes, so Linda Heywood is an African American academic. I think it’s important to include the work of the African diaspora, be they in the Caribbean, Latin America, North America or Britain. This all comes under the banner of Africans telling their own history, even if Linda Heywood is disconnected from the continent of her ancestors. It’s important to include that diaspora voice, and they bring something interesting to discussions about African history because they have the benefit of seeing both sides, or being able to relate the history of her ancestors in a way that a Western audience will understand. So I think she’s a very important voice, along with all the fine African scholars in Western universities. Queen Njinga was born in 1583 and died in 1663. She was Queen of the Ndongo kingdom, a vassal state of the kingdom of Kongo —one of the main African empires, established in the 1300s. Njinga is a very good example of strong African female leadership. Her name, in the local language, means ‘to twist’. She was born with the umbilical cord around her neck, which denoted that she was going to be a great leader, a great person. Her father, the king of Ndongo, saw that amongst his children she was the most able and skilled. Although she had a brother who was the heir, he would take her to meetings with elders, judicial occasions, and so on. So she learned statecraft, and she was also a very effective soldier and fighter. She was an exceptional person. When her brother was king—as Heywood relates in the book—Njinga was sent by her brother to Luanda, about 250 kilometres away from their capital Kabasa. She went in all her finery. And when she arrived in Luanda, the Portuguese governor of Luanda told her to sit on the floor. He was sitting in this beautiful chair, embossed velvet and gilt. She refused to sit on the floor, as obviously this would show a subordinate status—so she commanded her tallest female attendant to go on all fours, and she sat on her back. After her brother killed himself, she killed his son and became queen. So she was ruthless. She had said to the governor of Luanda: Don’t enslave our people, we’ll give you enslaved people from our enemies. So the elites were involved in slave trading. The Portuguese turned against her and she outwitted them every which way, and died a peaceful death in her early eighties with her crown on her head. She became a Catholic—was baptized—but she also maintained her own traditional beliefs. So it harks back to what we talked about with Chinua Achebe’s book; even nominally African Christians, to this day, will indigenize their own beliefs into Christianity. They find their own form of Christianity by marrying them. I saw this all over Africa. And the Achebe book is so good because it shows this rejection was not wholesale. Njinga is a very good example of that also. It’s a very thick book, with a lot of sources. The Portuguese wrote about Queen Njinga a great deal. But what Linda does—which is what most African and African diaspora historians do—is also rely on oral tradition, and what that tells us about Queen Njinga. That’s very important too. She pieces together the life of this remarkable, as Heywood calls her, warrior queen. It shows how, as the Europeans began encroaching on African land, it’s not as though the Africans took it lying down. They resisted at every turn. They lost, in the end, because of the superior firepower of the Europeans, but they resisted. Njinga’s story is one of resistance and strong leadership. Jada Pinkett Smith, the wife of Will Smith, produced a TV documentary series based on Queen Njinga . I’m pretty sure she used Linda Heywood’s book as part of her source material . And that shows you how Linda being African American is very very important, because it helps popularise African history and put it out into the mainstream, to the point where a member of the Hollywood aristocracy wants to make a series about it. As a result of Linda’s book and the TV series, many more people will have heard about this strong African queen. You know, we started off with people like David Olusoga writing about Black Britons. That started making people aware of African stories. There was the controversy around the Coulson statue, the Black Lives Matter movement, I think all these things do represent a sea change. Restitution is a very current debate. Dipo Faloyin talks about that in his book—how much British institutions benefitted from the profits of slavery. All of this has come together to put the focus on the African diaspora. In my book, I look at something different—which is African history in Africa. For me, the pre-colonial era is very important. To say: Actually, Africa is part of the global story. You should know about African history, and it’s not all about colonialism and slavery. It’s not all about suffering. While Europe was being decimated by the Black Death, these mighty civilisations were flourishing in Africa. Now everybody thinks Sudan is just a conflict-ridden country with nothing good coming out of it, but hundreds of years before the common era it was a regional superpower. My additional point is that it shouldn’t be left to the outsiders to tell that story, because they will never tell it properly. You know that old African proverb? ‘When the lions have historians, the hunters will cease to be heroes.’ That’s true in many ways. And I’ve been very heartened by the response to my project. Aside from ancient Egypt , I don’t think there’s much African history on schoolkids’ curriculums. And that’s important—because Africans are not only the descendants of slaves, we are much more than that. We have a fine history, and I think that’s very important."