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Basil Davidson: Mythologist of modern Africa

Now about ninety, with his fangs seemingly drawn, the old man spends his days peacefully pottering in an English garden. But Basil Davidson represents the most willful single-handed effort to mythologise African history, and his numerous books have misled millions on a continental scale.

Barbaric kingdoms were romanticised, tyrants whitewashed, and cruel and bloodthirsty customs expunged (or simply ignored) in order to impress well-meaning western middle-classes who wanted to believe only the best about the cultures of the new, free, ‘liberated’ African states.

the romantic adventurer
Beginning as a romantic adventurer, Davidson was smuggled into Yugoslavia during World War II by the SOE (the Special Operations Executive run by the British Government). His boss was James Klugman, head of Special Ops Balkan operations at Bari, and a life-long communist and Cambridge contemporary of Kim Philby and his friends.

After the war Davidson resumed his pre-war career in journalism and worked for various national papers. He also produced his own pamphlets published by the Union of Democratic Control, a small Leftist group inherited from his father. He was available as a free-lancer for various “progressive” causes ranging from that of newly-established People’s China to the tiny anti-Salazar Portuguese Opposition in exile.

Strangely, however, considering what should have counted as his worthy and reputable Left-wing writing, the International Department of the British Communist Party warned party-members against trusting Davidson, telling them he was a Colonial Office agent. This was in the early 1950s, a time when London was seething with numerous groups of African exiles agitating for independence.

propaganda: the true vocation
It was among these exiles that Davidson discovered his true vocation. With the independence of a growing number of African states his books entered the remunerative field of required reading for students of African History on campuses throughout the world. Davidson found himself in constant demand as a lecturer, and apotheosis was reached when the BBC commissioned him to direct a highly successful TV series of doubtful scholarship on African history.

Fame and fortune came not just in the West. There were vastly greater rewards from translations in the communist world. In the Soviet Union and its satellites editions of politically acceptable works reached astronomical figures by Western standards.

There was however a royalty problem. The USSR and its vassals were not signatories to international copyright agreements and hence under no compulsion to pay royalties. Any ingenuous Western author who imagined he would automatically receive them soon realized he would have to toe the line. Davidson was perfectly aware of the constraints placed upon him. In his case they were twofold. He had to satisfy not only his communist publishers, but also his African supporters. It was probably the second who first gave him the idea of embroidering history to provide an inspiring vision of the African past.

Davidson first came into contact with African folklore in the halcyon days of négritude. Its most talented exponents were to be found in a circle around the Paris magazine Présence Africaine. One of these was the Angolan Mário de Andrade, a founder of the MPLA, (Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola, or People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola) the political party which was to rule Angola after independence a quarter of a century later.

Andrade held the highly original view that Angola, at its time of first contact with the Portuguese in the late fifteenth century, enjoyed a level of civilization equivalent to that of eighteenth-century Europe. Davidson lapped this fantasy up and proceeded to direct his research and writing towards an extravagant eulogy of pre-colonial African kingdoms, their technology, and their philosophy. This approach pleased not only Mário de Andrade but also the generality of African liberationists in exile. ...
Read entire article at Gerald Vouga in Culture Cult