Who’s telling stories?

The victor wields the pen — and, eventually, the textbook [View this email in your browser]( June 2, 2021 [Mail & Guardian]( [Mail & Guardian]( [Twitter]( [Facebook]( [Instagram]( [YouTube]( Hi there, History, as we all know, is written by the victors. Take, for example, war-time British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. What we remember from school is the great orator, ever ready with the zingers, and the overarching notion that if it weren’t for him, and him alone, perhaps this newsletter would be in German. Nothing can be allowed to complicate, let alone tarnish, the (inter)national myth of a flawless hero: an intellectual titan who “saved our civilisation”, as current Prime Minister Boris Johnson once claimed, or “humanity as a whole”, as another former prime minister, David Cameron did. Make an uncomfortable [observation about his views on white supremacy]( and the likes of Piers Morgan will whinge on cue. Britain entered the Second World War, after all, because it faced an existential threat — and not primarily because it disagreed with Nazi ideology. The victor wields the pen — and, eventually, the textbook. How often have you heard the story of the day Churchill was lashed across the face by a young suffragette wielding a whip? Here’s a news report from The Guardian of November 1909: Mr Winston Churchill was the victim of a disgraceful outrage by a militant suffragist at Bristol on Saturday, when a woman, said to be Miss Theresa Garnett, of Leeds, broke through a cordon of police on the railway station platform and struck Mr Churchill with a dog-whip. She aimed the first blow at his head, the lash cutting his face. Mr Churchill seized her and was able to secure the whip after a struggle. The police then took the woman into custody. That’s one of the milder, even funnier, points of Churchill’s life that has been forgotten through time. The dominant culture gets to record and recount history as it sees fit. This is evidenced in a roundabout way by Timbuktu Global, a clothing company based in the north of England. It is owned by two white people with no obvious connection to Nigeria or the Yoruba ethnic group, yet somehow they managed to trademark the word Yoruba. In addition, they do not appear to have any connection, or even knowledge of, Timbuktu — claiming on their website that the ancient Malian city is “a fictional location, which literally means ‘the middle of nowhere’”. You’ve got to wonder what they’re being taught in British schools, given the role of imperialism in the making of what is present-day Nigeria. In this week’s issue of [The Continent]( we follow the story of Gbemisola Isimi who started CultureTree, a Yoruba language academy for the children of Nigerian expatriates; and began posting teaching videos on YouTube. In London, home to a sizeable Nigerian community, her business took off. One programme, Yoruba Stars, was particularly successful. Like all smart business owners, she decided to trademark the name “Yoruba Stars” so that no one else could use it. She filed a request with the UK’s Intellectual Property Office, and waited several months to hear back. Her request was denied. Another company had already trademarked the word “Yoruba” in Britain, and it had opposed her application. [Timbuktu Global said she needed to pay]( if she wanted to use the word in her business. Last week, Isimi took to social media to raise the alarm. “I thought it was really strange that a company would be allowed to trademark the word ‘Yoruba’, a tribe and language of millions of people!” she tweeted. “Let’s all call out @timbuktuglobal on this daylight robbery! Today it’s Yoruba, tomorrow it could be Igbo, Swahili or even the word AFRICA! I intend to fight this with everything in me!” Her tweets went viral. Within days, the flood of negative publicity had forced Timbuktu Global to surrender the trademark and delete its social media accounts and website. Isimi may have won this battle, but this is not the first or last time that intellectual property laws have allowed Western individuals or companies to lay claim to Africa’s cultural, linguistic and even culinary heritage. A few of the most egregious incidents: - In 2003, in successful patent applications in the Netherlands and the US, a man named Jan Roosjen claimed to have “invented” teff flour and all associated food products — including injera, Ethiopia’s staple food, which has been consumed in the Horn of Africa for millennia. - Rooibos, the herbal tea, is grown only in a very specific area of South Africa — and has been done so for hundreds of years. In 1994, an American company registered “Rooibos” as a trademark in the US — and demanded that South African companies pay it to use the name. - After the success of The Lion King, the Walt Disney corporation trademarked an entire Kiswahili phrase: Hakuna matata (meaning, as Timon and Pumbaa tell us in the movie, “no worries”). In a quick search of the World Intellectual Property Organisation’s database, The Continent discovered several other examples of Western brands that have trademarked African names, symbols and cultural references. Often these associations reinforce negative stereotypes, or simply rely on an African name as a kind of shorthand for “exotic” or “other”. In Canada a trademark for “Zanzibar” is owned by Toronto’s oldest strip club, the Zanzibar Club. In the US, the phrase “Zulu Warrior” is registered to a company that makes a herbal remedy for erectile dysfunction, and whose logo features an image of a scantily clad soldier clutching a very upright spear. These examples raise difficult questions about the effectiveness and the fairness of Western intellectual property regimes. It also speaks to how we must guard against the rampant commodification and hijacking of our histories and cultures. That’s why [The Continent]( is important. It’s free. It offers reliable news from a continental perspective, taking advantage of the same viral networks used to such disturbing effect by disseminators of disinformation. To get your copy, send us a WhatsApp or Signal message on +27 73 805 6068. Don’t forget to save the number. If WhatsApp is not your thing, send an email to TheContinent@mg.co.za and you will be added to the mailing list. Yours in solidarity, Kiri Rupiah & Luke Feltham [Subscribe now]( Enjoy The Ampersand? Share it with your friends [Share]( [Share]( [Tweet]( [Tweet]( [Forward]( [Forward]( [Share]( [Share]( Copyright © 2021 Mail & Guardian Media LTD, All rights reserved. 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