When We Ruled: The Rise and Fall of Twelve African Queens and Warriors

Paula Akpan

In When We Ruled, historian Paula Akpan takes us into the worlds of twelve powerful African queens and warriors, following their stories and how they came to rule and influence the futures of their people. With reigns spanning from pre-colonial Nigeria to the rich lands of Rwanda, and from Ancient Benin to apartheid South Africa, these rulers shed new light on gender politics in these regions, showing how women were celebrated and revered before colonising powers took hold, and continued to be long after. When we Ruled is out now in the UK, published by Trapeze, and in the US, published by Pegasus Books. NOTCHES is grateful for permission to publish this extract from Akpan’s exciting debut book.

The Portuguese manufactured Njinga as a deeply unsuitable monarch.

Belligerent, determined and garnering support, the Ndongo royal and their goal of sovereignty were a threat to a colonial project approaching seventy years in the making. Njinga’s gender, then, made for a convenient vehicle for disqualification. ‘A woman had never governed this kingdom,’ penned Governor Fernão de Souza to the Portuguese king.

Njinga embodied transgression, especially of European norms. They commanded their own troops into battle; they wore what was understood by the Portuguese as masculine garb; they used a male-coded name, especially in military settings, and would answer to no other. Njinga had also declared themselves ‘Lady [of Ndongo]’ before their people and had sent letters to Governor de Souza from 1624 onwards as ‘Dona Anna, the senhora de Angola’. They presented a walking contradiction. What kind of dona or queen was this?

The deployment of these terms in African contexts already stretched Western imaginations to breaking point. Preconceptions around the continent and its inhabitants collided. Missionaries and colonial settlers transmitted messages on the morality, decency and modesty of women. These merged with notions of the morally decayed ‘savage’ in need of salvation. And it seemed Njinga needed salvation more than most.

Here was a figure that the Portuguese called ‘woman’, sexually exploiting the bodies of the unfree, draping their own body in male attire and engaging in the brutality of war – all decidedly masculine behaviours that weren’t permissible for the Ndongo ruler. To them, this African flouting their civilised values of feminine morality was inherently deviant. A ‘volatile, unstable, and abject ruler who was to be distrusted and ultimately removed from power.’ Njinga was thoroughly incompatible for the role of queen.

But Njinga did not understand themselves as a queen – they did not have the language for it. The language of the Mbundu people, Kimbundu, did not have gendered pronouns, let alone distinct terms assigned on the basis of gender alone. Although the Ndongo held a precedent of male rulers, the title of ngola – which emerges from the root of ‘ngolo’ meaning ‘strength’ – is not inherently gendered. ‘Ngola’ cannot be accurately translated as ‘king’ or ‘queen’. It’s an issue that continues to throw contemporary historians: in a footnote, Belgian historian Jan Vansina noted that ‘the [historical] tradition does not mention Queen Nzinga, but King Nzinga, even when speaking of Queen Dona Anna Nzinga.’ He questions whether the ‘Nzinga’ reference could be describing Njinga or perhaps even their deceased brother.

Trans history scholar Kit Heyam suggests it’s likely that Njinga requested to be addressed as ‘king’ in gendered languages, a desire to wear the same title as the Portuguese sovereign they viewed as an equal. But perhaps their bargaining position against a more powerful occupier meant that the new ngola sometimes accepted the use of gendered titles, like ‘queen’ and ‘dona’, that carried notes of respect and sovereignty.

Could it be possible that, given that Njinga had to learn gendered language to specifically deal with the Europeans, they didn’t struggle with entrenched attachments to the terms? Perhaps it even allowed for a certain playful deliberateness in when and how they expressed all parts of themselves. Here was a coy-looking feminine figure, as romanticised by Portuguese artists, couched in rich furs, golden regalia and feather plumes but also a military-minded general barking out brash directives in male-coded cloth.

It’s unclear how many others there were in the kingdom who, like Njinga, were assigned female at birth but expressed themselves fluidly or lived as men. We know, however, that Njinga’s dominion teemed with other gender-variant people, including kimbandas (or chibados): people assigned male at birth who lived as women.

They embodied another form of divine connection between the people of Ndongo and unearthly realms. Of the fifty kimbandas Njinga was said to have at court, each one – clad in feminine attire – could be called upon as ‘spiritual arbiters’ in political and military decisions, as well as to perform the rituals required to usher the deceased’s onward journeys. The belief that they could not only cure diseases but also force secrets out into the open, unveiling criminal identities and activities, rested a special status on their heads. Kimbandas married men, with their unions ‘honoured and even prized’ among the Mbundu and the Imbangala. One elderly kimbanda would lead the caste, the contours of time carved into her aged body, responding to the call of ‘grandmother’. So entrenched were the ritual traditions of Kimbanda throughout the kingdom, overseen by individuals who predate the term ‘trans’, it travelled across the Atlantic alongside enslaved people ferried through Njinga’s lands to Brazil and beyond. With its key tenets surviving over 400 years, it forms the foundation for the Afro- Brazilian denomination of Quimbanda observed today.

The lives of Njinga, the kimbandas and, no doubt, unnamed others within the Ndongo kingdom repudiate a number of assertions. These include the belief that there is something ‘traditional’ about understanding gender as essentialised, or that it can be understood as a recent development, a novel trend, a fanciful fabrication.

The confines of European tongues could not, and still cannot, capture Njinga. It’s why, as you’ll have noticed, I’ve used ‘they/ them’ pronouns to describe the ruler. It’s an imperfect approach: I’ve made a choice – linguistic and political – that Njinga didn’t make. I do not suggest that Njinga would have used these pronouns to describe themselves. Instead, like Heyam, I want to avoid presumptions of gender and honour the plurality with which Njinga explored theirs. Until there are better linguistic tools for exploring gender neutrality in the English language, until there is greater acknowledgement of how our languages impose pronouns on people who did not have them in their own language, I hope that for now, ‘they/them’ can suffice.

Paula Akpan Paula Akpan (she/her) is a Black British historian and writer who gained a distinction in her fully funded MA in Black British History and who has credits in Vogue, Teen Vogue, The Independent, Stylist, VICE, i-D, Bustle, Time Out London and more. When We Ruled is her much-anticipated debut book.