Former ANC Fighter Films Historic African Culture

It delves into a literate civilisation that may have started as early as AD 1000, before its decline in the 17th century.

Zola Maseko, who fought apartheid in South Africa as an armed revolutionary, defends Africa's ancient intellectual heritage in his latest documentary.

The award-winning South African director's Mali documentary "The Manuscripts of Timbuktu" premiered at the 40th anniversary pan-African FESPACO film festival in Burkina Faso this week.

It delves into a literate civilisation that may have started as early as AD 1000, before its decline in the 17th century.

For Maseko, who in 2005 earned South Africa its only top FESPACO gong with his film "Drum" about a black journalist crusading against apartheid, this new work is part of a wider effort to promote a rarely acknowledged intellectual history.

"Africa's heritage has been plundered and stolen, and African history has been changed to suit the colonisers," Maseko told Reuters. "We've grown up being fed that before the West colonised us, Africa had no civilisation."

The packed cinema hall applauded scenes that showed Africans writing long before European colonisers arrived, and gasped at a comment from French President Nicholas Sarkozy that Africa never really entered into history or launched itself into the future.

"We're always taught about our oral history, but we forget that there was a very vibrant written intellectual culture," said Cherif Keita, a Malian professor who teaches francophone African literature in the United States and takes his students to Mali for three months every other year.

The film refers to thousands of manuscripts, preserved in battered trunks, under beds and hidden in cavities in walls across the sandy town to dodge the avarice of French colonisers.

"Some Europeans don't want to admit this rich history exists," said Ares Honvoh, a sound mixer from Benin, after watching the film. "I think Europe has come to a standstill politically and morally, and Africa can help by drawing on the intellectual endeavours of its past."

INTELLECTUAL OASIS

Rich in images of dunes, camels and horses, the film says that at one point 25,000 people in the city were educated from primary school to university level, and that scholars studied astronomy, physics, chemistry, mathematics, medicine, theology, literature and more, in stunning Arabic calligraphic script.

The 340,000 pound ($483,600) four-year project, funded by South African TV channel SABC, was finished only last week. It was sparked by a visit from former South African President Thabo Mbeki, who promised to fund a library, to house and make digital duplicates of the pages, which opened in January.

"South Africa was isolated until 14 years ago," said Maseko, 42, a former member of the African National Congress armed guard. "I knew nothing about Timbuktu. It used to be the place your mother would threaten to send you if you didn't behave. I didn't even know it actually existed."

Long characterised as so remote as to be the stuff of legend, Timbuktu grew great as trans-Saharan trading caravans stopped there to pick up gold, slaves, salt and more.

When Europeans discovered America and seaborne commerce grew, and after Morocco invaded, Mali's trading importance receded. Today the West African cotton-grower ranks among the poorest countries in the world.

"It's a different fight now," said Maseko of his ANC days. "But the objective is still the same -- to define ourselves and tell our own stories. This is not just Malian heritage, it's African heritage."