Recently I came across a meme featuring Malian King Mansa Musa and how a person wanted to see a film about the man who was deemed to be one of the wealthiest men who ever lived who gave so much gold away in Egypt on his famous trek in Africa, that it caused the gold markets to crash.

I was first introduced to King Mansa Musa back in high school in the ’80s when I saw one of those Budweiser marketing displays about the “Great Kings and Queens of Africa” in a bar that I was not to supposed to be in. I didn’t think anything of it other than cool, an African King. It was later when one of the former podcasters I knew used an image of Musa as his cover art. The show was in part about generating wealth. I then decided to look up information on King Musa and discovered he enslaved people and being a modern slavery abolitionist, I questioned the choice.

So coming across the meme armed with the information I had learned previously, I simply stated a fact which was that his wealth was acquired from gold mines worked by victims of slavery and that his “flossing” or “showing off” his wealth, put a target on Africa which brought more and more Arabs and Europeans to Africa.

Therefore in my own meme, in the description I wrote that I would like to see the film as well, but only if it is historically accurate. This resulted in some pushback which I will share on this podcast including the research by Balanta scholar by the name of Siphiwe Baleka who formerly identified as African American or Black.

Source Material: THE MALI KINGDOM AND MANSA MUSA WERE IMPERIALIST SLAVE TRADERS: REVISITING AFRICAN HISTORY FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE PEOPLE WHO WERE OPPRESSED

https://www.balanta.org/history/the-mali-kingdom-was-imperialist-revisiting-african-history-from-the-point-of-view-of-the-people-who-were-oppressed#

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