There is an African proverb I return to again and again: “Until the lion learns to write, tales of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” Although the exact origins of the proverb are unknown, its popularity is often attributed to the Nigerian writer and scholar Chinua Achebe, author of Things Fall Apart—a powerful story about the quiet violence colonialism inflicts on a thriving Igbo community, where traditions and identity are slowly erased as an imposed order overwrites their world. In a 1994 interview with The Paris Review, Achebe invoked the proverb to highlight how dominant narratives and historical accounts often reflect the perspectives and experiences of those who hold power – and how writing must instead capture the challenges, courage and bravery of the lion.
Although it is a simple proverb, its imagery is powerful. The “hunter” represents the victor or dominant group that shapes stories in ways that privilege its own experiences, interests, and status. The “lion,” by contrast, symbolizes marginalized communities whose voices and experiences are ignored, excluded, or misrepresented.
Therefore, the proverb is a reminder that those who have the power dictate how history and communities are remembered. This is because those who control narratives also shape how information is interpreted. They establish values, make moral judgments, and determine which stories are remembered and which are forgotten. The proverb reminds us that historical knowledge is never entirely neutral or benign. It is shaped by selection, language, perspective, and institutional power, whether deliberately constructed or unconsciously reproduced. As a result, oppression, violence, and injustice can be reframed as heroism, necessity, or progress when narrated by the victors – or those who receive knowledge from them.
When we put this in the backdrop of the colonial process, the proverb reminds us that many of Africa’s stories have historically been told by outsiders. Debates about colonialism provide a useful example. While scholars recognize that colonial administrators often produced narratives that justified commerce, missionary activity, and imperial expansion, many contemporary discussions continue to privilege the perspectives and interests of former colonial powers. One need only consider how frequently students are asked to debate whether colonialism benefited Africa in classrooms around the world – including those in Africa.
Colonialism, at its core, was a violent system of domination. Millions were subjected to forced labor, dispossession, and political subjugation. Families and communities were torn apart, as illustrated in many of Chinua Achebe’s works. In the Congo Free State, countless people suffered mutilation and death under the rule of Belgium’s King Leopold II. In Kenya, colonial authorities carried out widespread abuses, including land dispossession, massacres, detention without trial, systematic torture, and other forms of repression, many of which have been documented through historical research and community testimony. In Namibia, Germany established concentration camps, including the notorious camp on Shark Island, where genocide was carried out against the Herero and Nama peoples. These realities are well documented, yet narratives that downplay, justify, or romanticize colonialism continue to shape public debates in both the Global South and the Global North
These debates surrounding our collective memory of colonialism reveal the enduring influence of older colonial narratives that still linger today — stories that claim Africa had little of value before European rule. According to these narratives, the continent lacked advanced knowledge systems, sophisticated political structures, scientific innovation, architecture, iron‑smelting technologies, trade networks, or written traditions worth recognizing. Yet the opposite is true. All of the progress that Africans had made were misrepresented, erased, misunderstood or their contributions were absorbed into colonial accounts without acknowledgement. As in many parts of the world that experienced colonial intrusion, colonialism did not introduce progress — it disrupted progress that was already unfolding. It also buried the histories of many cultures. This is the story of the Mughal Empire in South Asia, the Kingdom of Burma in Southeast Asia, the Aztec and Inca civilizations in Latin America, and the great African kingdoms of Benin, Kongo, and Great Zimbabwe — societies whose achievements were dismissed, overwritten, or erased under colonial rule.
This is why the work of writers like Achebe and historians such as Ali Mazrui has been so vital in asserting marginalized narratives. Their scholarship challenges these distortions by reclaiming histories and perspectives that colonialism attempted to erase. Mazrui, for example, used his BBC/PBS documentary series and accompanying book The Africans: A Triple Heritage to directly confront colonial portrayals of Africa as a continent “without history.” In this work, he dismantled colonial myths by demonstrating Africa’s deep intellectual, political, and cultural heritage long before European rule. Still, the assumptions born from those earlier colonial narratives continue to shape global perceptions of Africa, reinforcing the idea that certain peoples and histories are less worthy of recognition and respect — or that entire communities of people can be reduced to one limiting story. As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie argues in her Ted Talk, The Danger of a Single Story, there is profound harm in telling one narrative about a people or a place. Single stories flatten complexity, reduce communities to stereotypes, and obscure the richness of human experience. The work of bringing those marginalized perspectives to the center is still important.
This proverb reminds us that we need multiple voices if we are to develop a fuller and more accurate understanding of history. When the lion learns to write, the story changes. Suddenly, we hear about courage instead of danger, resilience instead of weakness, and humanity instead of caricature. The lion was never voiceless; it was simply rendered powerless within a script that was neither written by it nor for it. That is what makes this proverb so profound: it reminds us that the struggle for justice is often, at its heart, a struggle over who gets to tell the story.
