Peter Alegi has produced an academic but highly readable and highly topical account of African football, past and present, which spreads a great deal of light on what we are witnessing in South Africa today. Divided into six easy bite size chapters, Alegi, a professor of African history at Michigan University, offers his readers a comprehensive account of African football from the roots of the British Empire through the period of the anti-colonial struggle and beyond into national independence and finally to the age of corporate globalisation. Alegi’s research has as much relevance to European football as it does to African, the two continents being inextricably linked through lingering colonial ties and present day corporate greed.

Alegi sets out his stall in chapter one, entitled, ‘The White Man’s Burden’, where he offers a succinct account of the relationship between British colonial interests and the introduction of ‘Christian’ sporting activities. Alegi explains:

I intend to show how the game of football arrived in Africa in the late nineteenth century through the major port cities and then began to spread into the interior by the 1920’s by means of newly laid railway lines, Western-style schools run mainly by missionaries, and the colonial armed forces.

This chapter reminds me of the now famous indigenous summation of the colonial experience; The White man arrived in Africa with a rifle in one hand and a bible in the other. They asked us to close our eyes and prey. When we opened our eyes, we had Christianity and the bibles and they had our land. Alegi adds the detail:

‘Africans, of course, had their own sports, but these activities were little esteemed by their new imperial masters. Sports such as wrestling, martial arts, footraces, canoe racing, and competitive dancing offer compelling evidence of how agrarian African societies embraced sportgeist the spirit of sport.’

Quoting fellow historians William Baker and Tony Mangan, Alegi is able to paint a vivid picture of settled and advanced African communities:

Throughout pre-colonial Africa dances and games were long performed with a seriousness akin to modern industrial societies, and for purposes not altogether different: the striving for status, the assertion of identity, the maintenance of power in one form or another, and the indoctrination of youths into the culture of their elders.’

Sounds very familiar. Alegi continues this theme:

Indigenous sports were spectacles of fitness and physical prowess, technical and tactical expertise. Clearly, pre-colonial athletic traditions had much in common with Western sport. As such, they provided the soil into which the seeds of European sport would later be planted.

Having firmly established that Western sporting interests were not painting on a blank canvass, Alegi then expands on the mind set behind the colonialist. And what a distorted mind-set it was. Hungry for a quick return, totally dismissive of the indigenous culture, brutal in the extreme yet wrapped up in a bazaar interpretation of the Christian precepts that generally went under the term, ‘muscular Christianity’.

Alegi elaborates,

In nineteenth century Britain, elite schools spawned a movement devoted to using sport for academic education and moral training. For middle and upper class reformers of the Victorian age, sport became a highly valued component of a broader program of rational recreation, and ‘muscular Christianity’ aimed at producing disciplined, healthy and moral citizens.

Of course, the unstated but widely agreed assumption was that they were talking about white healthy and moral citizens. The Christian god had been firmly requisitioned for the economic interests of the British Empire. Alegi continues:

Legions of colonial administrators and missionaries graduated from public schools and universities in Britain. These individuals brought with them to Africa a deep commitment to the ‘games ethic’; the belief that sport forged physically strong, well rounded men of sound moral character for imperial service.’

Alegi summons up a quote from the Reverand J.E.C Welldon, headmaster at Harrow School (1881-95) to exemplify his point, and I simply can’t resist the chance to offer up this quote to the wider audience of the world wide web:

Welldon, possibly unaware of the sheer hypocrisy of his words had this to say of the merits of the sporting life.

The pluck, the perseverance, the good temper, the self control, the discipline, the co-operation, the spirit de corps, which merit success in cricket or football, are the very qualities which win the day in peace or war. In the history of the British empire it is written that England has owed her sovereignty to her sports.

No doubt these fine moral qualities were flowing through the veins of the British imperial administrators and foot soldiers as the cut a swath through other peoples lands from as far a field as Australia, India, Africa and coming closer to home, Ireland. As the corpses mounted up so did the profits for the empire.

How fitting that at the time of writing, the British Government has been finally forced to offer an abject apology for just one of its acts of brutality in Ireland. The government would probably need another hundred years to complete the round of apologies that it owes to the brutalised peoples of the old British Empire!

Alegi concludes his first chapter on a defiant note:

Needless to say, Africans were not simply duped into adopting Western sport: they enjoyed the game for their own reasons and on their own terms.’

Chapter Two charts the ‘Africanisation’ of football and does so with some fascinating detail. Without expanding on that detail the chapter may best be summarised as follows.

In the larger contest between residents and rulers for control of urban areas, football could sometimes be a tool in the hands of the players and fans to find some leisure activities they could call their own and in the process build a local culture beyond the reach of colonial rulers, missionaries, and employers. And as Africans wrested control of football from the hands of those European officials who had first seen the game as a means to inculcate the values of colonial capitalism and empire, they also turned the game into an activity that was distinctly African. The game may have been played according to international rules, but the incorporation of magicians and healers, the rise of different playing styles, and the performance of various rituals of spectatorship revealed that football was taking on distinctive indigenous characteristics.’P15

Alegi crosses the continent to provide empirical and anecdotal evidence for the Africanisation of football and always behind this Africanisation process was a implicit challenge to the brutalities and indignities of European occupation. And no matter what the new Tory Minister of Education might try say to the contrary, this occupation was never regarded by Africans or any other subject people, as a benign force for good.

Chapter Three focuses on the last two decades of significant colonial rule between the 1940’s and the mid 1960’s, though in reality colonial rule did not actually end until the final collapse of the Apartheid regime in South Africa some twenty five years later. Again Alegi shows great academic sweep in his dealing of this period, particularly the significance of football and the Algerian struggle for Independence from French colonial rule. Alegi introduces his chapter thus:

As anti-colonial militancy intensified in the 1940’s and 1950’s, African nationalist movements forged connections with popular football teams, players and fans. Stadiums and clubhouses became arenas in which workers, intellectuals, business owners, and the unemployed challenged colonial power and expressed a shared commitment to racial equality and self-determination. Football constructed a fragile sense of nationhood in political entities arbitrarily created y colonial powers and fuelled Africa’s broader quest for political liberation.’ P36

Agegi then adds:

‘Until now, however, academic historians have overlooked the role of sport in African independence movements.’P36

Concluding his survey of that period, Alegi writes:

In South Africa, as in Nigeria and Algeria, football after 1940 reverberated with political implications, locally and nationally. In all three cases, urban growth, access to Western education, mass media coverage and passion for the game among cosmopolitan African nationalists strengthened the connections between football and mass politics. Football helped to propel and legitimise the activities of anti-colonial movements.’ P53

Chapter Four has relevance for today as it deals with the twin questions of nationhood and Pan Africanism as they developed after Independence. I think particularly of the national aspirations of the Palestinians and their long and tortuous and at times stalled struggle for nationhood. A close reading of this chapter by their leading activists might not be the worst time spent in that it highlights just how important football, and sport generally can be in fostering both an internal and, just as importantly, an external sense of a new nation. Alegi has this to say on the matter:

The game (football) exposed newly enfranchised Africans to the gravitational pull of the idea of nation. AS historian Eric Hobsbawn remarks, ‘The imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of eleven named people. The individual, even one who cheers, becomes a symbol of his nation himself.’ The game also carried a relatively small price tag for territorializing identity and providing ballast to the idea of the nation-state as a legitimate institution with a monopoly of power.’ P55

Alegi then proceeds to outline how the newly established African states used football to consolidate the sense of nationhood. Establishing national leagues with national championships, and constructing impressive stadia were instrumental in this process. AS for the nation, so for the continent as a whole and it was not long before there was established a Confederation of African Football (CAF), and the associate all-Africa championships.

The going though was not always smooth, bearing in mind that many of the new African states were somewhat artificial creations, cutting across older tribal regions and loyalties. This legacy of colonial rule was to cause much tension and bloodshed across Africa in the coming decades and this tension was of course reflected in sporting allegiances. Alegi elaborates:

While much was achieved in the first decade of independence, African football struggles to produce a lasting sense of nationhood. This was partly due to the game’s paradoxical ability to unite participants while simultaneously dividing them. This inherent quality of team sport complicated nationalist agendas in post-colonial nations that had been artificially created by European powers and continued to be marked by cultural pluralism, class and ethnic divisions, and other social cleavages. Much to the chagrin of African governments, football fostered multiple identities.’ P63

If chapter four has contemporary relevance, chapter five is contemporary dynamite. The chapter title says it all; ‘Football Migration to Europe’. The colonial era might be officially over but the legacy of colonialism and the economic imperialism attached to it are far from over, either in the economic field or the cultural field. The net balance of trade between Africa and Europe is still firmly to the advantage of the latter. Alegi sums up the situation accordingly:

Football migration was part of a larger movement of labour from Africa to Europe and beyond that has intensified greatly in recent years. From 1981 to 2001, the number of African athletes, musicians, artists, white-collar professionals, entrepreneurs, and manual labourers living in the European Union increased by about 70%, from 700,000 to 1.2 million. In the context of Africa’s five-hundred year history of global migration, forced and voluntary, the overseas movement of athletes is not surprising. But the intensity and volume of recent migration are unprecedented, and represent a significant brain drain and muscle drain. P79

To put it at its bluntest, every time a doctor of African origin treats our maladies in the NHS, that is another African city, town or village that is missing out. As for the African health industry, so it is for the engineering, construction, finance, and agricultural industries. All those precious resources that go in to creating the African professional class is lost in a moment as the lure of higher wages draws ever more educated Africans to prop up European institutions. Is it any wonder that Africa struggles to move forward. The African football migration to Europe mirrors the general economic pattern. Alegi comprehensively outlines this one way traffic in African footballers:

It could be argued that there is an up-side to this African migration in that Africa’s prestige in the European mind in enhanced and that European prejudices are dissipated a little, though the negatives tend to outweigh the positives by a fair margin. Alegi puts it this way;

Migration brought about a partial Africanisation of the European game that blurred the boundaries of race, citizenship and national identity. It is no longer extraordinary for players of African origin to represent a European nation in the World cup or European Championships The departure of legions of young prospects, as much as established names, has been a major factor in the deterioration of domestic football in Africa. The best players now spend their entire careers in European clubs, thus deskilling African leagues. P102

The president of the CAF sums up this bleak situation:

After the flight of brains Africa is confronted with the muscle exodus. The rich countries import the raw material talent and they often send to the (African) continent their less valuable technicians. The inequality of the exchange terms is indisputable. It creates a situation of dependence and the pauperization of some clubs and national championships. P102

In the final chapter Alegi moves to the present and outlines how African football like its counterpart in Europe has been commercialized and privatised. Alegi paints the all too familiar picture of commodification of European football and its inevitable extension to the African continent.:

Only in the 1980’s did Western European clubs move decisively towards maximizing revenues and turning themselves into brands. Stadium advertising expanded, corporate logos adorned team uniforms, and ticket prices rose dramatically. Rising costs, partly due to player wages kept profits down until the epochal changes in the 1990’s, when football was transformed into a booming post-industrial service sector awash with money and hubris. Television deregulation and the rise of the new global communication technologies triggered the revolution. Though on a much smaller scale, African Soccerscapes underwent a comparable transformation. P104/105

Alegi spells out the particularities of the privatisation of African football:

The entrance of local business tycoons and the greater involvement of domestic and foreign companies at the elite level in some cases did challenge old hierarchies and encourage the professionalisation of sports management. Increasingly, top clubs in Africa today are owned by private interests, although government ownership, in full or part, remains common.P112

Alegi then goes on to explain that in the vacuum left by the public sector due to the viscous dictates of the World Bank and the IMF, came the establishment of the football academy. Many of the state-funded sports programmes at school, youth and amateur level were wiped off the development map so it was left to these academies to fill this vacuum. It is via these academies that many of the top European clubs have been able to lure Africas brightest young talent to European clubs. But the African football academies, as have been well documented in the British media, are anything but a benign force. Alegi makes the point clear:

The football academy has been criticised as a modern-day plantation. It is a form of neo-colonial exploitation in that it involves the sourcing, refinement, and export of raw materials, in this case African football talent, for consumption and wealth generation in the European core. The process results in the impoverishment of the African periphery. P118

Alegi then offers a dispiriting conclusion:

For the thousands of young boys not good enough for admission to the academies or unable to reach the professional ranks, the future looks bleak. The exclusionary process inherent in the football business has serious consequences for football and society. P119

It is right and proper that Alegi should wind up his magnificent study of African football with an epilogue devoted to the FIFA World Cup in South Africa. His closing words are directed to Africa but there is a certain universality about them that could equally apply to the London 2012 Olympics or any other of the regular corporate sporting jamborees that we are force-fed every couple of years. Alegi hits the nail fairly and squarely right on the head.

From a cultural standpoint, many ordinary South Africans (and their African neighbours generally) cannot afford World Cup tickets and thus may be reduced to adding African flavour to this corporate event by dancing in the streets, singing, making music, and showcasing traditional clothing and jewellery for foreign visitors and television audiences. That 2010 has yet to produce a coherent development plan for the youth, school and amateur games, male and female, also points to how global capitalist sport is a growing threat to the development of sport in underprivileged and economically poor communities.

African Soccerscapes is compulsive and compulsory reading throughout the duration of this year’s FIFA 2010 World Cup.