Archive for January, 2008

African Nations Cup and the history of football in Africa

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

Great news, the Africa Cup of Nations has started. Or, if you are a Premier League manager, terrible news, the Africa Cup of Nations has started. I predict two things:

1. Everyone will call the tournament the African Nations Cup, which is much snappier and surely the name everyone used in the past?

2. Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire will both self-destruct, and someone else will win it. Holders Egypt are still available at 8/1 at Betfair, even after whacking Cameroon 4-2 in fine style. I’d say that’s good value, whereas Ghana (4/1) and especially Cote d’Ivoire (3/1!) are bad value. The tournament seems to be suffering from the credit crunch, so there isn’t much liquidity, but it might pick up in the later stages.

So, as the point of this blog is history, here is my take on the history of Ghanaian football. It’s not very representative as it’s based on a single file from the Ashanti regional archive. The documents were mainly produced during the WWII. But they are quite interesting, and it’s a good excuse to show some cool pictures. The main question is: is football just a game? Probably not.

Firstly, football may have reflected growing ethnic rivalries within multi-ethnic states. For example, in 1942 the New Britons, a team from Tarkwa in SW Ghana, resolved at their AGM “to crush down in this year all the Kotoko Teams”.1 Kotoko, a common team name, meant porcupine and was also symbol of Asante nationhood. The club motto of Asante Kotoko was “Thousand Killed, Thousand Comes”. This referred to the military strength of the defeated Asante empire, now a constituent part of Britain’s Gold Coast colony. But the motto was also a measure of Asante’s political tenacity. The slogan was later associated with the National Liberation Movement – a specifically Asante alternative to the nationalist party that would lead multi-ethnic Ghana to independence, Nkrumah’s CPP.2 By September 1942, the Mighty Britons had defeated four Kotokos, scoring 14 goals and conceding just four.

Football may also have added more formality and structure to divisions based on region, race and religion. The appeal of the game cut across such boundaries – matches were announced on the radio in Twi, Hausa and English – but teams were more divisive. Muslims in Obuasi, probably northern migrants or members of the Hausa diaspora, played in the Mahommedans team. There is evidence that elsewhere in Africa different ethnicities voluntarily kept their distance during leisure activities. But football had some unique structural features. Teams (and perhaps fans) were visually differentiated through uniforms. The continuity of team and player registration made these divisions more formal and persistent. And matches and tournaments made fans and teams antagonistic, rather than indifferent, to their sporting/ethnic/religious rivals. This interpretation is firmly embedded in the conspiracy theory school of history: it shouldn’t be taken too seriously without a lot more direct evidence.

Football was also inherently political. Its popularity made it a source of prestige. This could be the prestige of personal skill, as for Ekow Glenland, who told the FA he was “commonly known as Kimpo the Devil Boy”. Football also bestowed prestige by association. The patron of Asante Kotoko was none other than Agyeman Prempeh II – Prempeh was the Asantehene (the Asante king), an office abolished then later reinstated by the British. And football was inevitably subjected to the concerns of imperial power. Matches during WWII, for example, were frequently held to support war charities.

Anyway, that’s more than enough history. Here are some more football club letterheads, plus sarcastic comments about their mottos.


Bonos Mores = good manners in Latin. Unnecessary showing off.


From the days when it was OK to have Scottish football role models.


I agree.


A common defense in war crimes tribunals.


Definitely my favourite, despite its rubbishness. We can safely assume that biros were not rationed during the war.

References:
1. This, and everything else here, is taken from the Ashanti Regional Archive, ARG 7/10/4 Obuasi Football Association.
2. Jean Allman, The Quills of the Porcupine: Asante Nationalism in an Emergent Ghana (Madison, 1993), p.16.

Posted in africa cup of nations, african cup of nations, african history, african nations cup, betting, football, gambling, history of leisure, soccer | 1 Comment »

Review: Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962

Friday, January 18th, 2008

Bush’s Bookshelf

Any book whose cover proclaims that it is “on the reading list” of George W. Bush is irresistible – although this vague formulation doesn’t make it clear if Bush has actually read this, or indeed any other, book. Despite the dubious presidential seal of approval, Horne’s account of the French-Algerian war is very good. He crams the years 1954-62 into 600 pages of journalistic prose. The result is pacy, detailed and – considering the acronym-heavy nature of Algerian politics – relatively clear. It’s not conceptually brilliant, but as a narrative of a fascinating, complex and important conflict, it works very well – exactly the kind of book a President might want to read after tiring of My Pet Goat.

The Algerian War of Independence

A horribly simplified narrative of the war might run like this:

Algerian nationalists experienced decades of disappointment as political reforms were blocked or watered down by the settler lobby. The Front de Libération Nationale was founded in 1954 as a military alternative to the failed reform movements. This small vanguard party launched attacks on French targets on 1st November, and the war began. Throughout the conflict, French reprisals for (often brutal) attacks by the FLN were violent, sustained and – most importantly – indiscriminate. French violence towards moderates and civilians created a steady flow of resentment and a critical mass of support for the FLN. This support was never universal, and certainly not natural, as simplified narratives of nationalism suggest. Instead, support for the FLN emerged from the dynamics of the war, and ultimately made the conflict unwinnable for the French. Algeria gained independence in July, 1962 – but not before the conflict destroyed the Fourth Republic, and took France to the brink of civil war.

Horne does a good job of detailing the many complexities of the war, both in Algeria and France, that this summary misses out. It is well worth a read. But I just wanted to pick up a couple of interesting points on the importance of childhood in creating nationalists and rebels – something I’ve previously discussed for white settlers.

Childhood

Horne offers potted biographies of many of the war’s protagonists, and it is striking how often a childhood experience emerges as both revelation and motivation for future FLN members. The injustices of colonial rule could emerge in dramatic or subtle ways. Ahmed Ben Bella, Algeria’s first President, moved from his village to attend school, and was shocked to find that the football teams at Tlemcen were segregated. Krim Belkacem noticed that Europeans were recorded on the school register in blue, and Muslims in red. Mohamedi Said saw his grandparents slapped by a French officer. And Hassiba Ben Bouali became aware of the 1945 massacres by French forces while still at school. Such injustices explained older French misfortunes. Ben Bouali’s parents told her that Hitler’s invasion was a divine reprisal for the mistreatment of Muslims. And they would justify, too, the violence of the FLN: the war of Algerian independence was a final, homegrown punishment for the cruelty and indifference of French empire.

But if the colonial experience marked childhood so dramatically, it did not create universal political awareness: explanation and interpretation as adults was sometimes necessary for the creation of revolutionary nationalists. Ali la Pointe, the FLN leader portrayed in The Battle of Algiers, had a childhood marred by poverty, pederasts and petty crime – but it was not until he was imprisoned for resisting arrest that jailed FLN activists linked his experiences to the structures of colonialism. For others, childhood created nationalist feeling but they became revolutionary only as adults, motivated by pre-war political inertia or the undiscerning French repressions during the conflict itself. [61, 77, 131, 185, 187]
Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace:
Buy from amazon.co.uk or amazon.com

Posted in algeria, algerian war, colonialism, empire, france, history of childhood, military history, nationalism | No Comments »