GAF Essay

After a detailed reading of Peter Alegi’s African Soccerscapes, I believe that Alegi does a fine job in crafting his argument that Africa had a major role in defining just how the game of soccer was played continuing into the 20th and 21st century. However, I feel like there are certain subjects that Alegi was somewhat remiss in describing in his writing. There are a few historical events in the development of African football that may have proved vital to the current state of Africa, both politically and culturally today. Nonetheless, Alegi provides key reason to believe that soccer is more than just a common diversion, it’s roots in Africa run deeper than we know.
	I feel that the best segments that Alegi described were the times that African soccer players played into the context of the larger motion of history that was going on around them, with a few directly influencing the political landscape at the time. A particular section that I felt he emphasized well was the battle for independence between France and Algeria. Before a large international sporting event, several Algerian-born French players left the team to play for the Front de Libération Nationale, Algeria’s rebel national team. It was a strong push for their freedom that the French were hard-pressed to counter.
I believe that in his writings, he doesn’t intend to convey that football causes political change around the world. Rather I feel like most political tide shifts start as grassroots movements, and that football is an extremely effective vehicle for amplifying said movements. When it comes to politics, good communication is the most important tool for getting the public on your side. One can have the greatest ideas about political separatism, government abolishment, or anything else in one’s head, but they’re just ideas unless they can be distributed out to the audience one caters for [1]. That’s why I feel like teams like the FLN were so successful in organizing the rest of Algeria under one united cause. They were an extremely effective communication vehicle to pass along ideas and values and make them generally accessible by the public. The same ideals that the FLN had are present even today. One can look no further than the 2014 World Cup that took place this past July to see that the precedent established is still alive and well. As the years have gone by, many European national teams have become more multicultural. France fielded a stunning 10 immigrants on their national team, and Germany had 5 of their own. Political parties are using this to their advantage to push for more lenient immigration standards [2].
However, I felt that there were some parts of the development of football in Africa that he didn’t touch on quite enough. This one omission I felt most was the growth of women’s soccer in Africa and the rest of the world. I believe that soccer on the world stage is almost at the same level of dichotomy that tennis is on, with Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova being just as notable as the Federers and Djokovics of the men’s scene. I understand his coverage of the women’s side of the game was relatively short, given that women’s football in Africa didn’t even get much of a foothold until the 1960s, when the Orlando Pirates women’s team was established. I was hoping that Alegi would provide more historical context of how soccer played into women’s rights in Africa, much like he did with the males, especially with the more considerable struggle that women have had in gaining rights over the past half-century with the Federation of South African Women founded in the late 50s and the Black Women’s Federation, formed in 1975 as part of the African Consciousness Movement [3].
Overall, Alegi does a fine job in detailing how significant football is in both African history and culture in a concise, well-thought out book. Many people may try and downplay what seems like a common sport in history, but Alegi shows that this is clearly not the case.