African names dot the landscape of modern sport.
Senegal’s Louis Phal, Nigeria’s Dick Tiger, and Ghana’s
David Kotey head a substantial list of African boxers
who have won world championships. Without Tunisian
Alain Mimoun, Ethiopian Abebe Bikila, Kenyan Kipchoge Keino, and Tanzanian Filbert Bayi, recent
Olympic track history would be much poorer. For several years Nigeria’s Akeem Abdul Olajuwon and Sudan’s
Manute Bol have performed successfully (in Olajuwon’s
case, brilliantly) in a U.S. professional National Basketball Association that is dominated by African American athletes.
This modern prowess is built on a broad foundation
of premodern, or “traditional,” African experience. In
the Nile River valley and on the grassy veldt of South
Africa no less than in the tropical rain forests of the
Congo River basin and at the edges of the massive Sahara Desert to the north, Africans played, devised local
rules for various games, and competed athletically for
centuries before Europeans intruded. To be sure, much
traditional “sport” in Africa, as elsewhere, derived from
impulses to win the favor of ancestors and the unseen
deities or to promote fertility. Competitive, highly ritualized games supposedly ensured productive crops and
hunts as well as a fruitful marriage bed.
Sticks and Stones
Little first-hand evidence survives of traditional subSaharan activities.We learn most about traditional patterns of African play behavior from the diaries, letters,
and treatises of explorers and missionaries, many of
whom were unsympathetic, and from early-20th-century anthropologists.
In Africa, Egypt is unique in its documentation of
ancient sport. Miniature sculptures, papyrus fragments, and inscriptions and paintings on the walls of
temples and tombs depict a lively sporting culture in
ancient Egypt. Even pieces of equipment have survived, ranging from chariots and fish hooks to balls
and board games. All bear witness to pharaohs and
aristocrats eager to prove their superiority as huntsmen, chariot drivers, archers, and runners. As elsewhere, these activities originated in the requirements
for hunting and war.
For most of traditional Africa, no clear line separated hunters and warriors from the sporting impulse.
Africans hunted and fought with sticks, if not spears, in
hand, and in similar fashion they competed athletically. The Zulu and Mpondo of southern Africa frequently promoted stick fights within tribes and occasionally between neighboring tribes. They carried a
stick in one hand (holding it in the middle) for parrying the opponent’s blow, and a stick in the other hand
for clouting the opponent’s head. Egyptian sources suggest that this type of competitive activity was common
in the land of the Nile as well as the Congo.
Some Africans threw sticks for distance and accuracy.Akin to the Greek javelin, this form of competition
obviously originated with the spear. Among the
Baganda of the present state of Uganda, the standard
stick measured only about 46 centimeters (18 inches)
in length. Sometimes the Baganda threw for distance,
other times to hit a foe’s stick. Rolling target games provided variations on the accuracy theme. In a way similar to the hoop-and-pole games enjoyed by western Native Americans,Africans everywhere rolled ball-shaped
stones or roots down hills, and sometimes along level
ground, while tribesmen competed with one another to
hit them with spears, arrows, or stones.
Competitive stone-tossing took another form
among the Kamba of Kenya and the Zulu of South
Africa. They piled stones in front of several competitors and required each one to toss a stone in the air,
pick up another with the same hand, and catch the
airborne stone before it hit the ground. This simple
game rewarded and enhanced agile hands and mental
concentration.
Little evidence of competitive ball play can be
found in traditional Africa. Among the San people of
South Africa, women formed lines and excitedly passed
a round object (about the size of an orange, cut from a
root) back and forth, more on the order of a cooperative children’s exercise than a competitive game. San
men devised a competitive game using a ball made
from the thickest portion of a hippopotamus’s hide, the
neck, a chunk of which they hammered into a round,
elastic object that would bounce when thrown upon a
hard surface. Then they placed a flat stone in the
ground, and threw the ball hard onto the stone.When it
bounced high in the sky, they pushed and shoved for an
advantageous position to catch it before it hit the ground. This game is noteworthy because ball games
were so rare.
Some African tribes, like the Boloki of the Upper
Congo River and the Bachiga of western Uganda, rowed
competitively on nearby waterways; Kenya’s Luo people
traditionally tested their new boats by means of a race
on Lake Victoria. In the mountains of East Africa,
where Olympic runners have trained so effectively in
recent years, the Maasai of Kenya competed and excelled in the footrace.
Another Olympic event, the high jump, also had antecedents in traditional Africa. In a rite of passage, the
tall, aristocratic Tutsi of Rwanda and Burundi catapulted off a hardened anthill and soared at remarkable
heights over a stick or rope suspended between two upright poles. Watussi male youths were regarded as men
when they could clear their own height.
Wrestling Traditions
Wrestling was the most omnipresent of all sport in traditional Africa. Ancient Egypt again leads the way in preserving visual representations.If one were to judge solely
from the famous wall paintings in royal tombs at Beni
Hasan dating from 2000 to 1500 B.C.E., one would conclude that wrestling was the national pastime in ancient
Egypt. Wrestling prepared soldiers for combat and provided a ceremonial exhibition at festive events. Egyptian
wrestlers evidently grappled in a no-holds-barred style,
trying to trip or throw each other to the ground.
Several Egyptian etchings and paintings feature
Nuba wrestlers from the Sudan (to the south) competing with Egyptians. In the hilly central section of the
Sudan, the larger Nuba villages held wrestling matches
periodically through the harvest season from November to March. Heralds went out from a host village to its
neighbors, announcing by horn and drum the forthcoming event and issuing challenges to would-be competitors. Entire villages, adorned in colorful headdresses and beads, and fortified with beer newly
brewed for the occasion, descended on the central marketplace of the sponsoring village. Ceremonial dances
and chants preceded the wrestling matches, which began in the early afternoon. The competitors, covered
with white ashes (symbolic of sacred power), finally
engaged in a catch-as-catch-can tussle, each one attempting to throw the other on his back. Victory
brought a rousing cheer from village partisans, and
when the matches ended shortly before nightfall, a festive party of dance, food, and strong drink followed.
In Nigeria, too, wrestling was a prominent feature of
village life. With colorful rituals strikingly similar to
the Nuba, the Igbo of southern Nigeria promoted
wrestling contests every eighth day for three months or
so during the rainy yam-growing season, then finished
with a day of matches in honor of the corn deity. Igbo
wrestlers were not allowed to become fatigued or angry
with each other, for either condition would displease
the gods and cause the crops to go bad.
For young Igbo males, wrestling meant initiation
into adulthood. The Bachama of northeast Nigeria not
only embraced ceremonial wrestling, but also welcomed
neighboring Jen, Bwaza, Mbula, and Bata peoples to
send teams to compete with Bachama’s best.A Bachama
myth explains the origins of wrestling.According to one
version, a one-legged man came from the east leading a
ram on a tether, bringing the idea of a harvest festival.
He wandered from village to village, challenging all
comers. He proceeded without defeat until he came to
the villagers telling the yarn. One of their forefathers
beat him, and from that day forward they held festivals
of celebration and wrestling matches. Another version
has the one-legged man losing and dying immediately,
but that night his spirit appeared to the man who defeated him. The spirit denied being dead. He vowed not
only to protect the village but also to return visibly to life
at the next wrestling festival. Thus, for the Bachama,
wrestling represented resurrection and life.
Wrestling styles varied from place to place. Unlike
the intense but controlled Igbo, the Khoikhoi of southwest Africa engaged in bloody, no-holds-barred fights.
Bambara wrestlers, in Mali, wore razor-sharp bracelets
to intimidate and debilitate their opponents. Competitors in southeast Africa reportedly wrestled with only
one arm, and from a kneeling position at that. Boys in
the same region grappled from a sitting position.
Although wrestling was customarily reserved for
boys and young men, women occasionally wrestled.
Nuba and Ibo women did so once a year, soon after the
harvest.Wrestling prowess won the females respect and
attention from male youths. Anthropologists have also
found evidence of young women wrestling in Senegal
and Cameroon. In Benin and Gabon, girls sometimes
wrestled males to whom they were betrothed. Those
contests frequently turned into lightly disguised forms
of sexual intimacy. In Gambia, the dominant female
wrestler often married the male champion.
Waning and Waxing
Within the past century or so, several factors have coalesced to cause the waning of traditional African sport,
especially wrestling. First, a revived, more aggressive
Islam swept across northern Africa in the 19th century in opposition to the “pagan” rituals, gambling, and consumption of alcohol that usually accompanied festive
sport of old.
British missionary schools, too, had a negative effect on native patterns of play and athletic competition.
Anglican schoolmasters taught discipline and teamwork through games like soccer (association football)
and cricket.
The emergence of a capitalist mentality also worked
to the detriment of native games. Particularly in the
cities, new labor demands cut into old concepts of
abundant free time. Wed to the seasons and time-consuming rituals, traditional sport could scarcely make
the transition to urban settings. Soccer, boxing, and
track especially lent themselves to the urban need for
orderly recreation and spectatorship.
Traditional sport is not dead, however. Albeit
stripped of many of its ritualistic and mythological
trappings, wrestling still thrives in Nigeria. School
schedules rather than agricultural cycles now determine the time of competitive meets.
Traditional sport appeals to African nationalists.An
old Igbo wrestler, Okonkwo, is the central character in
Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe’s famous tale, Things
Fall Apart (1959). Appearing in print just one year before Nigerian independence, Things Fall Apart depicts
the texture of traditional life and its brutal downfall.
Having beaten the previous wrestling champion,
Okonkwo proudly lives off his reputation as “the greatest wrestler and warrior alive” until he lashes out at the
newly arrived guardians of English law and order. The
novel begins with village drums beating and flutes
playing in celebration of Okonkwo’s athletic prowess; it
ends some 30 years later with his body hanging from a
tree, a victim of modern, alien ways.
—WILLIAM J. BAKER
Bibliography: Sport in Africa: Essays in Social History, edited
by William J. Baker and James A. Mangan. (1987) New
York: Africana. Decker, Wolfgang. (1992) Sports and
Games of Ancient Egypt, trans. Allen Guttmann. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press. In Sport in Asia and
Africa: A Comparative Handbook, edited by Eric C. Wagner. Westport, CT: Greenwood. 1989.