Into Africa?
Gamal Nkrumah looks at Egypt's African heritage

As far as sport is concerned, Egypt is thoroughly African, and has left an indelible mark on the continent's sports scene. Take football -- Egypt hosted the African Cup of Nations in 1959, 1974, and 1986, and is also scheduled to host it in 2006. The Africa Cup of Nations, which incidentally was launched before its European counterpart, was initiated by Egypt. And, Egypt, along with Ghana and Cameroon, has won the Africa Cup of Nations four times, the only countries to do so. Egyptian striker Mahmoud El-Khatib won the France Football Best African footballer of the year in 1983.
The impressive power of the modern football player is specifically linked to contractual negotiations. For many black African football players, Egypt is a testing and training ground for their talents and skills -- including those of negotiation.
There are about 50 black African professional soccer players in Egyptian clubs at the moment -- most of them not well known to the global public. Most play in second and third league clubs, but a few have made a name for themselves in some of the country's top clubs.
Egypt was the stepping-stone for some of Africa's most talented international soccer players -- their professional careers beginning in Egypt before moving on to even greener pastures abroad. Among the most famous football players from sub-Saharan Africa to have played in Egypt is Nigerian striker John Otaka of Al-Ismaili -- who now plays in France -- and whose career kick started in Egypt. Others included the Cameroonian striker Joseph Antoine Bell, Malian striker Dramane Traore of Al-Ismaili, Emanuel Quarshie and Ghanaian international striker Ahmed Felix Aboagye, who played with Zamalek.
Politically and culturally, too, Egypt has long been among Africa's heavyweights. The allure of ancient Egypt is especially powerful. From an Afrocentric perspective, ancient Egypt was unquestionably black. Stolen Legacy -- first published in 1954, by African American Afrocentrist George GM James -- claims that the Egyptians from whom the Greeks took their philosophy were black Africans.
Several European historians and Egyptologists have, however, acknowledged the strong affinity between ancient Egyptian civilisation and the cultures of Africa south of the Sahara. "Thothmes III and Ramses II resemble Mtesa of Central Africa more than they do Alexander or Caesar," wrote French Egyptologist Gaston Maspero.
Significant cultural contact between ancient Egypt and countries further south existed from ancient Egypt's earliest pre-dynastic periods.
"I believe that the Egyptian civilisation was fundamentally African and that the African element was stronger in the Old and Middle Kingdoms, before the Hyksos invasion. Furthermore, I am convinced that many of the most powerful Egyptian dynasties which were based in Upper Egypt -- the first, 11th, 12th and 18th -- were made up of Pharaohs whom one can usefully call black," Martin Bernal wrote in his celebrated Black Athena.
"I have demonstrated in my earlier books all the biological and cultural kinship between Arabs and Black Africans, a kinship so old that it goes back to the fifth millennium BC and the beginning of the fourth with the birth of the Semitic world," wrote Senegalese Pan-African historian Cheikh Anta Diop, underlying the fundamental unity between Africa north and south of the Sahara.
"I have further explored the 'genetic kinship between Pharaonic Egyptian and the African languages' ... This kinship greatly antedates Islam, but all the prejudices inherited during the history of the intervening centuries have obscured it," Diop notes.
Egypt's sense of its African identity was revived in the 1950s and 1960s when the late President Gamal Abdel-Nasser forged strong ties with the leaders of the African liberation struggle who later assumed office in their respective countries. For Nasser and his fellow African leaders, African liberation was a historic duty. They lived and died for the cause of national liberation.
The July Revolution inspired African leaders throughout the 1950s. Namibian President Sam Nujoma, who attended Nasser's funeral in Cairo in 1970, once wrote that, "Nasser had inspired us in Namibia as far back as 1956 when he fought against the British, French and Israelis after he had taken the Suez Canal. When we read about the fighting, in the newspapers in then South West Africa, we were firmly on the Egyptian side," Nujoma explained.
Nujoma's testimony was supported by Nelson Mandela, Ahmed Sekou Toure, Patrice Lumumba and Kwame Nkrumah among others. The special bond between Egypt and Africa was strengthened when African countries cut off commercial and diplomatic relations with Israel in 1973 in solidarity with Egypt in the wake of the October War. These ties of friendship and fraternity are as strong today as yesteryear with Egypt hosting the first ever meeting of African parliament speakers in January 2004.