The notion of a dominant Africa rarely exists. Afrofuturist cultural aesthetics sometimes imagine possible futures through an African-led lens, but seldom do we see real-life examples where Africans are on top of the world. Except, however, every four or so years, at the Olympic Games. While African countries had to fight for recognition to get accepted into the Olympic movement, they took advantage of their representation on the global stage to do more than just win athletically. As Todd Cleveland argues in Africa and the Olympics: Winning Away from the Podium, African presence in the Olympics complicated the reductive notion of the Olympics as solely a sporting competition. Over the course of five rich historical chapters, Cleveland explores ‘African engagements with the Games as a series of strategic measures to improve personal, communal, regional, national, and even continental plights’ (p. 3).
Extending the analysis in Ramadhan Ali’s Africa at the Olympics, Cleveland draws on an array of primary source materials from the Olympic Studies Centre, the Avery Brundage Collection, newspapers and magazines from around the globe, interviews with African athletes, activists, and sporting officials to back up the theoretical and historical claims in each of his five chapters.
The first chapter lays the foundation for understanding Africa at the Olympic Games by exploring its initial engagements with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Olympic movement. Forming National Olympic Committees (NOCs) and gaining recognition in international sport were important steps during decolonisation. While Egypt had gained some international recognition by the 1920s, most African countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, did not gain recognition until the middle of the twentieth century, because colonial officials feared sporting representation would inspire decolonial movements. Here, Cleveland lays out several examples of efforts to form NOCs and be recognised on a global stage in the ensuing decades.
Cleveland then goes on to detail the efforts to keep South Africa from competing in the Olympics because of its racist apartheid policies. Critical here was the alliance involving the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee (SANROC), which was led in part by Dennis Brutus, who went on to be then-president of the IOC, Avery Brundage’s, ‘Most persistent irritants’ (p. 64). In what follows, Cleveland details the coalition building between African NOCs, athletes, activists and politicians, and the protracted struggle to ban and then expel South Africa from the Olympic movement. This Black-led movement built upon and helped to fortify a shared identity of colonial dispossession beyond Africa, incorporating resistance from other racially discriminatory policies in the U.S. and elsewhere.
There is a great deal of scholarship about SANROC, and Olympic boycotts surrounding the protest of South Africa’s place in the Olympics, but Chapter 3 covers less chronicled attempts to ban Rhodesia from the 1972 Olympics. Here, again, Cleveland explores the systemic racism within the Olympic movement. At the Munich Games, where the movement to ban Rhodesia failed, ‘Brundage declared that the Games had suffered from “two savage attacks,” equating the Africans’ efforts to ban Rhodesia with the assassination of the Israeli athletes’ (p. 102). It is in many of these cutting archival materials that we see the racist brutality that Africans at the Olympics confronted, and often successfully contested. Beginning in 1976, Africans threatened to, and in many cases did, boycott the Olympics, often citing racist policies of hosting nations, the IOC or allied partners. Cleveland cites boycotts initially as the ‘most powerful weapon in the African nations’ Olympic Games arsenal…’ and that they ‘invoked boycott as a politico-sporting tactic to advance their mutual aim of liberating sport on the continent from racial discrimination’ (p. 125). However, by the 1980s, the continental solidarity had cracked, and African leaders tended to determine involvement based on a broader set of Cold War-driven boycotts.
Chapter 4 moves from a focus on the sporting institutions and commissions to the influence that individual African athletes have been able to wield because of their global visibility. Beyond sports, Cleveland notes the array of altruistic endeavours that have resulted because of the economic and social capital gained through their athletic pursuits. From creating a Refugee Olympic team, to raising funds or starting charitable organisations, and bringing about awareness for humanitarian issues, many from around the continent have used their status to pursue social justice initiatives.
The fifth and final chapter covers other African Olympians who utilised Olympic sport to derive personal benefit and stretch the meanings of what nation and nationality mean. In many cases, they have changed nationalities to represent wealthier countries where they can be better compensated and receive easier pathways to a start on the Olympic starting line. While this can generate a lot of media criticism in some cases, athletes have also used international competitions to defect, get educational opportunities and create better futures for their children.
Africa and the Olympics is a welcome contribution to the fields of sports studies, Olympic studies, African and African history. Cleveland deftly weaves in highly researched historical anecdotes from archival materials that provide a starting point for those who wish to explore further. At the same time, he maintains a strong throughline through each chapter to reinforce the importance of the Olympics in the history and development of African politics, and Africa’s centrality to the development and history of the Olympic Games.
