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Boxer Muhammad Ali and Soldier Idi Amin As International Political Symbols: The Bioeconomics of Sport and War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Ali A. Mazrui
Ali A. Mazrui
Affiliation:
The University of Michigan
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Extract

Did Idi Amin join the army because of a lack of alternative economic opportunities for uneducated Kakwa in colonial Uganda? Or was he helped by the prior attractiveness of “tall African specimens” to those who were recruiting for the King's African Rifles?

Why have black people performed better by world standards in athletics than in most other sports and games? Does the explanation lie in the low economic status of blacks? Or is it partly a question of the physical attributes of some black “athletic specimens?”

Did the food culture of the Gurkhas and Punjabis help to make them “martial people” suitable for recruitment into the Indian army? Or were there primarily economic differences between them and the less martial communities of India like, say, the Gujerati?

Type
Social Stereotypes and Popular Politics
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , April 1977 , pp. 189 - 215
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1977

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References

1 Consult Johan, Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture (London: Granada Publishing Ltd., 1971 reprint). The book was first published in English by Routledge and Regan Paul Ltd., in 1949. The original German edition was published in Switzerland in 1944.Google Scholar

2 Martin, D., General Amin (London: Faber and Faber, 1974), p. 15.Google Scholar

3 Murdock, G. P., Africa: Its Peoples and Their Culture History (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959).Google Scholar

4 Baker, S., Ismailia Vol. 2 (London: Macmillan, 1874), pp. 212–13.Google Scholar

5 Beattie, John, The Nyoro State (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1971), pp. 128–9.Google Scholar

6 L. A. Fallers, assisted by F. K. Kamogaand S. B. K. Musoke, “Social Stratification in Traditional Buganda,” Chapter 2 in Fallers, L. A. (ed.), The King's Men: Leadership and Status in Buganda on the Eve of Independence (London and Nairobi: Oxford University Press, 1964), pp. 111–3Google Scholar

7 The Kabaka of Buganda, Desecration of my Kingdom (London: Constable, 1967), p. 185.Google Scholar This point is discussed in a related context in Mazrui, A., “The Social Origins of Ugandan Presidents: From King to Peasant-Warrior”, Canadian Journal of African Studies, Vol. VIII No. 1, 1974, pp. 3–23.Google Scholar

8 Ibid., p. 192. These issues are discussed in a wider context in Mazrui, A., Soldiers and Kinsmen in Uganda: The Making of a Military Ethnocracy (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1975).Google Scholar

9 Jesse, Kornbluth, “Muhammad Goes to the Mountain”, New Times (U. S. A.), Vol. 3, No. 5, 09 6, 1974, p. 55.Google Scholar

10 Uganda Argus (Kampala), August 23, 1972.

11 Kornbluth, , “Muhammad Goes to the Mountain,” New Times, p. 54. … screw the paltry 150,000 witnesses to the actual event; they're not holding it at three in the morning just so it'll be cool in the stadium. The world's the thing here (3 a.m. translates into 10 p.m. New York time) and megahype's the August song at the training camps. Screw those 16 African Presidents sitting ringside, the hell with the event's “implications,” we've got a fight to promote here, got to make sure we don't blow the $15 million white dollars that have been advanced to get the thing off the ground; please,Google Scholar

12 Ibid., p. 48.

13 This point is argued more extensively in Mazrui, , “The Lumpen Proletariat and the Lumpen Militariat: African Soldiers as a new Political Class,” Political Studies, Vol. XXI, No. 1, 03 1973, pp. 1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Martin, , General Amin, op. cit., p. 186.Google Scholar

15 Huizinga, , Homo Ludens, op. cit., p. 117.Google Scholar

16 Izenberg, Gerry, “Does Ali have a Chance Against Foreman?” Sport, Vol. 58, No. 3, 09 1974, p. 24.Google Scholar

17 Homo Ludens, op. cit., pp. 110–1.Google Scholar

18 See “1896–1968: A Survey of the Olympic Games”, Sport in Africa, Vol. 2,Google Scholar“Africa and the Olympic Games” (Cologne: Deutsche Welle, 04 1972), p. 35.Google ScholarPubMed

19 See for example Potter, Barnett, The Fault, Black Man... (Capetown: Howard Timmins, 1971 edition), pp. 114–5, 36.Google Scholar

20 Osugo, Peter, “Battle of the Giants,” Africa (an International Business, Economic and Political Monthly), No. 37, September 1974, p. 13.Google Scholar

21 Macpherson, James M., Holland, Laurence B., Banner, James M. Jnr., Weiss, Nancy J. and Bell, Michael D., Blacks in America: Bibliographical Essays, (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Co., 1972), p. 298.Google Scholar

22 Ibid., p. 297.

23 Kombluth, , “Muhammad Goes to the Mountain,” op. cit., p. 48.Google Scholar

24 Cited by two black psychiatrists, Grier, William H. and Cobbs, Price M., Black Rage (New York: Bantam Basic Books, 1968), p. 60.Google Scholar

25 Consult the chapters on religion in Rotberg, Robert I. and Mazrui, Ali A., Protest and Power in Black Africa (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970).Google Scholar

26 See, for example, the fascinating account by Scotch, Norman A., “Magic, Sorcery and Football among Zulu: a Case of Reinterpretation under Acculturation,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 5, No. 1, 05 1951, pp. 70–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a broader picture consult Marwick, Max (ed.), Witchcraft and Sorcery, a Penguin Modern Sociology Reader (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970, 1972).Google Scholar

27 Martin, , General Amin, op. cit., p. 16.Google Scholar

28 For interaction between technology and traditional cultures in a wider context consult Foster, George M., Traditional Cultures and the Impact of Technological Change (New York: Harper and Row, 1962).Google Scholar

29 Welbourn, F. B., Religion and Politics in Uganda, 1952–62, (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1965), p. 8.Google Scholar

30 Muhammad AU quoted by Kornbluth, , “Muhammad Goes to the Mountain,” op. cit., p. 55.Google Scholar

31 See “The Pleasure and Problems of the ‘Pretty’ Black Man,” Ebony, September 1974, p. 135.Google Scholar

32 Homo, Ludens, op. cit., p. 116.Google Scholar

33 Weiss, Paul, Sport: A Philosophical Enquiry (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press, 1969), p. 39.Google Scholar

34 Consult for women's point of view Ann, Scott, “Closing The Muscle Gap”, Ms., Sept. 1974.Google Scholar