Our great leaders of Africa have just announced that the beloved All Africa Games (AAG) will henceforth be called African Games (AG). Why? They did not bother to explain.
And to think that our leaders chose the 50th anniversary of the Pan African Games to effect the change beats the imagination.
What actually was wrong with the AAG as a name?
The Organisation of African Unity (OAU) was unnecessarily redesignated African Union (AU).
In an embarrassing imitation of the Europeans who renamed themselves European Union (EU), from their historic European Economic Community (EEC), our leaders suavely renamed themselves the AU.
In fact, when France, West Germany (as it then was), Italy and the three BENELUX countries – Belgium, The Netherlands (Holland) and Luxemburg – formed what became the Common Market or “The Six”, in 1957, Britain shunned them as it was then swooning in its British Commonwealth of Nations.
A lot of changes took place in the EEC, including Britain’s rancour with France in its bid to join the Six in the 60’s, before a name change was considered.
At each stage, there was a palpable reason to effect a change in name.
But in OAU’s change to AU, what justification did we have? None! Just sheepishly following Europe!
In Addis Ababa on May 25, 1963, two contending African groups – the Monrovia group of majorly perceived Conservatives and the ultra-leftist or self-proclaimed Progressives of the Casablanca bloc – met to discuss Africa’s future.
Leopold Senghor, the Senegalese leader, headed the Monrovia bloc which wanted gradual integration starting with the economy.
President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana led the radical Casablanca group that sought immediate political Federation of Africa with a central government!
The meeting of May 25, 1963 of 32 African leaders in Addis Ababa, under the chairmanship of Ethiopian leader, Haile Selassie, was a confab of compromise. Both sides agreed on the formation of the OAU but with the absence of apartheid South Africa.
Thirty-nine years later, on July 9, 2002, African heads of state, without any cogent reason, renamed the OAU as AU, to go with the Joneses of the EU.
Now again they have followed the same pattern to change the All Africa Games to African Games to tie with, this time, Asian Games!
All Africa Games came into being in Brazzaville in 1965.
And in celebrating 50 years of the popular pan African sport fiesta, our leaders can only think of a name change.
What is actually wrong with the tag All Africa Games? Do we realise the implications of this sort of changes?
Records have to be updated. Students have to relearn what they had always known in current affairs. Books will be reprinted to accommodate very unnecessary changes.
The Games were originally organised by the Supreme Council for Sports in Africa (SCSA) which was soon dissolved and replaced by the Association of National Olympic Committees of Africa (ANOCA).
The man who founded the modern Olympics, Pierre de Coubertin, conceived the idea of a Pan African Games as far back as 1920.
But the colonial authorities shot it down for fear of creating a meeting environment that could generate ideas of freedom among sport participants.
French-speaking states tried something like sport get-together in 1960 in Madagascar and another was held in Cote d’Ivoire in 1961.
But with the prospect of the emergence of the OAU in 1963, another sport jamboree scheduled for Senegal was subsumed by the activities that eventually led to the creation of the Pan African Games in 1962 by African ministers of youth and sport at a meeting in Paris.
It is time to curb this mania of name-changing by African leaders.
