Muhammad Ali

‘Muhammad Ali made everything a fight between an uncle tom and a proud black.’

It is this quote of Sir Ali that I will centre my blog around. The Rumble in the Jungle was first famous for the obvious, traditional reasons. It was going to be a showdown of two of the greatest living boxers in the world, with a hefty sum of money as the prize. Yet, as the documentary showed, it became much more than that. It got turned into a fight for black liberation, racial pride, and African dignity. There were two people behind that: Mobuto Sese Seko and Muhammad Ali.

              It might be surprising to see another name listed here other than Muhammad Ali. However, the fight would not have happened in the context that it did if it had not been for this man. Mobuto Sese Seko was the dictator of the Republic of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) who ran a totalitarian one-party ruled state. As it was stated in the documentary, the president of Zaire was willing to give 10 million dollars from his country’s very scarce, hard earned money. Not for some short-term economic gain but to promote his country, and himself. As Ali said, countries go to war to get their names on the map, and wars cost much more than 10 million dollars. It was a matter of African pride. Mobuto wanted his country’s name to reach every country’s household and prove to the Western world that the story about Africa was not one just limited to poverty and slavery; he wanted to attach the story of modern glory to it. It is interesting to note that instead of investing this amount into healthcare or development (which must have been desperately needed), Mobuto lavished it on a boxing match. It reminds me of a lot of things our own politicians do. How often have I heard the criticism about the Sharif brothers that instead of building more hospitals, they rebuild urban roads just because this progress is more visible. His decision to do so ties in with what Ali said in the documentary that all he had seen about Africa was Tarzan, and how ecstatic he was to find out that Africans were more skilled than the blacks in America; they were pilots and spoke better English than him along with other languages.

              However, the man who made the fight a sensation was Muhammad Ali. It would have been very easy to understand why the fight was so important for coloured people worldwide if it had been between a white and a black. Yet why did it become a black liberation issue when both the fighters were black? George Foreman himself said: “Why? I’m black; blacker than Ali!” It became so because Muhammad Ali made it into a battle between an Uncle Tom and a proud black; between a house Negro and a field Negro, in Malcolm X’s words. Foreman became an Uncle Tom only because he was competing against the vociferous Ali. Ali uplifted both the African-Americans and the Africans themselves. He kept saying that Africa was his home, the Africans his brothers, his colour his pride. Ali was the one who chanted ‘I’m pretty, I’m scientific, I’m artistic.’ The words sound weird but consider the fact that the sciences of the previous centuries were centred around proving how primitive and incapable blacks were, intellectually and physically. A black commentator in the documentary said: “He was a real person. He was genuine…Muhammad Ali could have been even lighter skinned than he was, but for us, he was defending the good cause; for Africans and the whole world”. All this flowed from Ali’s intense love for his people. He had also become an icon for refusing to be drafted into the army to fight against Vietnam, a third world country. Ali was a pan-Africanist and a Third-Worldist icon.

              So, when Foreman was set against him, the black man who favoured the American government and did not criticize white supremacy, his blackness faded away in the eyes of the public. The people had actually expected him to be a white. It was also interesting that his German Shepherd was taken as a symbol of colonialism (they were the police dogs of the Belgians). Ali intensified the conflict by saying: “The man is scared. He’s in my country to start with”. He was able to say that because Foreman did not emphasize his blackness which Ali flaunted. The pressure on Ali for the fight was of all the Africans and blacks in the world. He had himself created the fight into that as he yelled to the crowd “Ali Bomeya!” and the crowd yelled back. “Ali picked it up as if these are my people. This is what I’m here for”. He said he was fighting for the prestige of his black brothers in the US. Black people who have no knowledge of their selves.

              What also struck me was the videos of the people who had come to see Muhammad Ali. Their veneration and devotion to Muhammad Ali was clear in their eyes and their screams. And Ali’s love for them was clear too. He was a political leader through those actions in which he uplifted the coloured people of the world,. And I say coloured for Ali was watched by people in our country as well with admiration. It certainly was a big deal to hear my mother say people watched him the way they watch cricket! For Pakistanis, that is saying a lot. To conclude, I will say that Muhammad Ali was a black leader who was fighting a battle just like Malcolm X and MLK, just in a wildly different way.