The death of soccer legend Pelé has saddened millions of soccer fans. Born Edson Arantes do Nascimento, the Brazilian star has touched hearts and captivated minds around the world. In Africa, he has been celebrated not only for his mastery of soccer but also as a symbol of black excellence and representation.
For me, Pelé has been a source of indescribable joy and inspiration.
I was born into a world cruelly short of memorable black stories and universally acclaimed black heroes, a planet decimated by the violent political and economic power of white supremacy.
Whether in politics, science, business, or sports, whiteness had permeated every conceivable aspect of society and systematically shunted blacks to the fringes of human existence.
Whites, we were told, made the best scientists, the best business managers, the best athletes. They were the models to emulate and admire.
But we knew this was wrong. And we admire black superstars like Pelé and Muhammad Ali and the black revolutionaries who led the African and black liberation movements that swept across the African continent and North America.
Growing up in what was then known as Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare), a stronghold of settler colonialism, he was acutely aware of the “racial segregation” of the heroes.
My heroes, freedom fighters, were described as “terrorists.” African nationalists such as Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe were imprisoned by the white settler regime, after campaigning for democracy, civil rights and equality for all races.
My own uncle, Moses, joined the liberation movement as a teenager and received military training in Mozambique and Yugoslavia. After he left, for years, we didn’t even know if he was alive. He only came back after we were finally liberated and Rhodesia became Zimbabwe in 1980.
Black people in sports that he admired were also belittled and insulted. Pelé had a number of derogatory nicknames by which he was called, while Muhammad Ali was once referred to as an “embarrassment to his country” and a “fool”.
So my heroes were not celebrated in the spacious and well-developed areas of Salisbury that were occupied by largely wealthy and privileged white people, or for that matter, in densely populated and impoverished mostly black communities.
Fearing deadly reprisals from soldiers, sympathizers, and government spies, people only talked about their unsung heroes at home, and mostly in low voices. Rhodesian security forces regularly murdered black people for allegedly collaborating with freedom fighters or violating nightly curfews.
Elsewhere, the Sharpeville massacre in South Africa and the violent suppression of the 1967 uprising in the US city of Detroit also demonstrated how the white world brutally resisted black struggles for socioeconomic parity and political independence.
In the midst of this violence and fear, black superstars like Pelé were giving us a glimmer of hope. They defied the condescending stereotypes and stifling challenges that white supremacists have placed on us, Black people everywhere.
Of course, Pelé wasn’t the first black athlete to achieve tremendous success in a world sport or competition, he was the first black man to rise to the top of soccer, a sport that was loved by most of the poor people in Africa. and the African diaspora. in pieces.
My hometown, a sprawling, high-density suburb called Kambuzuma, remained far removed from the exploits of prominent black athletes like American basketball star Bill Russell, the 11-time NBA champion.
When I was young, I didn’t know baseball legend Jackie Robinson or tennis star Althea Gibson, the first African-American woman to compete on a professional tennis tour and win a Grand Slam title.
I adored Pelé, in part because soccer, unlike tennis, basketball, and baseball, was an incredibly accessible sport.
Equipped with a “chikweshe”, a homemade plastic ball, my friends and I used to play soccer on makeshift pitches full of potholes and marked out with sticks and stones.
Even so, my admiration for Pelé was not limited to soccer.
Long before he was old enough to appreciate his myriad achievements and confidently place him at the top of the pantheon of all-time soccer greats, the Brazilian soccer star was firmly entrenched in Africa’s sociopolitical and cultural awakening. Along with Muhammad Ali, he existed as a towering and indelible symbol of black pride.
Pele’s story helped inspire devotion to black identity at a critical moment in African history and my country. For a people severely traumatized by oppression and economic dispossession, its unparalleled success freed us to revel in endless possibilities for our future.
Later, pundits and fans alike intermittently debated whether he was the greatest footballer in history, ahead of Argentine maestros Diego Maradona and Lionel Messi, or Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo.
Others would question whether he really scored more than 1,000 goals, reaching Guinness World Records.
Johan Cruyff, the Dutch star who won the prestigious Soccer Ballon d’Or three times, would not agree with such superfluous arguments about my hero.
“Pelé was the only footballer who exceeded the limits of logic,” he said.
I believe that one day someone will be able to surpass Pelé’s achievements. But no footballer can claim to have exemplified the hopes and dreams of Africans in colonial times – the long, difficult and bloody years when we desperately wanted to see and appreciate a supreme manifestation of black identity.
Today, first and foremost, Pele must be remembered as an extraordinary human being, a black man who exceeded all expectations in a world shaped and ravaged by the legacies of slavery and white supremacy.
He may be gone, but the spirit of black excellence that he embodied will endure forever.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
