Ethiopia: The Football-Politics Nexus in Ethiopia

Despite claims that they are independent of one another sports and politics are intricately intertwined, argues our columnist Taye Negussie (PhD). More often than not, politics manifests itself through sports, and the occasions of sporting events serve as apt moments to communicate about one's political linings. This is possible because of the ways both national and local identities become associated with sports teams. This is particularly true in the realm of what has become the world's sport: football. Since both governments and ordinary citizens have become so physically, emotionally and mentally involved in that particular game, it has become another branch of political expression, identity and propaganda.

For example, in Europe, during the era of the dictatorships that plagued the continent from 1930s through 1950s, the link between football and politics was extremely visible when the dictatorial regimes often used the victories of their national football teams as vindicating their rather crazy policies, whereas, the ordinary masses seized the occasions of football matches to demonstrate either their loyalty and alignment with or dissatisfaction and resistances to the ideologies of the incumbent regimes.

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