Some Piece Apart

Sadio Mané hitting Leroy Sané has more underneath

Leroy Sané spent three seasons with Manchester City before joining Bayern Munich. He returned to England last week to play his former club in the Champions League. Sané arrived at the Etihad Stadium with something to prove, but the homecoming turned sour. His combative spirit was evident, but aggressive to the point of liability. He declined every safe pass, dribbled every opening, and fired every shot. Footballers who appear busy often receive measures of credit, but Sané found no such payment. Bayern lost 3-0, their quarter-final seemingly exhausted, and the 27-year-old’s performance was heavily interrogated.

A bad night for Sané got worse.

During the match, a miscommunication transpired between Sané and teammate Sadio Mané. Understanding the former’s determination to play well against his previous club, the latter made a congruent run. Moving behind City’s defensive line, Mané assumed either an expansive through ball or his teammate would keep dribbling into the opposition’s half. Instead, Sané played to feet and while Mané ran away from the ball, City defender Nathan Aké pounced on the error.

Sané turned and yelled at his fellow winger before continuing the game. Nothing was thought of the shout until the following day when Tobias Altschäffl of Sport Bild revealed an altercation in the away dressing room that involved Mané striking Sané. For his punch, Bayern suspended Mané one match and issued a fine over €300,000 according to Sky Germany’s Florian Plettenberg.

“Something Sané said” was the reason offered for the dispute, but there wasn’t an account of the words. Twenty-four hours later, Brut journalist Papa Mahmoud Gueye reported “noir de merde,” meaning “black shit” in their shared French, sparked the fuse. Gueye wrote Sané immediately regretted his comment and Mané apologised to his teammates in training.

Bayern’s sporting director Hasan Salihamidžić told Sky Germany he spoke with Sané after Gueye’s story, and claimed he denied the allegation.

To earn an English degree at my alma mater one needed 12 foreign language credit hours. I chose French. The first three classes were grammatical. Luckily—as I was quickly sinking—the fourth and final installment offered a reprieve. You could choose between another intensive grammar course or one centered on French culture.

The second option was offered once and had 20 spots. It was the earliest I ever attempted registration; thankfully I was there in time. Instead of conjugating verbs, my class watched films, read poems, and learned about French life. When assigned to write about one Francophone poet, it was there I found Léopold Sédar Senghor. He wasn’t formally taught, but when left to myself I invariably revert to people and ideas from the African world.

[In retrospect, Senghor was an obvious occurrence. Not only an intellectual and poet, when Senegal was given independence in 1960 he served over 20 years as its first president. Finding his poetry was unavoidable and probably preferred when investigating colonial ties. One does not rule two decades in west Africa without proximity to the French political apparatus.]

I remember selecting “Cher frère blanc,” where Senghor asserts his Blackness while simultaneously subverting the label of “coloured” by recognising in Europeans, whether truthfully or figuratively, their capacity to change colour. Much of his intellectual and poetic work is grounded in “Negritude,” a literary and political ideology developed by Francophone writers like Aimé Césaire, Jeanne Nardal, Léon Damas, and Senghor himself in the 1930s.

Negritude (roughly meaning “Blackness”) seeks to combine anti-colonial thought with Black nationalism by promoting positive ideas of Africa, solidarity throughout the African Diaspora, and shedding concepts of European superiority. Taking inspiration from movements like the Harlem Renaissance, Negritude’s legacy can be seen in South Africa’s Black Conscious Movement, the “Black is Beautiful” movement in the United States, and philosopher Franz Fanon.

I felt an immediate uneasiness when the initial story broke.

How one acts on the pitch is not entirely reflective of their personality, but were Mané prone to violence more than one instance where he overstepped would exist in his near decade at the top. If past behaviour is any reflection of character, to bloody a teammate would require something horrific. My first thought was colourism, but I had no evidence—nor was I interested in opening the door to what follows—but Gueye’s reporting was consistent with the uneasiness I felt.

In addition to aiding suspicions, the account returned Senghor and his framework to mind because both Mané and Sané have roots in Senegal.

Mané is his country’s most famous person. Born in Senegal, he rose from football in his village to lifting the Champions League and Africa Cup of Nations. Sané is of the Diaspora. His father was born in Dakar but moved to France when he was young. Finding professional success as a striker in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, Souleymane Sané earned 23 caps for the Senegal national team in the 1990s. He settled his family with Olympic medalist Regina Weber in Germany and had three sons—one of them Leroy.

If the attributed comment were accurate, it betrays the ideals created and crafted by the Negritude movement. Where fraternity should have been—not only within the context of Bayern Munich but through a shared Senegal—it was absent; that layer is without question. More damning is the suggestion Sané wielded Mané’s blackness as a weapon to inflict psychological damage.

The tenets Negritude espoused have not fully materialised. Blackness remains bound by stigmas placed upon it during processes of imperialism and colonisation. Conditionally, Mané’s reaction is less concerning than Sané’s overreach. Bayern fining and suspending players who violate team laws is customary, but the alleged comments would be the true violation, as they would require Sané digging deep in an attempt to excavate pain.

Mané cannot access the same rhetorical mechanisms as Sané. There is little darker-skinned Africans can say about lighter-skinned Africans to cause trauma when comparing the reverse. Understanding that dynamic, if “noir de merde” left Sané’s lips, Mané firing back was logical—albeit rash.

The centrality of my uneasiness was Sané’s mother. He and I share that in common. My mother is partly German, by way of Canada, and is not an African—although many of her friends, Ugandan husband of over 30 years, and two sons are.

Placed in Sané’s mouth, those words demand questions because the composition of his ancestry creates tension. Someone who looks like Sané looks, is named Leroy Aziz, and has suffered racist abuse in his career knows the lines and where he stands in relation. Crossing those lines places identity into a tailspin.

Adopting anti-African postures while being someone who in most instances is viewed as African (regardless of one’s belief in its accuracy) does nothing except fragmenting the already fragmented.

There is already some level of suspicion, some piece apart, those with mixed parentage are subject to in the wider African community. Stories like this expose fault lines of colourism, anti-Blackness, self-hatred, and the regrettable—though understandable—insufficiency of movements like Negritude to rectify the assault on African identity over the last five centuries.

I was raised and identify as an African. I find dignity in being Ugandan/Iteso. My upbringing and politicisation are my own, so I don’t expect to be followed, but baseline expectations must be set. One of which is: nothing permits using the darker complexion of another as an instrument to demean.

For Sané’s sake, and perhaps my own, it is impermissible to become duplicate versions of the same oppressor, repeating the same oppression. 🎯