The protagonist of the new Netflix miniseries, played by Adele James, is the first black Cleopatra in cinema history, provoking outrage from the Egyptian government. Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, was chosen 60 years ago, on May 25, 1963, as the city for founding the Organization of African Unity (OAU). The two events are linked by an ideological bridge that sheds light on the mainstream political discourse of the Black movement.
With the founding of the OAU, the leaders of the newly independent countries renounced the ideal of panAfricanism: the United States of Africa. For decades, at the various panAfrican congresses in Europe and the USA, the state unity of all of Africa was promised. Just as Bolívar envisioned a Hispanic American great homeland, PanAfricanism dreamed of a “racial great homeland.” But in the crucial hour, African leaders favored national fragmentation along the lines drawn by the European powers.
The OAU sanctified colonial borders and secured the power of the political elites that emerged from independence. But the outward ornaments of the United Fatherland had to be preserved in the name of the historical legitimacy of the new heads of state. For this reason, the organization that opposed it was baptized with the word “Unity” and for the same reason Addis Ababa was chosen.
Ethiopia remained an independent empire throughout Europe’s imperial expansion into Africa. The idea of ”empire” was adapted to the discourse adopted by the new heads of state about an African entity freed from external influences. Menelik II, Ethiopian Emperor between 1889 and 1913, enslaved the subject Oromo in the south on a large scale. Haile Selassié, his successor between 1916 and 1974, was an Orthodox Christian monarch celebrated by the European aristocracy. Empire, slavery, Christianity? “Africanity” knelt before the dissolving European tradition.
Black Cleopatra? Official Egyptologists accuse the miniseries of trying to “erase the Egyptian identity”: the queen of Macedonian descent is “Greek” and “fairskinned”. Nations are the “imaginary communities” of nationalism and authoritarian Egyptian nationalism claims a legitimacy rooted in ancient Greece and refined by Arab civilization. Therefore, the Egyptian state rejects the ideological project of “Africanization” of Egypt.
What color was Cleopatra’s skin? The debate inspired by “scientific racism” is an anachronism: in ancient Egypt, skin color didn’t matter. There is no answer to the question. More than two centuries separate the queen from her Macedonian ancestors and the Egyptian empire stretched across all of Sudan. Inaccurate research suggests that Princess Arsinoe, Cleopatra’s halfsister and rival, had black African features.
Thina Garavi, director of the miniseries, doesn’t bet on the blackness of the queen, but on the ideological power of the suggestion: “Why do some people need a white Cleopatra?” The question makes sense but so does the symmetrical question. Why does racial identity need a black Cleopatra? The enterprise of “Africanization” of ancient Egypt was spread by the black movement. Following a rule of racial identity politics, it is about waging symbolic wars against imperialism and “Western whiteness”.
However, as in the case of the Addis Ababa election, the desired model is a reflection of the 19thcentury European canon. Ancient Egypt was a centralized empire whose productive power depended on masses of workers subjected to bondage or slavery.
“I challenge the Egyptians to see themselves as Africans,” explains Garavi. Okay but the request implies that the black movement is being asked to accept imperialism and slavery as part of African tradition.