Habib Ayeb and Abeer Abazeed celebrate the life of Helmi Sharawy. Born in Egypt in 1935, Sharawy saw Africa as one with all its own coherence, but with cultural, historical, and geopolitical diversities. He spent his life campaigning for African unity, with empirical knowledge of Africa he was a committed anti-racist and anti-colonial scholar and activist. The idea of two Africa-s was a colonial and racist lie – the continent was one and must unite.
*
In memory of Helmi Sharawy (1935-2023)
By Habib Ayeb
Egypt and Africa have lost, on Monday 20 March 2023, the academic and tireless “activist” of African causes professor Helmi Sharawy (1935-2023). He was undoubtedly one of the best specialists on sub-Saharan cultures and the geopolitics of Africa as a whole.
At the beginning of his biography, recently published in Arabic in Cairo, he quoted his great friend and accomplice, the economist Samir Amin (1931 – 2018), who said, addressing him during a tribute organized in his honor:
I am not only a companion in the struggle; much more than that, you and I were among the first Egyptians to realize that our national struggle is an integral part of the struggle to restore the independence of all the peoples and nations of Africa’[1].
Born in 1935 in the Egyptian city of Giza, Helmi Sharawy entered the University of Cairo in 1958 and began his postgraduate studies at the Faculty of Arts of Cairo University in the Department of Sociology. From October 1959, Helmi Sharawy was hired as a civil servant in the Office of African Affairs attached to the Presidency of the Republic. He was there, in charge of the follow-up of the East African countries with the task of general coordinator of the 23 offices of the African liberation movements in Cairo.[2] He remained there until 1975.
Sharawy participated in the composition of official delegations representing Egypt and Africa and was part of the delegations celebrating the independence of the newly independent countries. He was politically active during the period of Gamal Abdel Nasser. He also served as a liaison between Nasser’s government and the various African liberation movements based in the Egyptian capital. He later became a consultant to the Ministry of Sudan – Egyptian Integration Programme (1975-1980). Helmi Sharawy was well known for his role with Gamal Abdel Nasser but also for his sometimes full-frontal opposition to Nasser’s two successors Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak.
Sharawy was able to build relationships with some of the great African leaders he had met during his work at the African Affairs Office, which later enabled him to develop a wide network of relationships with political actors on the continent, but especially with African academics and intellectuals, which he continued to expand and develop until his last days. He had known and engaged with Samora Machel, Amilcar Cabral, and Nelson Mandela.
This solid experience in African issues was used to produce more than 13 books in Arabic and four in English, most of which were devoted to African issues. His books, published since 1970, included: Angola Revolution (1978), Arabs and Africans Face to Face (1985), Israel in Africa (1986), Culture of Liberation (2002), Africa in Transition for 20-21st Century (2008), and The Sudan: On the Cross Roads (2011). He had also translated African scholarship, including Kwesi Prah’s African Languages for the Mass Education of Africans (Dt. Stiftung für Internat. Entwicklung, 1995), and Mahmood Mamdani and Ernest Wamba dia Wamba’s classic African Studies in Social Movements and Democracy (CODESRIA, 1995).
With his empirical knowledge of Africa and the various political issues at stake, as well as his anti-racist and anti-colonial convictions, Helmi was one of the first to question the idea of two Africa-s: a sub-Saharan and black Africa and another north of the great Sahara which would be more Arab-Berber and white. For him, Africa was one with all its own coherence but with cultural, historical, and geopolitical diversities that are its primary wealth.
He taught “African Political Thought” at Juba University, South Sudan (1981-1982). Then he was selected as the expert for Afro-Arab Cultural Relations at Arab League ALECSO in Tunisia until 1986. In 1987 he was appointed professor at the Arab and African Research Centre (AARC) in Cairo, where he was director from 1987 to 2010. It was during his tenure at AARC that CODESRIA, of which he was an executive committee member from 2011 to 2015, alongside Samir Amin, developed the partnership that led to the organisation of the Gender Symposium in Cairo for several years, and to the joint publication series entitled Afro-Arab Selections for the Social Sciences. This series selects and translates CODESRIA publications into Arabic. Helmi’s passing gives meaning to the phrase ‘end of an era’.
During a discussion on the hydro-politics of the Nile and especially on the relations between Ethiopia and Egypt, Helmi Sharawy, whom I had met for the first time in Cairo at the end of the 1980s, replied with this beautiful sentence that has remained engraved in my memory: “Ethiopia is the beating heart that provides the vital sap to Egypt. Without this heart, Egypt would never have existed. For this reason, these two countries do not have the luxury of being enemies”.
Habib Ayeb is a Geographer and filmmaker. He is the founder of l’Observatoire de la Souveraineté Alimentaire et de l’Environnement (OSAE) and a regular contributor to ROAPE.
*
Helmi Sharawy – a storyteller, an activist, and a scholar
By Abeer Abazeed
‘Egypt is an African country or not’ this ongoing debate about Egypt’s position in African politics and scholarship was transcended by Helmi Sharawy. His academic work and activism transferred to us – young Egyptian researchers – the African identity of Egypt and how to analyse Egyptian social phenomena through Africanist lenses. Personally, I digested African knowledge through his talent of storytelling, his scholarship and his persistent activism at national and continental levels.
A storyteller
Nasser’s regime and the question of Africa is a common issue in many studies covering Egypt’s engagement in the continent’s affairs. Under Gamal Abdel Nasser’s rule, Egypt used to be a supporter to liberation movements and newly independent countries as well as the founding of the non-aligned movement and the Organization of African Union. I used to read about Nasser’s role in Africa as a historical event without any real sense of its significance. But listening to Sharawy narrating such historical events, I became conscious of the anti-colonial struggle and politics of building African solidarity in the 1960s.
Prof. Sharawy worked as a coordinator for African Liberation Movements Office under the auspice of the President’s Office of African Affairs from 1960 to 1975. From his close interaction with Nasser, I realized for instance that the marriage of Nkrumah and Fathia is not just a sentence to read in a study showing the Ghanaian-Egyptian relationship, rather, it is a story of how and why Nkrumah proposed to her through Nasser.
In the last phone call with Sharawy, he told me about the dog of the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie when he visited Egypt and how the pet walked in front of the emperor and its collar’s bell was like an alert to others that the emperor was coming. Such a story encouraged me to read more about Haile Selassie and his obsession with animals. This talent of telling stories was supported by his educational background in sociology and his early research interest in folklore. Prof. Sharawy travelled through villages across Egypt to document folklore. In the African sense, he believed in the significance of orality to transfer knowledge and wisdom.
Furthermore, his way of narrating the past did not only provide us with information about the event or interaction, it also encouraged us to think critically about what happened and generate research questions. For instance, in the group of Africanists that he founded as a sub-research group for young researchers in the Arab and African Research Centre, he motivated us to do research on historical topics that reveal Egypt’s connections with the continent. As in the following post on his Facebook post in 2016, Sharawy suggested topics such as the Forty Days’ Road, the Cairo-to-Cape route or the role of Kamal Al Din Salah, the Egyptian diplomat who was assassinated in 1957 in Somalia or the role of Abd Al-Aziz Ishaq and the African Association.
A scholar
Prof. Sharawy did not let his rich experience with African leaders fade without documentation. Oral history needs to be recorded otherwise history would easily vanish. Sharawy wrote academic books and articles demonstrating Egypt’s engagement in African affairs in the time of independence besides analysing the anti-colonial struggles. Additionally, in his volume of Heritage of African Languages Manuscripts in Ajami he illustrated the cultural interaction across Sahara. In 2019, he published his autobiography Sira Misriyya Ifriqiyya: Mudhakkirat Helmi Sharawi (in English: An Egyptian African Story: The Memoirs of Helmi Sharawy) where the reader can enjoy his tales documenting phases of Egypt’s position on the continent. Reem Abou-El-Fadl wrote a synthesis of the autobiography, she also translated into English some of his interviews and analysed his role in Nasser’s time.
However, Prof. Sharawy’s scholarship was not only centred around his unique experience with liberation movements, he constantly mobilized us as young researchers to engage with African scholarship namely through CODESRIA. Starting in May 2012, Sharawy held meetings with me and other colleagues to establish a network of Egyptian researchers to actively participate in CODESRIA’s activities and publications. At that time Ebrima Sall, the former executive director of CODESRIA aligned with Sharawy’s vision of enhancing Egyptian participation and kept us connected to CODESRIA’s activities. Furthermore, to bridge the language barrier, Sharawy, with Sall, used the Arabic language in CODESRIA’s announcements as well as accepting papers written in Arabic in conferences and workshops to encourage the involvement of Arabic-speaking researchers.
While Sharawy mobilized us to connect with other African scholars, he advised us on how to produce original research. Sharawy usually told us not to reproduce the western view by relying only on Western scholars and negating African writings and publications. African researchers know better about their countries, so read and cite them, he argued. Therefore, we read and discussed in the monthly meeting of the Africanist group the works of Archie Mafeje, Samir Amin, Mahmood Mamdani, Heider Ibrahim Ali and other Africanist scholars.
Another key piece of advice he gave us was to consider Egypt’s affairs when we submit a paper to an African conference or journal; in other words, engaging in African academia does not mean adopting the colonial classification and studying a ‘sub-Saharan’ country. Moreover, he enlightened us that politics is not to analyse only conventional power structure i.e. political parties and formal policies but our analytical scope must look at cultural and social dynamics.
An activist
The spirit of struggle and resistance was part of Sharawy’s personality. He cofounded different civil initiatives and organizations that struggled against imperialism mainly after he left the President’s Office of African Affairs in the 1970s. He was a member in the consulting committee of the Socialist People’s Alliance Party, and he actively joined the masses in demonstrations that took place after the 2011 revolution. What I witnessed closely was how he was a ‘committed intellectual’ who was concerned with, as Issa Shivji has written, ‘politics as a mode of people’s self-expression’.
Prof. Sharawy taught us – maybe unconsciously – the meaning of scholar-activism. For example, in 2013 when a new constitution was being drafted in Egypt, Sharawy encouraged us in the Africanist group to search how African identity is addressed in other African constitutions and to write a statement to the constitution committee urging them to affirm the African identity of Egypt. This idea evolved into a public conference with the Ministry of Culture about African identity in the programs of Egyptian political parties and social forces.
Besides Egyptian dynamics, Prof. Sharawy invited guest speakers from Sudan to the monthly meeting of the Africanist group to share with us what had been happening in the 2016 and 2018 uprisings. Through that, we could keep our eyes open to the voice of people on the ground and not simply focus on media coverage.
Prof. Sharawy did not transfer African knowledge to us in a mechanical manner, rather he was a humane and amiable mentor who cared about young researchers. Though I barely knew him at the time, I remember in a CODESRIA conferences in Accra how he took pictures while I was presenting my paper as a gesture of support in an international conference. In addition, he introduced me to other African scholars at the conference.
Another situation that confirmed his nobility was when our dear friend Mohamed Hagag passed away in a car accident in 2018. Hagag was a promising researcher who participated in CODESRIA’s activities and coordinated the Africanist group. Prof. Sharawy generously pushed for collecting Hagag’s writings of academic papers and op-ed articles in a printed book which was a further reflection of his belief in the agency of young researchers.
As valuable as the experience of knowing Prof. Sharawy, we never felt he played the role of gatekeeper of African studies in Egypt. On the contrary, his engagement with the liberation movements, his scholarly connections with CODESRIA and his thorough activism provided us with analytical approaches and tools to research Africa as a whole.
Your voice and support will be deeply missed Prof. Sharawy!
Abeer Abazeed is assistant professor of political science at the Faculty of Economics and Political sciences in Cairo University.
Notes
[1] Shaarawi had published an autobiography, entitled Helmi Sharawy’s “Egyptian African Biography” (Sira Misriya Afrikiya). Dar Al-Ain for publishing and distribution. He was about to publish the second part of the book, the final manuscript of which he had reviewed himself a few days before his departure. Sharawy wrote in his important memoirs about accompanying Joshua Nkomo, who came to Egypt to open the Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) office for the African National Congress and about his rare meetings and recordings with the leaders of Eritrea at the height of their struggle for independence from Ethiopia, then his interviews with the Zanzibaris and their leader, Sheikh Ali Mohsen Al-Barwani, who asked for help to achieve independence from Britain, with whom he began a long friendship.
[2] At the time, Cairo had become, at the instigation of the former Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, the capital of the African liberation movements of almost all the countries of the African continent which were still colonised and which obtained their independence successively between the 1950s and the 1970s (Algeria in 1962, Tanganyika (Tanzania) in 1961, Zanzibar in 1963, and Angola and Mozambique in 1975.)
