Every two years, the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) does more than crown a football champion. What it interestingly does is briefly suspend the weight of everyday crises and allow the continent to breathe, laugh, argue and imagine itself anew. The 2025 AFCON, hosted in Morocco, was no exception. From the opening whistle on 21st December, 2025 to the final match on 18th January, 2026, the tournament was filled with excitement, drama and suspense; moments that transcended stadia into the digital public squares of social media. Across platforms, especially TikTok, X formerly known as Twitter, and Instagram, AFCON generated an endless stream of memes, debates, jokes and rivalries. Africans from different countries argued passionately about footballing superiority, refereeing decisions and historical dominance. While some Ghanaian fans were sympathetic, others openly rejoiced when Nigeria’s Super Eagles were eliminated at the semi-final stage, reminiscent of long-standing football rivalries that felt as old as the tournament itself. At the same time, many Africans rallied behind Senegal, seeing in the team not just sporting excellence but a symbol of discipline, organisation, and continental pride.
These moments of collective joy mattered. They revealed a continent hungry for shared experiences that transcend borders, however briefly. In a time when Africa is often portrayed through narratives of crisis, conflict, and dependency, AFCON offered an alternative story: one of laughter, creativity, rivalry without war and unity in diversity. Yet amid the noise, humour, and celebration, one quiet figure stood out motionless, silent, and deeply symbolic. During the Democratic Republic of Congo’s matches, a Congolese football fan, Michel Kuka Mboladinga, popularly known as Lumumba Vea, stood still throughout the games, mimicking the famous statue of Patrice Lumumba in Kinshasa. Clad simply and refusing to react even during moments of intense excitement, Mboladinga embodied discipline, restraint and memory. His silence spoke louder than chants. This act quickly went viral because what began as an individual gesture of remembrance became a continental and global conversation. For many young Africans, some encountering Lumumba’s image for the first time (especially Gene Z), it was a reminder that African history did not begin with hashtags or end with colonial independence. Lumumba’s presence at AFCON, resurrected through popular culture, connected football to politics, memory and unfinished struggles.
At independence, most of the first leaders of these newly founded countries guided by the ideal of pan-Africanism sought alternative paths toward development. Lumumba, Nkrumah, Toure and Nyerere among others walked this path. The result of this movement was that it led to the political spaces in these countries to be crowded with actors pursuing divergent goals under the banner of “order,” “stability,” or “international responsibility.” Yet these goals systematically undermined collective African interests. Patrice Lumumba, Congo’s first Prime Minister, was not merely a nationalist leader. He was a symbol of uncompromising African sovereignty, pan-African unity, and resistance to external domination. His assassination in 1961, facilitated by internal betrayal and external interests, remains one of the clearest examples of how African aspirations have been derailed by misaligned interests between local elites, foreign powers, and the broader African populace. Lumumba’s life and death illustrate a recurring pattern in African political history. His vision of an independent Congo, free from foreign manipulation and internal exploitation, directly threatened entrenched interests. While he sought genuine sovereignty and popular legitimacy, others both within and outside Congo, prioritised control over resources, geopolitical advantage, and regime stability. As in the case of Nkrumah in Ghana, Lumumba’s removal was justified through security narratives, but its outcome was decades of authoritarianism, extraction and instability. Their fate reflects how African leaders who challenge dominant interest structures often face isolation, delegitimisation, or elimination. The symbolic revival of Lumumba at AFCON is therefore not accidental. It resonates because many Africans recognise that the structural conditions he confronted have not disappeared. External influence persists, internal elites often prioritise regime survival over popular welfare and continental unity remains more rhetorical than real. Football, in this context, becomes a space where suppressed histories re-emerge and political memory finds new expression.
The 2025 AFCON demonstrated how popular culture can momentarily realign African interests. Fans from different countries disagreed fiercely, mocked each other relentlessly, yet still shared a common emotional space. The same social media platforms that often amplify division became arenas of collective storytelling and identity-making. This matters because it contrasts sharply with elite political behaviour. While ordinary Africans find joy, solidarity and meaning in shared moments like AFCON, political leadership across the continent often remains trapped in misaligned priorities between national and continental goals, between popular needs and external allegiances, between short-term power and long-term development. Lumumba’s silent presence at AFCON exposed this contradiction. He stood as a reminder of what African leadership could mean: moral clarity, courage and alignment with the people. His legacy challenges contemporary leaders to ask difficult questions about whose interests they truly serve.
The resurgence of Lumumba’s image at AFCON carries important lessons for today’s African leaders. First, legitimacy cannot be sustained through coercion, external backing or securitised governance alone. It must be rooted in alignment with popular aspirations. Second, unity cannot be declared, it must be practiced through policies that prioritise collective African interests over fragmented national or foreign agendas. Finally, African leaders must recognise that memory is political. Young Africans are reclaiming history through digital spaces, popular culture, and symbols. They are questioning inherited narratives and revisiting figures like Lumumba not as relics of the past, but as benchmarks against which present leadership is measured. In this sense, AFCON was not just a football tournament. It was a cultural and political moment. Amid laughter, memes, and rivalry, it reopened old questions about power, betrayal, and hope. Patrice Lumumba’s silent return reminded the continent that while interests may remain misaligned, the desire for dignity, unity, and self-determination endures and perhaps that is the most enduring victory of all.
