El-Sisi never ran, while Semenya was a champion; the winner?

We will continue living in an unfair and unpredictable world if Caster Semenya is barred from running as a woman and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is considered to have enough legitimacy as head of state of Egypt to head the African Union. It does not make sense.

El-Sisi came to power some five years ago simply by overthrowing the elected president, Mohammed Morsi, throwing him in jail and jailing and torturing thousands of his Muslim Brotherhood supporters.

Seriously, this man has absolutely no right to join, let alone head, an organisation that has declared its democratic ambitions and particularly its opposition to military takeovers that remind the continent of the coups of the 1960s and 1970s.

True enough, when el-Sisi’s coup took place, the AU appeared to put its collective foot down and closed its doors in the face of Egyptian delegates.

But in very short order, that foot proved not heavy enough, and Egypt was allowed back into the fold without so much as having made a promise to mend its ways and allow at least the semblance of democratic governance all the other states pretend they respect.

Now, that was the injury. The insult came a week ago, when the same gatecrasher was chosen to be the year-long master of ceremonies of the same party it was wrong to let him into.

Okay, I understand, some will say there are hardly any democratic states in Africa, that el-Sisi is just one card in a whole pack of tyrants, but we have to agree that some are worse than others.

It is safe to say, and I say it without a second thought, that el-Sisi is not a bona-fide president of Egypt, that he is a usurper, that the true president of Egypt is languishing in gaol. It is a problem that the people of Egypt, and no one else, should be meddling in, but then, as Africans, we are called upon to stand up and say that what is wrong is wrong.

Unlike el-Sisi, Semenya belongs in the category she is competing in. She is a woman, quite a muscular one, yes, but I trust that those whose job it is to check these matters have done due diligence.

It is the way we are made that makes us different. Some are made frail, some are made stout. Some are created tall, some short. Some are constructed for speed, some for comfort, etcetera, etcetera.

To want to force Semenya to lower her testosterone levels is to want her to interfere with the way she is made; it is artificial meddling with nature. I have never heard anyone in the sporting world suggest that the extra-tall basketball players reduce their height, nor that the boxers who look like armoured personnel carriers.

The physical attributes of an athlete will naturally influence the way he or she performs. A British sports medicine journal article I read recently says that high testosterone produced naturally – that is, without artificial meddling – gives a “significant competitive edge” to female athletes. There exists, says the journal, a condition known as “hyper-androgenism,” an overabundance of male hormones.

The international athletics governing body, IAAF, was challenged by an Indian athlete, Dutee Chand, who had this condition and was disqualified at first.

Unsurprisingly, Chand has come out strongly in support of Semenya. She says that for four years she was treated shabbily by sports officials and the public… “The negativity, the fear of my career ending prematurely, the insensitive comments about my body…” She is relieved that now she can run again, and hopes Semenya will too.

These girls, and others like them, are surely the victims of the way our societies almost everywhere have constructed masculinity and femininity. The male is supposed to be this tough, rough, gruff hunk, while the female is expected to be soft, tender and doll-like. But all that is fiddlesticks. There are women who look like Arnie Schwazeneger and men who could be mistaken for Angelina Jolie.

Maybe Semenya’s “mistake” was to wed her girlfriend, Violet, which produced such bizarre media quips as “her beautiful, pregnant wife.” In a world that has changed so much in ways that people of my era can hardly comprehend, maybe our attitudes are still stuck in the past.

Like, we still think that an el-Sisi can be our chairman even though he stole a government but Semenya can’t run with women.

Jenerali Ulimwengu is chairman of the board of the Raia Mwema newspaper and an advocate of the High Court in Dar es Salaam. E-mail: