"A Friendship of Combat": Pan-African Solidarities from Cairo to Congo

This paper is concerned with examining the role of intimate connections such as friendships and kinship bonds in the histories of African decolonization. Using a microhistorical approach to look at a particular moment and relationship, I analyze the lesser-known friendship between famed Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba and Egyptian university professor Abdel Aziz Ishaak. Prior to Lumumba’s brutal CIA-sponsored murder, his three children Patrice, Francois, and Julianne were taken from Congo to Cairo for protection arranged by Ishaak’s efforts. The children were raised by the Ishaak family household until their mother Pauline Opanga could safely join her children in Egypt a number of years later. Ishaak’s role has been largely written out of the Egyptian state’s narrative that instead valorizes the role of participating military forces. Through Ishaak and Lumumba, we can trace a transnational friendship bonded by a shared interest in anti-imperialist Pan-African ideals that was then translated into militant support for safety and ultimately, a familial unit. I rely on family records, interviews, and archival fragments to illuminate this relationship. I historicize the conditions that allowed for this bond to materialize while exploring its impact both on the micro-scale of family dynamics and more broadly, what it can tell us about mobility, communication, and diplomatic exchanges in the height of the Pan-African moment. Additionally, by investigating social ties as interconnected histories between Congolese and Egyptian families, I aim to unravel continuities and contradictions of the anti-colonial moment between official political strategy at the state level and narratives at a micro-level.