First of all, the reporter doubted the stadiums would get much use because there are so few training facilities and grass-roots pitches in Angola. Sounds like there is an active league, though, so I’m not sure.

Also, it appears that Angola hosted the basketball version of the CAN in 2007 (its called Afrobasket: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIBA_Africa_Championship_2007). The reporter said the venues built for this tournement have already fallen into disrepair. Angola is pretty good at Basketball, perhaps much better than they are at football. If this is true, then I think there isn’t much hope for the football stadia. Time will tell.

The MPLA has been in power for over thirty years. It is corrupt and bloated by petrodollars. If the CAN legacy is spoiled it won’t be the first great opportunity they’ve cocked up. After all, the such oil wealth in a supposedly socialist country should have led to a big increase in living standards for all Angolans. Sadly, as you said, it has been more likely used to buy Portugese villas than something the people truly need.

I’m not this cynical about all of Africa. I just think Angola is one of the few remaining old-school dictatorships. Thankfully they are dying out. Two of the remaining ones, though, are Gabon and Equitorial Guinea (co-hosts for CAN 2012!)

The stadium issue is interesting in that regard. It’s true that Angola’s oil money is being used in sketchy ways. But I wonder if it is not better to build stadiums in Angola than luxury villas in Portugual (which I fear is the other option). That doesn’t excuse it, but it does make it complicated.

Likewise, with the white elephant argument on the stadiums–again, I’d just like to see the evidence. I think the white elephant argument could be better made in South Africa, where they already have plenty of decent stadiums. But (as I commented a few months ago in relation to my post on the Angolan stadiums) the infrastructure in Angola has been destroyed. I’ve been to games in the old Citadela in Luanda and it was a death trap–an aging concrete hulk that was a disaster waiting to happen. And whether we like it or not they will keep playing soccer in Angola, people will want to watch, and they will need somewhere to play. In fact, the Angolan domestic league is not bad for Africa (partially because some of the teams benefit from oil money). And I’m pretty sure the new stadiums will be used for the domestic league. They will also be used for other sports–the running tracks are not popular among soccer fans, but they do ensure use (even if it means no EPL team will play there on tour). The alternative of the old crumbling stadiums was not safe nor good for the communities. So I suspect the Angolan stadiums will actually be used much more than many world stadiums–even it requires public subsidies (remember also that Angola is technically a socialist country–so conceptually they don’t mind public susidies as much as those who think the free market cures all ills). But if there is evidence to to the contrary I’d genuinely like to see it.

Finally, I do have some sympathy for the concept of political criteria for hosting sports events. But I just worry that is a slippery slope. Who gets to decide the criteria? Us, as enlightened Westerners? As the comment notes, one of the trickiest things about Angola is its wealth of oil. And oil is tricky because the world is addicted to the stuff. So maybe the good old USA shouldn’t be able to host any mega-events (ie, the World Cup) until it cures its addiction to oil. I’d sign that petition. Instead, Hillary Clinton made quite a pleasant visit to Angola a few months ago, and gave no indiction that the US gov would agree to the claim of the Angolan gov as a “brutal dictatorship.” The Angolan government does, of course, have many inexcusable problems–but de-contextualizing that and opining with absolutes also strikes me as problematic.

Yes, they built four new stadiums. Now that the everyone’s gone home, who will use them? It is extremely doubtful that they will generate enough income pay for their own maintenance. They will either decline or require public subsidy. Angola is a country with serious social challenges ahead, does it need to have these white elephants?

The MPLA government is a brutal dictatorship. Their only saving grace is that for most of their existence they were opposed by a more butal insurgency, UNITA. Yes, Angola did well to host such an event considering its history, but that does not mean it was a good idea. Considering how many challenges Angola has, syphoning money off for a grand circus is a decidedly bad idea.

African governments have, since independence, opted for grand prestige projects. It has been one of the major curses of post-colonial life. The Volta River Dam in Ghana, the cathedral at Yamasoukro, the entire city of Abuja, are all examples. These projects have boosted the egos of various rulers, and taken valuable resources away from the people they rule.

The MPLA is an oil backed regime. The last I heard they had not published the government accounts for two decades. The CAN is undoubtedly someone’s pet project. He is probably pretty proud of it. It hasn’t really helped his country.

The CAN should be held in countries that have more-or-less deomocratic regimes and that don’t need to build new stadiums. If that limits the possible candidates to a handful of countries for the time being, so be it. Otherwise you just end up with white elephants and giving ego boosts to tyrants.

In fairness I do think the standard of the tournament was fairly poor as I wrote on Just Football. There was a massive dip in quality compared to Ghana 2008 and one can only speculate as to why that is (Didier Drogba claimed he was scared Cote d’Ivoire would be ‘shot like rabbits’ while in Cabinda – who knows to what extent that affected their play and the play of others).

But the extremely lazy stereotype that everything was poorly organised and ho ho ho look at Africa making a mess of things again is wholly unfair on a nation fresh out of a 27 year civil war. The Cabinda incident aside, of course there were some teething problems and issues that maybe didn’t go to plan. But like you say, Angola built 4 brand new and highly impressive stadia for this competition (in less time than it took to rebuild Wembley might I add) and got many things very right.

Let’s not bury the tournament under all the old cliches and instead judge it on its own merits.

“There was a theory that as the novelty wore off, local interest in the tournament would wane, but the queues that stretched twice round the block for tickets for tomorrow’s quarter-final between Cameroon and Egypt suggest Angolans remain as enthusiastic as ever. Whatever faults there have been in the organisation, and whatever difficulties with the infrastructure, this Cup of Nations has had better local support than any in recent history.”

Attendance wise, I just tried to look it up and found this as the recent stats for average ACON crowds:

2010 Angola — 18,741 per match
2008 Ghana — 22,313 per match
2006 Egypt — N/A
2004 Tunisia — 17,297 per match
2002 Mali — 17,813 per match
2000 Ghana/Nigeria — 21,172 per match
1998 Burkina Faso — 12,900 per match
1996 South Africa — 22,099 per match

So Angola seems to have been right around the median — which is not bad considering how difficult it is to travel to, and how little infrastructure it has for tourists. There were indeed a few games that had virtually no one there; Malawi v Algeria gets mocked a lot, but that was played in the middle of a week-day (when it was around 100 degrees) at the Luanda stadium out in a suburban area that all the journalists noted was almost impossible to travel to because of traffic. But otherwise (with the very significant exception of the Cabinda situation) it seems to me as though it is not fair to just write off the whole tournament (or the whole place–as often seems to be the implication) as an abject failure. That just panders to stereotypes and over-simplifications.