Issa Hayatou, far right.

Our post last week condemning CAF’s decision to ban Togo for two Africa Cup of Nations tournaments for withdrawing from this year’s event following the deadly attack on their team bus mirrored much of the world reaction: it saw the draconian punishment as rash, insensitive and wrong.

Not everyone agreed, though. Gabrielle Marcotti defended CAF for following the principle that governments should not interfere in sporting matters no matter the circumstances, as it was Togo’s government who reportedly made the final decision that Togo’s team should return home for three days of national mourning (CAF then took this as a de facto withdrawal from the tournament, even though Togo then said they wanted to return and play).  I’ll cite Marcotti in full:

On the face of it, the decision seems ludicrous. You enter the Africa Cup of Nations, you get attacked by terrorists, watch as two of your delegation die before your eyes and withdraw from the tournament to mourn. And then comes the most stinging blow. You get banned for the next two tournaments by the Confederation of African Football (CAF).

CAF’s announcement that Togo would not be allowed to enter the next two continental tournaments met howls of outrage. And, indeed, it is shocking, until you read CAF’s justification. Togo were banned not for withdrawing from the competition — given the circumstances, it would have been more than understandable — but because the decision to pull out was taken by the Togolese Government, which apparently overruled the players, who reportedly wanted to play.

And CAF, like Fifa and Uefa, has strict rules about government interference in sporting matters: the decision should have been made by Togo’s football association and it should have been final.

If this decision — however painful — is the first step in CAF standing up to government meddling in African football, then it is welcome. But if it fails to follow through the next time some local “strongman” starts giving “advice” to his FA or plunders the football coffers, then it will feel as if Togo are being singled out.

We criticised Marcotti for this piece on Monday, with one commenter strongly disagreeing and defending this position. Yet I’m still convinced this is a hasty and political decision by CAF themselves. And this would seem an extraordinary incident on which CAF should take such a first step, however worthwhile the principle, to ending “government meddling” in African football — this isn’t a case of squabbling over team selection or player bonuses or TV money, but a true tragedy that actually should make us pause and realise football is a game, and sometimes life, or mourning over the loss of it, should take precedence.

Here are several questions I’d have for Issa Hayatou, CAF’s chief, regarding it:

• Why was CAF’s decision to ban Togo announced before the tournament was even over, on the eve of the final itself? Was there no consideration given to CAF taking a full investigation into what had happened in Cabinda and after, and what role Togo’s government had exactly played in the return of the team to Togo? How could this decision have been reached so swiftly and abruptly, without any apparent input from Togo?
• Togo’s government themselves said CAF failed to contact them, even to offer sympathies, in the aftermath of the attack. Why was this the case?  Wouldn’t communication between CAF and Togo’s government potentially have allowed them to find a mutually agreeable way for Togo’s team to leave, mourn and return?
• Did CAF, in the wake of the horrendously traumatic attack on Togo’s team, offer to delay Togo’s next game in order to give the team time to mourn?
• Relatedly, is CAF planning a full, independent investigation into who knew Togo were travelling by bus to Cabinda, and who accepted this arrangement?

Furthermore, it was clear from the conflicting statements coming from the players, team and government of Togo in the days after the tragedy that nobody was sure what to do or how to react, and whether the team should play or not. Never before has a football team faced such a swift decision in the aftermath of such tragedy, while a player’s life was still hanging in the balance. CAF has consistently shown a shocking lack of compassion for the position Togo’s players, through no fault of their own, found themselves in.

Togo national team coach Hubert Velud expressed his fury at Hayatou for the decision today: “It’s a scandal. This decision shocked us. I wonder on what logical basis such a decision was taken. Everyone knows that the morale of the players hit rock bottom after seeing death in Cabinda. It was impossible for them to play a football match.”

He went on to say he was particularly angry about Hayatou “because I realized that he’s an opportunist who serves his personal interests in the name of football. I’m more frustrated than you can imagine. Issa Hayatou should have taken into consideration the sentiments of the Togolese people before such a decision was taken. Hayatou proved that he’s not capable of running CAF, he should review himself.”

FIFA, of course, with Blatter facing reelection soon and needing CAF’s support, will do nothing. Hayatou will not do the decent thing and resign, I am sure, but perhaps at least the rest of Africa’s football associations will do the decent thing and kick him out at their next election.

Big Story

While BBC African football blogger Piers Edwards’ opening sentence on his post yesterday may be slightly over-the-top (“Not since Buckingham Palace took so long to respond Princess Diana’s death in 1997 has an organisation so badly misjudged the mood of the public”), he does capture a bit of the public mood following Caf’s decision to fine Togo $50 000 and ban them from the next two Africa Cup of Nations tournaments.

Edwards is closer to the mark when he writes:

Caf argues that the African game doesn’t get the coverage it deserves – but how is Sunday’s Nations Cup final between Egypt and Ghana going to be about football when announcing this decision 24 hours beforehand?

Even while this tournament has progressed and become about the football, there was always the feeling that the Cabinda attack, which took place 48 hours before the opening game, would overshadow it.

Now it certainly will, as Caf reignited a fading ember at the worst moment.

And it’s true: in lieu of a preview of today’s final between Ghana and Egypt, most of the English news sites featured Emmanuel Adebayor’s bitter reaction in L’Equipe to Caf’s Cameroonian President, Issa Hayatou: “Mr Hayatou has served Africa extensively, but now he must escape…this decision is outrageous” (although, oddly, Jonathan Wilson’s tournament diary gives the news one sentence, the headline reading “all’s well”).  Any hope of a goodwill story leading up to the final, like the re-emergence of Ghanaian forward, Asamoah Gyan, has been definitively quashed.

FIFA is yet to issue a statement on the decision, and none more than Togo’s coach Hubert Velud are hoping for strong leadership from Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini:

I am curious to know if Blatter and Platini will endorse this decision.  If they let this go, it is the gateway to completely dysfunctional football. I officially launched an appeal to international bodies to see their reaction.

The relationship between politics and football is always a complex balancing act, but if there was ever an appropriate instance to allow a merciful exception to the rule, this was it.  By timing the decision immediately before the tournament final, Issa Hyatou and Caf have effectively ended any hope the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations will be remembered for anything other than violent attack, and the cynical politicking that followed.

Worldwide Stories:

• Meanwhile, Paul Wilson at the Guardian writes a scathing summary of the reasons behind slow ticket sales ahead of the World Cup in South Africa: “Cheap tickets or easier access may have persuaded more people to take a risk, but it is too late now. Fifa are stuck with an unholy triangle of security scares, expensive tickets and hotels, and too few flights into the country.”
• All geared up for next week’s Super Bowl action?  Well, you’ll be delighted to know that the NFL’s flagship final has been usurped by the Champions League in global viewership, and the trend looks to continue: “The Super Bowl, traditionally the biggest TV event in global club sport, attracted 106m live viewers for the whole thing, with a reach of 162m. ‘That was Super Bowl’s best ever figure, and as an event it’s still growing,’ said Kevin Alavy, an Initiative director. ‘Extraordinarily, the Champions’ League is growing faster, with room for further significant expansion.’”
• When Saturday Comes pays heed to the use of the “stern talking to” instead of a first half yellow card.
• And what finally, what all that John Terry business means for him financially.  If you must.

FIFA and its confederations take political interference into sporting affairs pretty seriously. Perhaps too seriously, given certain circumstances.

The decision of CAF to ban Togo from the next two Africa Cup of Nations because of the decision of the Togolese government to withdraw the team from the current tournament is defended by the confederation as follows:

The Executive Committee of the Confederation of African Football met on 30 January 2010 and examined the withdrawal of Togo national team from the Orange Africa Cup of Nations 2010.

The Executive Committee and its president renewed their sincere condolences to the families of victims involved in this tragic terrorist attack which happened January 8, 2010. The attack was condemned by CAF and also a total support was given to the Togolese team.

At that time, CAF said they have understood perfectly the decision of players not to participate in the competition.

Meanwhile, following a decision taken by players to participate in the competition, the Togolese government decided to call back their national team.

The decision taken by the political authorities is infringing CAF and CAN regulations. Therefore, a decision has been taken to suspend the Togo national team for the next two editions of Africa Cup of Nations, with a fine of $50,000.00 handed to the Togolese national football association, in conformity with article 78 of Africa Cup of Nations Angola 2010.

CAF then links to their regulations to prove their point (actually, they don’t: the link doesn’t work).

Togo midfielder Thomas Dossevi expressed his disappointment.

“We are a group of footballers who came under fire and now we can’t play football any more. They are crushing us. Togo should appeal the suspension. When we said we were going home for a three-day mourning they said they were with us in this ordeal and now they punish us.”

This comes just five days after CAF president Issa Hayatou said “We wished they would have stayed but respect their decision to leave.”

Apparently not.

Can anyone offer a serious defense for this decision? We like to look past the obvious reaction here, but I can’t think of much more to say about CAF’s insensitivity here, expect that it’s remarkable they couldn’t even wait for the dust to settle on the tournament and the brutal attack on Togo before laying down the hammer on a still grieving team.

In the midst of several embarrassing incidents during the last decade, most notably the arrest of Cameroonian coaches (one of whom was German) during the 2002 Cup of Nations in Mali for “trying to place a magic charm on the pitch,” CAF has worked hard to “modernize” the image of African soccer.  As a CAF spokesperson noted after the Mali episode: “we are no more willing to see witch doctors on the pitch than cannibals at the concession stands.  Image is everything.”

But with my sympathies to CAF and all due respect to the marketing industry, I find it much more interesting to think of “image” as merely the most obvious thing.  Behind the image is where you find the good stuff: the ways that the local and the global get mashed up into dynamic cultures of the game.  In African soccer stories of witchcraft and black magic are simultaneously fun and controversial, illuminating and misleading.  They are also extraordinarily common.

Among my own favorites from working in Malawi many years ago was one from a school teacher friend whose team was playing a local rival.  The game was delayed by a crucial decision about the game ball: they couldn’t agree on which to use.  Each team was sure that the other had put some type of juju curse on its own ball, and neither would concede the advantage.  Eventually a Solomonesque compromise was reached—they would use one school’s ball, but the other school’s players would be allowed to urinate on that ball in order to dilute any potential curse.  I assumed the first half was mostly short passing.

I was also thoroughly intrigued—why do seemingly rational people believe seemingly irrational things?  How similar is the popularity of juju in a place such as Malawi to the popularity of sports superstitions everywhere in the world?  And now, does the seeming absence of stories about juju at the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations signify meaningful changes in the nature of the African game?

Ivory Coast, 2007. By Michael Hughes on Flickr.

Believing and Questioning

To start, it is important to note that there is no one African experience with what I’m referring to as juju—there are different names, rituals, and degrees of belief both between and within the diverse nations on the continent.  There are also important technical differences between “black magic,” “witchcraft,” “traditional medicine,” and other loosely related concepts which I’m crudely aggregating into a broad colloquial category of practices and beliefs based on supernatural powers.  But as a generalization, from my experience juju in African soccer is mostly strange only when considered from afar.

For one thing, the use of curses and forms of witchcraft is not exclusive to African soccer: it is relatively easy to find examples from other parts of the world, including rumors that in his desperation (and apparent lack of managerial skills) Diego Maradona turned to Argentina’s version of juju before playing Paraguay in their crucial World Cup qualifier.  Maradona is also one of many managers who looks to religion to buoy his team’s prospects—Giovanni Trapattoni, for example, famously brought a bottle of holy water with him to the sidelines of Italy games in the 2002 World Cup.  Such analogies do not go without notice in Africa: as a South African fan noted to the Guardian following up CAF’s response to the 2002 Cup of Nations: “Will they ban Catholic players crossing themselves?  Will they shut the chapel at Barcelona? If you believe, muti makes you stronger.”

For another thing, it is not entirely clear whether calling something juju makes it all that different from the types of superstitions that are prevalent amongst athletes everywhere in the world.  When Tottenham striker Jermaine Defoe replied to a journalist asking about a particularly short haircut by noting “I had to, I only ever seem to get injured when I have longer hair,” was his logic that different from the Rwandan player who planted a ‘magic stick’ in the goal to ward against unlucky bounces?  Or when Raymond Domenech allowed his interest in astrology to mitigate against picking Scorpios such as Robert Pires to play for France, was his decision making any more exotic than Ghanaian fans who carried a “juju pot” in hopes of bringing the Black Stars good luck?  And all this is to say nothing of Robert van Persie’s apparent belief in the powers of horse placenta to heal a bum ankle.

Being fascinated by juju and African soccer may ultimately say as much about outsider perceptions of Africa and how we ourselves define what is “rational” as it says about Africa.  But I admit that it has long provoked my curiosity—so much so that when I spent a season playing in the Malawian Super League in the 90’s, I made an active effort to learn about juju.  It just sounded exotic and fun.  But when I started asking around the reality was considerably more mundane.

Sure, people had stories about juju and football.  But they almost always told those stories with degrees of humor, skepticism, and self-awareness.  The Malawians I played with knew that juju was not science, and it wasn’t something to be taken too seriously.  But, in some situations, it couldn’t hurt to pay it at least a little respect.  As one of my teammates explained to me:

“When I was playing at school, we played up to the finals and we used juju just because everybody was using it then.  We used to go to this guy who would tell you about the game…if we were going to lose he could give us some roots from different trees and tell us what to do, or have a certain person sitting on the bench with a certain thing in the hand pointing toward the goal and squeezing hard.  I can say I no longer believe in that, but at Civo [another Super League club] they used to take water from the mortuary, put in some small roots and put it over your face.  It was so if those guys are using some type of juju where you don’t’ see things clearly, then you could see things and play a normal game…why not?”

The guys I played with were relatively well educated and as such, I was told, we tended to use juju less than other local teams.  But my teammates would point out to me opposing players with small charms around their socks, or note opponents arriving at the pitch one by one after having stopped for individual “blessings” from a “juju man” in the locker room.  And most everyone recognized that juju was only a small part of the equation: “if the players are not dedicated [to training] then the juju does not work…but if you apply juju you try as much as possible to say—if I do this the juju has helped me.”

If anything, the guys I played with took advantage of how much attention other teams paid to juju.  This advantage was facilitated by one of our club officers and part-time bus driver, a jolly fellow named Nasimba, who happened to be one of the “chief supporters” for the Malawian national team.  And who happened to have a national reputation as a juju man.  When I asked him about it he would just laugh—never quite admitting nor denying.  He certainly played the role well, dressing in flowing African gowns and maintaining a mischievous look in his eye.  He also loved to tell the story of a time he had gone to Lusaka for a Malawi v Zambia international and been forced to leave a packed Independence Stadium under guard.  The Zambian authorities had feared that he was a Malawian witchdoctor.

His reputation was also the font for a trick played by my team during one of our biggest games of the year against Bata Bullets—at the time one of the two best teams in the Super League.  Bullets was full of national team regulars, and my UFC team had little chance of matching their skill.  So some of our players organized to conspicuously bring a hand-made rag ball into the stadium for warm-up, a plastic and twine construction mostly used by kids playing on the street or in the country.  I wasn’t playing that game, and from the sideline I first assumed that my teammates were just joking around—until a curious hush came over the crowd.

The fans and the Bullets seemed to watch carefully as the UFC players brought the ball to the middle of a tight circle of bodies.  Nasimba, decked out in a dotted orange outfit of flowing fabric, casually walked from the sideline to meet the team huddle.  After a brief silence, the group parted quickly and dramatically.  A designated player grabbed the ball, sprinted towards the bench, placed it on the touch-line, and cleared the way for Nasimba’s lumbering approach.  He hovered over the ball, methodically raised his arms, lowered his head, and allowed the stadium a moment of strain trying to hear his incantation.

Then, with a quick, shrill yell, Nasimba dropped his hands and joined the rest of us on the bench.  Either a curse had been put on the game, or a lot of people believed a curse had been put on the game.  In some ways it did not matter which.  Bata Bullets still won 1-nil.

In my mind this was how things usually seemed to work: juju might play a small role in Malawian soccer (sometimes relaxing players, sometimes motivating players, and sometimes intimidating players) but ultimately what mattered was still the game on the field.  And, while Malawians gave varying degrees of credence to juju, they mostly understood that.

Ghana, 2008. By malaise creole on Flickr.

The Business of Superstition

Over time what became most interesting to me in Malawi was the realization that juju had been around a lot longer than football—how was it that football as a European import became the site for what outsiders believe to be a “traditional” African practice?  It seemed to mostly be a matter of entrepreneurship.  As one of the older team officials on my Malawian team told me: “during my time juju was not popular in football.   It was just coming….because the doctors, they put their posters up somewhere there and people started to come…it was just a business opportunity.”  In fact, others told me this was still a problem for club’s accountants: where do you record your expenses for juju?  Under medical?  It didn’t quite fit.

The idea that juju in African soccer is actually an example of a modern entrepreneurial spirit rather than an African “tradition” fits with other analyses of the phenomenon.  In his interesting history of football in South Africa, for example, Peter Alegi argues that applying ritual magic to football was part of a broader “process of Africanisation.”  He notes that in South Africa “the infusion of agrarian beliefs and rituals reveals a way young African men de-colonised football through cultural practice and, in so doing, influence the institutional growth of black soccer.”

Scholars generally tend to be more sympathetic to the use of black magic in Africa than do CAF officials.  In fact, though it has nothing to do with soccer, one of the most famous works in the history of cultural anthropology is E. E. Evans-Pritchard’s classic from the 1930’s: Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande.  Though his analysis of the Azande near the upper-Nile was in many ways a product of the colonial times, it was also distinct in positing that the use of witchcraft was not so much exotic and irrational as it was human: all our definitions of “rationality” are constrained by particular cultural boundaries.  When the Azande relied on oracles to guide their decision making about who they should consider an enemy or about what medicines to take they were operating within a system of philosophical understanding that functioned in their society.

It may not be too far afield to suggest that when the US National Team employs a chiropractor or when Bundesliga teams employ homeopaths, despite questions about the “scientific” base of such practices, they are also operating within particular local ways of understanding the world that are as influenced by the entrepreneurial spirit as by pure rationality.  And I don’t mean to pick on alternative medicine; even more mainstream endeavors such as psychopharmacology depend greatly upon systems of belief—anti-depressants have generally been a boon to mental health care, but the most optimistic evidence suggests they still only significantly reduce depressive symptoms in about 60% of cases compared to reductions for about 40% of cases taking only placebos.

One thing science has learned is that placebo effects are real—in many cases thinking something will help does help.  And that process may partially explain both the persistence of juju in African soccer and superstition in all types of sports.  Just as Michael Jordan perceived a boost to his basketball luck when he wore his college shorts under his professional uniform, a Zimbabwean player explains that before games his team “put some powder in our mouths and had to spit it out as soon as we walked onto the pitch. In the game we would just fly. I will never know if these really worked but I remember some guys really got pumped up.”

Rationalizing the Irrational

Though I’m arguing that juju in African soccer may not be as exotic as it first appears, in the world of sports and superstition it does have some distinct qualities.  For one thing, in African soccer juju is often explicitly used against an opponent rather than just for one’s own benefit.  As such, it can get contentious.  In one scholarly paper arguing that understanding witchcraft in African soccer can help explain broader cultural notions of causality, for example, Wisconsin professor Michael Schatzberg describes violence provoked by manipulative threats of witchcraft in 2003 Uganda v Rwanda qualifiers.  Unlike Jermaine Defoe, whose superstition did no more harm than a bad haircut, one of the Ugandan players ended up with blood gushing from a head wound.

More tragically, a riot during a 2008 match in eastern Congo that killed 13 was reportedly provoked by accusations of witchcraft.  Of course, the real tragedy there is the lack of safety precautions that allow a sports event to become a riot, along with the fact that 13 deaths in Congo does not make much of a blip in the world news unless associated with unsubstantiated claims of the exotic.  In such cases claims of witchcraft implicitly and subtly encourage an ignorant belief that Africa is too “primitive” to take seriously.

But in my mind the best reason to take stories of juju and African soccer seriously is as an example of how all societies approach the game with rationality bounded by culture.  In the US, for example, I often think the assumption that we’ll conquer world soccer when we get a fully professionalized youth system in place is as much about our cultural reverence for “training” children for success from younger and younger ages as it is about the nature of the game.  We “believe” in professionalization.  Yet, a good argument could be made that American youths would become much better players if they just learned to enjoy the game and play for fun.  Unfortunately, such perspectives have only a marginal place in our own bounded rationality.

And if the 2010 Cup of Nations is any indicator, what counts as rational may also be changing in the world of African football.  It seems quite plausible that amidst globalization African players and teams are more likely to position themselves within a “modern” game that accepts belief systems such as those of evangelical Christianity or Islam much more readily than those of “traditional” African societies.  But despite the seeming success of CAF in eliminating stories about witchcraft and black magic, I suspect there are still players and teams at the Cup of Nations using juju more quietly.  Just as there are players and teams praying to their God for victory.  Just as there are players and teams investing in the latest sports science.  Just as there are players, teams, fans, and commentators trying to make sense of it all.

(Note: For anyone interested in other perspectives on this topic, the BBC radio show Heart and Soul recently put out an interesting program on “Faith and Football” that includes discussions of faith, religion, and juju in both British and African football; I’d also recommend the chapter in Ian Hawkey’s book ‘Feet of the Chameleon’ titled ‘Whispering at Pigeons.’)

Photo credits: michael_hughes and malaise creole on Flickr.

Big Story
Togo’s request to return to the Africa Cup of Nations following three days of mourning has been turned down by the Confederation of African Football (CAF). I find it very disappointing that CAF have not been more sympathetic to Togo. Togo were, after all, in the territory of the nation CAF awarded hosting to when the attack happened.

CAF’s communique on the decision today was blunt: “CAF noted that the Togolese delegation participating in the 27th Orange Africa Cup of Nations – 2010 – Group B of Cabinda left the Angolan territory; it was hence decided to cancel all the matches of the Togolese team in the frame of this group.”

CAF also announced they have signed a four-year sponsorship deal with Samsung, including for the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations (that link may not work, as CAF’s website has been going down for extensive periods of time in the past few days).

Between FIFA and CAF, it is shocking to me they could not find a way to give Togo time to recover and return if they wanted, even if it meant an expensive delay to the tournament.

Worldwide News

• How former MLS players are there at the Africa Cup of Nations? Like Soccer America, you probably think there is one, Mali’s Bakary Soumare, formerly of the Chicago Fire. Nope: there is also Mozambique’s beautifully named captain, Tico-Tico (Manuel José Luís Bucuane),who played for the Tampa Bay Mutiny for a season (thanks to our own Andrew Guest for the tip).
• Louise Taylor suggests the Football League takes a winter break, which sounds far too sensible to happen.
• There’s an excellent Q&A with the Observer’s Paul Hayward by our friends at European Football Weekends.
• Four Four Two has a pretty fantastic illustrated post on footballers in bad commercials; Pat Jennings’ is surely the best: “You can imagine the scene in the Unipart marketing meeting. The team sat around a large table, bouncing ideas around for their next TV ad, wondering how to bring car parts to life. One of the team nudges his mate before loudly suggesting: “How about we get Pat Jennings to dress up as an oil filter while we shoot black footballs at him? He lives next door to me, and he’s been having car trouble lately.” Now imagine his surprise when he’s given a promotion, a raise, and is charged with the task of shooting at the Northern Irish legend in his lunch break.”

The Sweeper appears every weekday, and once at the weekend. For more rambling and links throughout the day every day, follow your editor Tom Dunmore @pitchinvasion on Twitter.

On Friday, as most fans of the game now well know, a much grander Angolan attempt at that membership went tragically wrong.  The heartbreaking attack on the Togo team bus in rural Cabinda, an Angolan territory geographically separated from the rest of the nation, on the eve of the 2010 African Nations Cup upset me deeply.  Foremost, I’m upset about the dead and wounded; I’m upset that the vile geo-political mix of oil, land, terrorism, and inequality claimed innocent lives and injured the travelling party of a soccer team that was interested in nothing more than a game.  But I’m also upset about the potential for the ambush to detract from what should be a great year for African soccer—and to further distort perceptions of Africa.

As I noted in a comment on one of Tom’s posts regarding the Cabinda tragedy here on Pitch Invasion, Africa is a big, complicated place.  And Cabinda is a small, complicated place.  It is well worth trying to understand the politics of it all, and trying to figure out how to apportion responsibility and consider the implications of the bus ambush.  It seems plausible to me that the Cup of Nations organizers, the Angolan government, and the Togolese federation all have serious questions to answer—to say nothing of the sickness of terrorists willing to massacre innocents for publicity.  But I have no special access or expertise regarding those matters.

What I do have is some personal experience in Angola and an abiding interest in the way soccer can help us understand places, lives, and ways of being.  It now seems as though the Cup of Nations still has a chance to succeed, Angola’s wild tie with Mali in the opener brought a different energy to things, but I still can’t stomach the idea that the only story soccer fans might hear about Angola outside of its stadiums would be about a machine gun ambush in rural Cabinda.  That is only about Angola in the way that a US military doctor’s murdering innocents on a Texas army base is about America.

By way of context, I understand the fears regarding Africa being expressed around the world after the Cabinda bus ambush.  Even though I had spent a few years in another part of Africa before going to Angola, and though I knew to be careful of stereotypes about the continent’s lurking dangers, I was wary when flying into Luanda in 2002.  The country was just emerging from its 27 year civil war (though the somewhat distinct conflict in Cabinda was ongoing) and I had read much about disgruntled ex-combatants, easily available weapons, and the desperation of gaping economic inequality.  But as we drove away from the airport that first day, the Canadian NGO worker who picked me up casually rolled down his windows and we chatted about the coming week-end as if I’d never left Chicago.

The author and friends after an impromptu match in Angola

I did try to be careful when in Angola (where I was primarily working on a piece of my dissertation research), and heard a good few horror stories from other ex-pats, but in six months in and around Luanda I never personally had any problems or perceived any serious threat other than long days without running water.  And on the other side of the ledger, I had several opportunities to experience the sort of luxury an American graduate student usually only dreams of—expeditions to secluded beaches where locals would catch and cook fresh lobster while we had a kick-about on glorious white sand.  This was a long way from rural Cabinda, but actually quite close to where Angola’s Black Antelopes played Mali on Sunday.

In some discussions of the 2010 Cup of Nations I’ve seen Angola described as a poor country—but like all things related to these events that claim too is complicated.  Probably a more accurate description comes from the title of an interesting article in the British version of GQ magazine: “The World’s Richest Poor Country.”  There are pockets of immense wealth in Angola, particularly in and around Cabinda and Luanda where multi-national oil companies maintain gleaming corporate towers and heavily guarded luxury housing compounds.  In Luanda several of these buildings are just off Avenida Lenin and Rua Commandante Che Guevara—hollow tributes to Angola’s dalliance with communism during the cold war.

But while Angola’s rich are indeed very rich, the poor are also very poor.  Less than ten years ago, Angola was ranked by the United Nations Children’s Fund as “the worst place in the world to be a child.”  The combination of landmines, a decimated infrastructure, the unavailability of education, and the rarity of decent health care made for a dismal statistical reality.  But for me as a researcher and aspiring developmental psychologist part of what was fascinating about Angola was the way those decimated external conditions did not necessarily decimate people’s internal experience.  The Angolans I met were often justifiably angry about the conditions of their lives, but they maintained a vitality and a willfulness that is sometimes surprising yet somehow human.  And peace, along with Angola’s wealth of natural resources, had brought hope that the external conditions would improve.

Although I have not been back to Angola since 2003, my sense is that in many parts of the country the external conditions of life have gotten better.  There have been accusations of massive corruption, but at least some investment does seem to be going towards repairing and creating a real infrastructure.  Angola has serious problems and challenges, but there are some good stories and I feel compelled to indulge in at least one that has very little to do with the politics of Cabinda or the glamour of millionaire footballers—but it does have something to say about the place and the game.

My favorite Angola story is about a seven year old soccer fan I’ll call “Diego” who I met through my research in a hard luck refugee camp on the deep outskirts of Luanda.  Diego had spent his whole life in the camp, a dusty set of semi-permanent huts where his family had years ago taken refuge from heavy fighting near their home in rural Angola.  Their hut was among the most haggard in a collection of several hundred that made up one section of camp.  It was sticks, mud, and brightly hued scraps of plastic sheeting printed sporadically with various insignias: the white symbol of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, a dark cartoon “jumbo” on a bag from a store 20 miles distant, an illustrated corn husk on a former sack of food aid from the US Agency for International Development, faded red and white stripes from a cheap mass produced plastic grocery sack.

In the space where Diego slept, a sleeping area shared by several members of the family but no bigger than a department store changing room, yellowing newspapers hung on the wall.  The pages listed the players on Benfica and Sporting Lisbon a few years earlier.  I have no idea how he got those newspapers, but I do know that like most boys in the camp, Diego loved the game.  Unlike most boys in the camp, the muscles of Diego’s legs did not function.

Diego’s legs had been deformed since birth.  When I cautiously inquired as to the cause, the adults I asked were neither sure nor particularly interested (though polio seems like a reasonable guess).  The reality was that his peasant refugee family had no access to high technology hospital care, prosthetics, or wheelchairs.  So Diego had learned to move around the camp by walking with his arms, dragging his thin legs like hinged tent poles while using the thickly scabbed knots of skin on his knees as points on which to rest.

I had seen Diego around the camp at various points during my first few months in Angola, but he had hardly registered with me amidst much that was unfamiliar: the languidness of people whose daily routines involved much waiting, the chattering mix of Portuguese, French, Swahili, Bakongo, among other dialects, the dramatic variety of facial expressions ranging from giddy to sober.  I only started to know Diego personally during a period of weeks when I was administering surveys to children.

To do my research one day I borrowed a school room, a wall-less polished concrete floor covered by dull tin sheets propped up by adobe posts, interviewing children two at a time.  When Diego emerged from a crowd of curious children and sat down to do a survey I became a little nervous.  Among my many questions were several about participation in sport and play activities, and I was anxious to not embarrass Diego.  My instinct was to assume such questions would make him feel badly about not having functional legs, and presumably being unable to participate in the ubiquitous pick-up soccer games among boys his age.  When Diego sat down with me on a concrete step I decided, for the sake of standardizing my research protocol, to ask anyway.

“So, how often do you play sports and games with other kids?” I blurted in rote Portuguese.  “Every day, about three or four days a week, about once or twice a week, or never.  And it’s no problem if you say ‘never.’”

Diego looked at me with puzzlement, and a tinge of pity.

“Todos os dias” he said.

“Every day?”

Diego paused, unsure about me.  We sat briefly in a confused silence.

“Well,” he qualified himself, “there were a few days where I was a little sick and couldn’t play.  So almost every day.”

As with almost all the boys in the refugee camp, Diego played soccer nearly every day.  Diego just used his hands to “kick” the ball when others would use their feet, batting it sharply with his calloused fist.  There were no adults that set up special rules for the game, no adapted equipment, and no major modifications of the rules—I was the only one that seemed to find the whole thing interesting.  When asked, some boys explained that they occasionally debated what should happen when the ball hit Diego’s non-functioning legs: should that be the same as a handball for the rest of the players?  While different kids seemed to have different opinions, none seemed to worry much.  Mostly they just played.

The trajectory of Diego’s future life as a disabled refuge in rural Angola was not good, and I do not mean to minimize the problems of Angola—nor the seriousness of what happened in Cabinda last week.  But I do mean to try and offer one small reminder that there are other stories to tell about Angola.  No matter what happens from now with the Cup of Nations, it seems important to me for all of us to keep in mind the small, symbolic, daily ways we claim membership in the community of a global game.

Andrew Guest writes weekly for Pitch Invasion. He is an academic social scientist and soccer addict living in Portland, Oregon.  Having worked (and played) in Malawi and Angola, he has a particular interest in Africa.  He can be contacted at drewguest (at) hotmail.com.

Big Story

As Tom wrote earlier today, it is unclear whether the Africa Cup of Nations should continue in light of three deaths and emerging evidence of cynical political maneuvering in the Angolan government’s decision to host games in Cabinda; it appears it for the time being it will, as Angola kicked off this evening against Mali.

That said there are a few good tournament previews.  The Independent gives a detailed and sober-minded appraisal of the ACN hosts, indicating that “Even before yesterday’s attack there were doubts about whether Angola would take the opportunity hosting offered. It is easy to be glib about such events and imagine great economic benefits, but Angola is not a particularly poor country, despite problems with poverty.”

When Saturday Comes also provides a straightforward preview, with the caveat that “For the first time, a major international tournament begins without anyone knowing for sure how many teams will be taking part.”  The piece ends with the self-negating but likely accurate statement: “Whatever happens at CAN 2010, the tournament is already destined to be remembered for the tragic events that took place before any games were played.”

In several major English dailies however, there is little in the way of any real coverage of the event as an actual football tournament.  Perhaps Friday’s tragic events led to reduced ACN coverage, but it’s unclear how much space these papers would have devoted to the games had the attack not occurred.  While many English football pundits had not heard of Cabinda before Friday, nor one suspects had any plans to write a jot on the Angola-based tournament (except maybe to bemoan injuries to Premier League starters), it seems they are clamouring to be first out the gate with an opinion on whether participating nations should stay or withdraw.

While this sort of “instant expert” syndrome isn’t new, and it is certainly within anyone’s right to express an opinion on Friday’s events, it’s hard to take these writers’ concerns about African football’s “legacy” in light of Friday’s horrific attack seriously when so little attention was given to that legacy as it developed on the football pitch.

Worldwide Stories

• EPL Talk‘s Christopher Harris uses the example of the CAN to highlight how frustrating it can be to sort out global viewing restrictions: “While I don’t condone online piracy of soccer broadcasts, I completely understand where the soccer fan is coming from. It’s much easier to go to Justin.tv than to spend a few hours searching through Google trying to find who has the game. While that may sound like an easy cop-out for soccer fans, I disagree. Rights restrictions are confusing. Yes, soccer fans should know better where to find legal streams of the Premier League, but even finding online stream of the Champions League is confusing since it has changed so much in the past six months.”
• Meanwhile Arsene Wenger has questioned the motives of those calling for players to return “home” to Europe: “What is behind things like that? Is it a selfish motivation or is it a real issue over security?” Wenger told reporters today.
• Landon Donovan debuted for Everton against Arsenal yesterday in one of the few Premier League games not canceled due to weather.  Twohundredpercent gives a good summary of the match.
• Fake Sigi picks at Jimmy Conrad’s vision of MLS’ future.

Richard Whittall writes A More Splendid Life.

It looks as if Togo will depart from the Africa Cup of Nations, though games will take place in Cabinda, just days after that region saw that team come under machine gun fire, will three officials dead and one goalkeeper (who had earlier been reported as dead) in intensive care, his life in the balance.

Togo have been under enormous pressure to stay from the tournament organisers, the Angolan authorities and the Confederation of African Football, who have much money and political prestige on the line.

“It is left to you to decide to stay in a competition synonymous with fraternity, brotherhood, friendship and solidarity,” Confederation of African Football president Issa Hayatou told Togo.

Conflicting reports have been coming out frequently over the past 24 hours as the team deals with all of the demands being made of them. This morning, the Guardian reported Togo were leaving:

Adebayor revealed a conversation he held with Gnassingbé Eyadéma, Togo’s head of state, this morning changed the player’s minds after they had previously vowed to play on.

“That’s what made the difference,” he said. “It was also our families and loved ones at home who called us. They told us we could continue if we wished but that it is the authorities who have the information.”Is there going to be another attack? Nobody knows.

If they asked us back [home], maybe they received a call saying that the threat was not passed. We are obliged to respect that. The head of state knows what is good for our careers and our lives.

“The presidential plane will pick us up. He told me that the plane had left Lomé. There are about two hours flying between Lomé and Cabinda. We will leave in two or three hours.”

The BBC’s Piers Edwards quite rightly questioned the pressure being put on the Togo team to stay (he was writing when it was reported they were staying):

It seems wholly inappropriate to put pressure on footballers who survived a near-death experience to play a tournament, which is the least of their concerns when life was flashing before their eyes, but that is what appears to have been happening.

The pressure has – somehow – worked and Togo’s players are now singing a different tune to the one that reverberated around the world in the aftermath of the attack.

“People died for this tournament, others were injured. We can’t abandon them and leave like cowards,” Alaixys Romao told French sports agency L’Equipe.

“If we stay here, it’s for them. But also so as not to give satisfaction to the rebels. Our government doesn’t necessarily agree with us but we are determined to play in this competition.”

Indeed the Togolese government does not want their players to stay in Cabinda, with the West African nation’s prime minister upping the ante by declaring that if the players ‘present themselves under the Togolese flag, it will be a false representation’.

While this story has no clear end at present, it’s revealing to note that there has never been talk by Confederation of African Football officials of scrapping the tournament.

This is a ruling body for whom money talks and with about 80% of Caf’s revenue coming from the Nations Cup, it’s no surprise at all that no political will has been shown to stop the tournament.

Arsene Wenger made the sensible counter-point that we always hear in these situations: you cannot let the terrorists “win” by cancelling the tournament.

“I don’t believe you just can stop a competition as it rewards the people who provoke the incident and means any competition is stoppable at any time. The international federation has to make sure the security is good enough.

This, of course, is an important point, and Wenger makes it well. At the same time, there are some important reservations about continuing the tournament in this case, and in particular, pressuring Togo to participate and holding games in Cabinda:

(1) In my opinion, the political pressure on Togo is disgraceful, given the human tragedy those players have just gone through. They should have been given several days to recover before even being asked to make a decision. The tournament, at the least, should have been delayed for this: even if FIFA had to dip into their coffers to help Angola and CAF financially cover the costs. They can afford it. Who has the appetite to watch the games starting today anyway?

(2) Togo should have been given the assurance that they would not have to play in Cabinda, with their games, at the least, moved to a safer part of Angola from a region that we now all know all too well (and as Angola’s organisers were well aware) is not safe — and I don’t mean not safe in the sense of today’s modern sense of fear of everything, but in the old-fashioned in-the-grips-of-civil-war-still unsafe. The splinter group of FLEC responsible for the attack have promised to strike again.

(3) Does anyone believe that the motivation of the Angolan government is not political in their insistence games should continue in Cabinda, as indeed, the entire staging of games there was seemingly motivated by their desire to present a firm grip on the oil-rich region that still had an armed separatist movement known to target foreigners? FIFA and CAF, by allowing the political motivation of the Angolan government to determine the course of events, are going against their responsibility to the sport first and to the safety of players, fans and officials.

But those are just my opinions. The last words on this should go not to the blogger writing this from thousands of miles away, nor to Togo’s head of state, or to Issa Hayatou, CAF’s chief shuttled around in executive safety and luxury, but to the captain of Togo, who just two days ago said his final prayers, believing he was about to machined gunned to death on a bus trip to a football match.

Togo captain Emmanuel Adebayor has been much maligned in recent times, but his honest thoughts and leadership in this situation has been admirable. Adebayor was speaking before the intervention of the Togolese premier, when the team seemed set on staying. Given his words, I am glad they are leaving.

“If we speak of the dead, the competition should have been cancelled. But CAF (Confederation of African Football) have decided otherwise. We’re going back and we wish good luck to those who will remain, especially to Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast and Ghana.

“What I have told their leaders is that they may be attacked at any time in Cabinda. I hope they will be cautious.”

There is only one story to cover this morning in a rare Saturday roundup, after waking up this morning and learning three more travelling with the Togo team have reportedly died from yesterday’s terrorist attack in Cabinda, Angola, apparently a reserve goalkeeper, assistant coach and a PR official. Togo have withdrawn from the tournament.

The complexity of the situation is such that we can only scratch at the surface at the politics behind the attack, and the decision to host games in Cabinda in the first place, as we attempted to do yesterday.

And yet, as we said we feared would happen in our initial reaction piece, most journalists are choosing not to try and learn more and appreciate the depth of the issues underlying this incident, but to instead use it to paint broad brushstrokes about Africa and the World Cup.

And so Ralph Ellis in (surprise, surprise) the Daily Mail:

As details emerged last night of the horrific attack on the team bus carrying Togo’s players across the border into Cabinda, a province of Angola, it left growing fears about the future not just of the Africa Cup of Nations but of the World Cup in South Africa itself.The decision to take the game’s most colourful tournaments to a region that was scarred by a bitter civil war was always a gamble.

But the organisers reckoned it a risk worth taking to show the world how the continent was moving into a new era.

Instead last night there were calls from England’s Premier League clubs for their players to come back home as the full shock began to sink in. And the question will be asked: ‘If Angola can’t keep players safe from terrorists, can South Africa protect the world’s biggest stars in the summer?’

Nevermind that “home” for these players is actually in Africa.

Nevermind that South Africa does not plan to host any games in a region with an active armed separatist resistance as Angola decided to do. We would never make the same comparison in Europe between regions far apart and with incredibly distinct histories and political situations. Indeed, even when terrorism strikes in western countries during major sporting events, we go on. Many will recall that in England, an IRA bomb exploded in the city of Manchester on the 15th of June, 1996. The very next day, Russia played Germany in Manchester at Old Trafford in Euro ’96. The very next day (“City shows its defiance by throwing a Euro 96 party”, the Independent headlined after). Obviously, footballers had not been targeted in the Manchester attack; the Olympics, of course, were directly targeted in Atlanta in 1996, and the Games went on. Nobody suggested the entire continent of Europe or North America would be unfit to host the next major sporting tournament to be held there, however near or far it was from the attacks.

The point I’m making is not that the ACN tournament should necessarily go on as those tournaments did (I do believe no more games should be held in Cabinda). It’s just to wish so many did not make lazy generalisations on safety, security, and the entire continent of Africa. Rob Crilly makes this argument well at the Huffington Post: “Once again the continent is treated as a single country. The problems of one place easily transposed to another, whatever the similarities or differences between South Africa and Congo-Brazzaville. South Africa has its security concerns, there’s no doubt. Rebel groups is not one of them. Nor pirates, famine or elephants marauding through stadiums. The attack on the Togo team bus is an horrific tragedy. But let’s forget easy clichés. Let’s get a grip.”

Here is another appropriate photo to illustrate Cabinda, and the reason the separatist conflict there has lasted over three decades, and continued beyond the end of the Angolan civil war in the rest of the country in 2002:

Oil. There is a lot of it in Cabinda; reportedly more than half of Angola’s reserves. Separatists rebels (with over a dozen armed and unarmed groups active at various times in the past three decades) think the central Angolan government takes too much of its revenue; the Angolan government has long tried to crack down and assert control. As globalsecurity.org explains, this has not disappeared in the past decade:

After years of reduced activity, in 2001 a renewed independence movement was again active in the enclave of Cabinda. This movement, which calls itself FLEC-RENOVADA (Renewed Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda) started to target foreigners as it tries to gain international attention for its cause – namely, independence from Angola.

FLEC-RENOVADA reached a peace agreement with the Angolan government in 2006. But not all within FLEC agreed with this move. This is why, in an eerily prescient AFP piece from yesterday, many were still questioning the decision to host ACN matches in Cabinda given that offshoots of FLEC remain active in their armed resistance, actively and openly committed to attacking high-profile targets:

Oil-rich Cabinda, separated from the rest of Angola by the Democratic Republic of Congo, has been embroiled in a long-running independence struggle but will host the seven Nations Cup matches this month.

The conflict officially ended in a 2006 deal with the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC).

FLEC however has made several media claims in recent months about attacks on the military and foreign construction and oil workers based in the province.

According to Agostinho Chicaia of Mapablanda, Cabinda’s only human rights organisation, things have only gotten worse since the deal.

“Cabinda continues to be unstable, there is no peace,” he told AFP, saying the fighting has eased, but human rights abuses and arrests on security charges were increasing.

“The true peace is that which is born first in the hearts of people and in their consciences, and it’s a peace based on justice,” he said.

“The (agreement) has done nothing for justice, so now there is only a heightened tension.”

Mapablanda as well as US-based Human Rights Watch have documented abuses, including the case of Fernando Lelo, a former Voice of America journalist who last year was sentenced to 12 years in prison for national security offences.

Lelo spent two years behind bars but was later acquitted.

“Cabinda is still living in a state of war today,” he told AFP. “The fact that we present ourselves as defenders of human rights… we’ve been targeted for arbitrary detentions and persecutions.”

As Just Football rightly asked, after today’s attack that splinter group Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda – Military Position (FLEC-PM) have now claimed responsibility for, many questions must be raised about the decision of the Angolan Football Federation to host games in Cabinda for the Africa Cup of Nations.

Angola’s government has clearly seen the entire tournament as a showcase for the country in the wake of the terrible, decades long civil war, building shining new stadiums across the country. It promised to be a wonderful story for the country. But did they risk hosting games in Cabinda as a show of power, demonstrating to the multinational oil interests such as Chevron that all was under their control?

There is something of a defense to the decision, despite the state of Cabinda in general. As Andrew also pointed out in the comments to the previous piece, this attack happened outside the capital city of Cabinda, also called Cabinda. The Togo team, for reasons that remain unclear, decided to travel unsafely on bus through the hinterlands instead of flying to the capital. The footballing authorities may not be to blame for that; we do not know the full story yet.

The oil money that has flowed in Cabinda has made the capital city much safer than the rest of the region; the State Department’s travel advisory makes this pretty clear: