Africa Cup of Nations - blog

The politics of football

by Paul Myers

Article published on the 2010-01-09 Latest update 2010-01-09 14:05 TU

Paul Myers in Luanda reflects on the CAN organisers' response to the attack on the Togo football team.

"When do you go back to Angola?" – a traditional greeting in Cabinda.

And there I was talking only yesterday about nation building. And then up in northern Angola, the FLEC give me a variation on a theme. How zeitlich was my Geist?

The Front of Liberation of the State of Cabinda – as they call themselves in English – doesn’t want to be part of Angola.

It goes a a long way back and I don’t want to become embroiled in claims and counterclaims.

Suffice it to say, Cabinda is not attached to Angola. It has borders with Congo-Brazzaville and the Democratic Republic of Congo and the would-be powers that be (the government in exile) say once a republic is in operation, they’d hold a democratic election to give the people the chance to choose a president and prime minister.

The new lads and lassies in charge would also have the resources to fire their republic. Cabinda is dubbed the "Kuwait of Africa" and if you peruse the maps of the known oilfields off Angola’s coast… it gets your 4x4 roaring.

The FLEC says the new nation will assure lots of things like freedom of religion and human rights. Well that’s mighty gentlemanly, as they might say at the Oil Barons Ball in Texas, but the Luanda powers ain’t going to let that happen.

And so you have a machine gun attack on the bus carrying the Togo team. Oh the politics of football.

The FLEC move has certainly put their grumbles into the spotlight and it’s also given me another chance to see the workings of the Confederation of African Football.

Its executive committee went into an emergency at their five-star hotel 12 kilometres outside Luanda on Friday night at around 8.30pm. They  sauntered out nearly two hours later to condemn the attack.

So far so good.

Mustapha Fahmy, the general secretary, read out a communiqué (not so good) to tell us that a plethora of Angolan politicians and CAF executives were going to leave on Saturday morning for the region – or should I start using ‘troubled region’ to take stock of the situation.

The abomination in all this was that at no point did the CAF president, Issa Hayatou, come out and talk to the gaggle of journalists to offer up his sympathies to those involved in the assault.

That’s appalling politics.

I spoke to Kwesi Nyantakye, the president of the Ghana Football Association, who was due to fly to the Cabinda area on Saturday to rejoin the national team. He told me the players and trainers had been there since Wednesday and were quite happy with the place and the facilities.

Poor old Togo. Not only do they get shot out by an outfit the Angolan government call terrorists but they get flak from the CAF because apparantly the Togo team failed to follow set guidelines.

"What the regulations state clearly is that all the teams fly to Luanda or into their host city,’ said Suleimanu Habuba, the director of communications at CAF.

"At no point was CAF told that the Togolese were going by road from point A to point B."

Well, clearly the Angolan authorities were au courant because there was a police escort for the bus.

Barack Obama spoke recently about how intelligence fails to link up the clues quickly enough in the quest to stop the terrorist atrocities.

Here, at the dawn of what should be a joyous occasion, is a classic case of power politics, incipient terrorism, rule breaking, blame and indolence.

 I’m not sure I’d grace what I’ve seen so far at CAF with the epithet "intelligence".

There’s no connection and that paucity is threatening the spirit of the tournament. Football is great and wonderful game but nation building?

That’s too big a goal.