World Cup 3: African Perspectives

So which team do you support if yours has been eliminated? Readers in Scotland may be alarmed to hear that I recently met a Scottish woman after Mass here in Johannesburg sporting an England jersey!
For African fans the answer is simple - another African team. A Jesuit confrere who comes from Soweto was away in Nairobi for the opening march but was overwhelmed by the Kenyan solidarity with South Africa. This comes with expectations however. As he left the country a passport official chided him, saying, ‘You guys missed four goals (against Mexico)!’

Earlier I interviewed Chris Idibie, a Nigerian who has just completed an engineering doctorate at Wits University, on his loyalties. He has a hierarchy starting naturally with Nigeria and followed by South Africa, then Ghana and the other African teams. If the Africans are all eliminated, he will then transfer his support to worthy opponents Argentina.

The World Development Movement has a rather earnest website for those want to base their support on something less than the visceral (www.whoshouldicheerfor.com). It helps socially conscious soccer fans find their way through the supporter’s moral maze with an ethical calculus for each team’s country based on human development indices from life expectancy to the level of happiness. This NGO would judge Chris’s instincts sound, concluding that, ‘As in 2006, Ghana comes out as the most supportable team’. So there you have it: ethically-minded fans should adopt Ghana!

Even South Africans apparently, because in the rankings for the opening match, the home country came out as only the 28th most supportable while Mexico was judged to be the 15th. This seems harsh, but South Africa is pulled down by particular problems such as HIV/AIDS.

One indicator which WDM does not take into account, however, is the continental-wide use of football in the work for reconciliation and peace. Tor Sellström, of the African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes, reports on how the game is being used in post-conflict reconstruction and how ‘numerous football-for-peace initiatives have been launched all over Africa’. In Liberia and Rwanda–Burundi, soccer teams have been successfully formed from former enemies. Such initiatives are said to be particularly effective among former child-soldiers who quickly become more focused on the tactics for the next game than on their previous divisions. In Sierra Leone, amputee football clubs have been set up and some players are recognized as stars in their own right. Here in a still-divided South Africa, the Catholic Church is organizing a Soccer Peace Tournament in the Pretoria township of Atteridgeville to bring together players and fans from different sections of our society and other parts of the world. Other Church-based soccer projects focus on HIV/AIDS awareness and avoidance.

When I mention these initiatives to Chris Idibie, he waxes enthusiastic, describing some as ‘visionary’. After all, he comes from the Delta area of Nigeria, which has known serious conflict. ‘We need peace in Africa; without peace we cannot develop’, he says. ‘Peace will encourage investment and development, and give hope to the people’. As an economic ‘externality’ peace is priceless. ‘Where elephants fight, the grass cannot grow’.

Listening to Chris it occurs to me that I haven’t yet met a single black African who isn’t enthusiastically for the World Cup. Indeed even most previously naysaying white South Africans now seem converted. The BBC Africa Service has picked up this almost universal African support for the tournament. David Whitty reported on his recent West African ‘kick bus’ tour that he found everyone from politicians to poor fisher-folk were solidly behind it and that it is perceived as a reconciling event. One young man stated flatly to a somewhat sceptical Whitty that, ‘The World Cup will bring peace to Ivory Coast’ and he cited the powerful sense of national unity experienced when Didier Drogba was voted African footballer of the year.
More jaded Western observers may see these as naïve hopes. On the eve of the Cup 68% of Euronews viewers did not think it would even benefit South Africa. Nonetheless, quiet practical work to repair the Continent’s social damage is being undertaken by African soccer stars themselves. Players like Michael Essien and Samuel Eto’o have been in the forefront of the promotion of peace, education and health. Didier Drogba and the whole Ivory Coast squad have repeatedly exhorted the warring Ivorian factions to solve the simmering civil conflict there.

‘This (An African World Cup) has never happened before, says Chris, but it’s happening now in our own generation’. Other change is also happening. Sub-Saharan Africa has far fewer conflicts than a decade ago and is now one of the fastest developing regions in the world. If soccer can be used to push forward this growing peace and prosperity, then if your European, Antipodean, American or Asian team is eliminated, why not get behind an African one? In a sense they’ll all be winners.

This article was first published in The Tablet http://www.thetablet.co.uk.
If you enjoyed this article, the next in the series, World Cup 4: The Fifa Food Chain is at:
http://www.jesuitinstitute.org.za/en/node/231