Africa and the cruelty of football

The 2010 African Cup of Nations concluded on Sunday night with Egypt beating Ghana 1-0 in Luanda. For the Egyptians—who took their seventh nations cup overall, and their third in a row—it was a wild night of celebration and confirmation that, despite failing to qualify for the World Cup, they are the best team in Africa. But there are thin football pickings for the rest of us. It was a tight, nervous final for most of the 90 minutes. A young Ghanaian team, depleted of its stars by injury, showed discipline and grit. In the earlier rounds Malawi and Zambia played above themselves, Nigeria, Cameroon and Cote D’Ivoire below. Algeria utterly and theatrically lost their heads against Egypt. The tournament, however, will not be remembered for the quality of its football or its tantrums, but for the tragedy that befell the Togolese team.

The widely-reported 30-minute gun attack on the Togolese squad's convoy in the small town of Cabina, the Friday before the tournament started, saw three people killed and one seriously injured. The Togolese, not surprisingly, returned home and were accordingly disqualified from the tournament.

Responsibility for the attack was claimed by a number of nationalist groups who seek independence for Cabinda from Angola. Cabindans have never accepted their inclusion in Angola; they certainly weren’t consulted when the Portuguese hurriedly departed in 1975. During the long and bitter civil war, a faction of the Cabinda separatist rebel group, the Front for the Liberation of the State of Cabinda (FLEC) flourished. After 2002, however, when the main war ended, the government was able to turn its attention to this oil and gold rich province: Cabinda produces over a third of Angola’s oil. Almost none of the money this generates has been spent there, save for the very substantial military presence.

Over the next two years FLEC was militarily squeezed and a peace treaty signed in 2006. This, it seems, made the country safe for international football and so it was awarded the hosting rights for the 2010 tournament. It was clear at the time that the treaty was a complete sham: it was signed on behalf of FLEC by an ex-rebel, Antonio Bente Bembe, recruited by the Angolan government while in a Dutch prison. FLEC were not consulted and did not agree to the treaty, nor was there any process of amnesty, disarmament or reconciliation. Bembe meanwhile was rewarded with a ministerial post, while Cabinda was rewarded with a security crackdown, detentions and the use of torture.

The Confederation of African Football’s (CAF) senior members are good at politics; you don’t get a post like that without being a very sharp operator. So it was CAF’s responsibility when assessing Angola’s bid to make a call on the situation in Cabinda. And their failure to spot the illusory nature of the peace deal was compounded by their complete inattention to the mounting roster of human rights abuses by the Angolan security services.

The Angolan government are also culpable for making Cabinda part of the tournament in the first place. There was no logistical need to do so; indeed the enclave’s separateness and geographical distance were always going to complicate matters. But then simplicity was not on the agenda: instead, a very public statement over who runs Cabinda was. Given that the Angolan security forces are in charge of Cabinda and know exactly what is going on, it was extraordinary that they should have allowed the Togolese to travel by road rather than by air, whatever the price difference involved. The presence of Angolan guards with the Togolese buses confirms that the security services were aware of the risks involved, but chose to either ignore them or downplay them for fear of jeopardising the tournament’s profile.

The result is that the tournament has certainly acquired a profile—and one that threw the shortcomings of Angolan politics and African football administration into sharp relief. In a final flourish, CAF ensured that the tournament would leave a sour, bitter taste in the mouth: on the eve of the final they announced that Togo would be banned from the next two cup of nations contests for withdrawing from the event. Having fallen victim once to the naivety of CAF and the mendaciousness of Angola, the Togolese team are being punished for refusing to play through their trauma. Football administrators are often crass, but this verges on cruelty.