Anticipating
the 2012 African Cup of Nations with pride and anxiety for Sport in Africa.
By Takura Zhangazha
The Confederation of African
Football (CAF) African Cup of Nations (AFCON) begins on 21 January 2012 in
Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. It is a tournament that will have many of the
participating countries citizens glued to television screens and radio sets in
support of their teams. Other football fans of countries that did not qualify
may however not be as enthusiastic and understandably they will fight over the television remote
controls arguing about whether to switch to an AFCON or a European league match.
This is because when it comes
to the entertainment component of football, fans want many options, even if
they are using one television as is the case in most African circumstances. Sometimes
however, there is a lot more loyalty to a European club than a national side or
even a local premiership side. This is probably because the European Clubs play
better football and in any event, football is intended primarily to entertain
and in most instances only requires loyalty from fans as an added advantage.
This year’s AFCON is however
significant in that it occurs almost two years after South Africa became the
first African country to host the FIFA World Cup, a development which, as the same tournament’s
slogan had it, was intended to show it is now Africa’s time (it is time!) to
enter the world stage of football on an equal footing with the rest of the
world.
It has since transpired that
we did not gain as much as we thought we would either as Africans or as South
Africans. Arguments still remain in South Africa about the benefits of large
stadiums that are difficult in the aftermath of the tournament to justify
amidst poverty. We can however take comfort in the fact that premier league football
is still played in some of the stadiums, though without the capacity crowds. The
quality of the game may not improve, but at least for a while it will be played
in somewhat modern settings.
And perhaps this is the challenge
of not only African football but all major African sports. This being a desire,
via hosting important but costly sporting tournaments, to be seen as being modern and up to
international standards albeit temporarily so. The two weeks of football we
shall witness in Equatorial Guinea and Gabon are worked for over two years, and
the moment in the international/continental sun is enjoyed only to leave
limited benefits in the aftermath of the games. And of these limited benefits,
the most celebrated one is always that of new sporting infrastructure in the
form of new stadiums or a new short railway line linking stadiums and improved
hotel accommodation (read as improvements in tourism).
These hardly have anything to
with the development of the sport in the host country or even for the hosting
region or continent, especially if it is viewed as an underdeveloped one. After
all the stars leave, there will be a return to complacency in relation to the
management of the particular sport and sport in general. An easy example is
that of the South African national football team and not only its failure to
qualify for this year’s AFCON but the manner in which it did so. This only some
eighteen months after their country hosted the FIFA World Cup.
Zimbabwe is an even more disappointing
example when one looks at the manner in which
we hosted the All Africa Games in 1995 and built infrastructure without a longer term comprehensive national
sports policy. The end result has been not only dilapidated sports infrastructure
and unfinished sporting projects but inefficient sports administration and
continued decline in popular participation in various sports disciplines.
In order to mitigate the
challenges that come with hosting international tournaments, African sporting
associations and governments need to re-think the long term benefits at
country, regional and continental level. It is ill-advised to fall into the
default mode of arguing that countries bid to host a tournament for short term gain
and expect the long term ones to define themselves later.
And it is not the physical infrastructure
that counts. Instead it is the sporting culture and administration that is significantly
more important. This includes not only how the tournament is held, but how the
relevant sports become an integral part of the socio-economic fabric of the
societies that hosted them. From grassroots based training institutions through
to national, regional and international competitions that are not only popular
but grounded in firm institutions that seek more to serve than to extract raw
talent from the African continent.
I will therefore be watching
the AFCON 2012 with pride and anxiety. Pride that as Africans we
continue with the international traditions of the beautiful game that is
football. The anxiety for the future is that
the two weeks of sporting competition will once again, leave us the poorer in
the development of our sport as countries and as a continent.
Ends// Takura Zhangazha writes in his personal capacity and this article first appeared onhttp://takura-zhangazha. blogspot.com/. Please acknowledge this
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