GUARDIAN
Sunday, February 06, 2000
The Funny Rulers Of Cote D'Ivoire
Crossroads
By Rueben Abati
FOLLOWING their early ouster in the on-going Nations Cup, the Ivorien
national team returned home, to Abidjan, on Monday evening. But the
unexpected happened. They were sherpherded straight to a military detention
camp by the government of General Guei who seized power through a military
putsch in December 1999. For three days, the footballers remained in
detention. Their offence, according to a government spokesman, was their
failure to go beyond the first round of the Nations Cup. "They are staying
there (in detention);" the spokesman said "to learn civic duty and because
of their indiscipline. It could take up to three days." It did take up to
three days. Families of seven of the players based in France were worried
and they said so. The footballers were not allowed to make contact with the
outside world. Enraged FIFA President Sepp Blatter barely stopped short of
telling the Ivorien government that it has done a stupid thing which could
further affect Africa's chances and reputation in the footballing world.
The conduct of the Ivorien government is indefensible, but it would
appear that football has become a very emotional sport. It draws fury and
blood. National teams carry with them the glory of their nations; any form
of defeat is hardly taken in the spirit of fair sportsmanship. Even
concerned spectators who cannot fathom the humiliation of their nation and
favourite teams at tournaments have been known to either commit suicide or
engage in riotous behaviour. English fans, for example, have quite a
reputation. Otherwise regarded as The English hooligans they are feared by
opposing teams across Europe. But it is not the English alone that are
guilty. On May 24, 1964, a match between Argentina and Peru, played in Lima,
the Peruvian capital, resulted in the death of 318 people. Over 500 persons
were also injured. For two weeks in the summer of 1969, El-Salvador and
Honduras fought a war - "the Futbol war" - with a shared death toll of
about 2,000. A football match between both countries had triggered off
latent animosities resulting from differences over immigration policies.
They fought again in 1970 and 1974 and 1976 and up till this moment,
relations between Honduras and El Salvador remain tense. A World Cup
qualifying match between Nigeria and Ghana on February 10, 1973 became
problematic - angry Nigerian fans took hold of the buses conveying the
Ghanaians and set them on fire, but unlike Honduras and El Salvador, Nigeria
and Ghana did not go to war.
This year, a few days before the Ivorien incident, Nigerian fans who were
displeased that the Super Eagles had played a goalless draw with Congo,
stoned the Super Eagles on the field of play. Not satisfied, they besieged
the offices of the Nigerian Football Association (NFA) where they vandalised
vehicles and other properties. During USA'94 World Cup, Andres Escobar, a
Colombian footballer, had scored an own-goal in a match between Colombia and
the United States. Defeated, the Colombian team crashed out of the
tournament. An aggrieved fan sought out Escobar on Colombian streets and
pumped bullets into him, killing him instantly. Escobar's offence: his
own-goal.
Football is not just about 22 men slugging it out on a field for 90
minutes. It is now big business. Fame. National pride. The pre-eminence of
countries like Argentina and Brazil, the European league, and the
commercialisation of football have turned football into more or less, the
most popular sports in the world. It is perhaps the only game that is played
in every country. This is in fact why it evokes such pristine base
instincts. Footballers are expected to be magicians. Many of us do not
infact, care how they do it, but once they wear national colours, we expect
them to realise that they are at war on behalf of the rest of us. The
football field is now a battle field. Footballers have become soldiers.
Competition is what drives the modern man. In the face of competition,
modern man escapes into the castle of his skin, crawling into its lowest
depths.
But in no way does their explanation rationalise the behaviour of the Guei
government in Cote d' Ivoire. Incarcerating the national team for failing to
meet the personal expectations of the man of power is crude. Guei and his
lieutenants who carried this sordid order have exposed their worst flanks.
They seized power in 1999 deposing a democratically elected government. They
have now shown that they are not sportmen at all. In Cote d'Ivoire, the men
in charge are a whole century behind the rest of the world. They have given
us one more reason why military rule is unfashionable, why it is
undesirable.
The forceful imprisonment of the Ivorien national team is an unfair
violation of their fundamental human right. If service to one's nation would
attract such crude response then fewer people would be willing to do
business with government in the future. Guei is not just putting the wrong
foot forward, he has no business being in power. He and his men talked of
indiscipline. What indiscipline can be greater than the seizure of the
Ivorien government by Guei and his team of conquistadors, their violation,
that is, of the sovereignty of the Ivorien people. They are the ones who
ought to be in detention, paying penance for their uncivilised behaviour.
If anything, the Ivorien national team deserves praise, not punishment.
They gave a good account of themselves. They happened to have been in the
toughest grouping of the preliminary rounds (Group A) where each team;
Cameroun, Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire and Togo had the same record of overall
achievement (4 points each).
Qualification to the second round had to be based on goals advantage. The
Ivorien team even defeated host team, Ghana, in a memorable encounter that
all Ivoriens ought to be proud of. Clearly, Guei and his people are not
acting on behalf of the Ivorien people. If Guei considers football that
important, why didn't the General lace his boots for the country?
And why the fuss, anyway? Cote d'Ivoire is not a fantastic football
playing nation. Ivoriens won the Nation's Cup in 1992, and that is about
all. Even Brazil, the world's leading football super-power, would not
imprison its players for losing a tournament. The problem in Cote d' Ivoire
is that of ego. Not the national ego but the personal ego of General Guei.
Dictators have fragile egos. Guei imagines Cote'd Ivoire's performance at
Nations Cup 2000 to be a slight on his sense of power. He deserves our
sympathies.
In retrospect, the fate of the Ivorien team further exposes the limitation
of football bodies and federations in Africa. Were it not for Sepp Blatter,
the FIFA President who promptly internationalised the problem, those
footballers could probably still be in Guei's Archipelago. The Ivory Coast
Football Federation was helpless: "Everyone is fine. There is no problem,
but even I do not know what is going to happen" said Oueseyaou Dieng, its
President. CAF, the African Football Federation was just as cowardly: "We
must not intervene in a question of national sovereignty". Well, yes, but
was it beyond CAF to express concern, or to make inquiries? If footballers
cannot be protected by football federations, then the likes of Guei can
afford to ruin the game with their sadism. At least seven members of the
Ivorien team including Ibrahima Bakayoko (Marseille), Lassine Diabate
(Bordeaux) and Olivier Tebily (Celtic) are based in Europe. In the future,
their employers will be reluctant to release them for such national
assignments that could result in detention.
The good people of Cote d'Ivoire do not deserve this kind of
embarrassment. General Guei, sounding unrepentant, has now said that in the
future, the punishment for poor performance at an international tournament
would involved the immediate conscription of the national team into the
military. Guei is a funny man. He sound like an Ivorien Sani Abacha. He
speaks of the future. Really, what does he know about tomorrow, even his own
tomorrow? A dark cloud hangs over Cote d' Ivoire, today. A plane crash. The
national team is detained. The exit of the Generals is the sacrifice of
expiation that will brighten the Ivorien skies once again.
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