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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------------