by Simon Kuper
Gary Bailey, the former England goalkeeper, learned about muti at home in South Africa. To support his weak right knee, he said, “They would tie strength-giving things to it,” and a “third ball” would be slipped down his shorts. Then he moved to England, and in his first three Wembley finals with United he let in seven goals. For the replay of the 1983 FA Cup final, against Brighton, he took the advice of a South African witch doctor, tied a red-and-white ribbon to his goal and fixed a lock and key to the netting. At halftime, he moved the padlock to the other goal. United won 4-0. Naturally, he used muti again in his next two Wembley finals. United beat Liverpool 2-0 in the Charity Shield of 1983, and they beat Everton 1-0 in the 1985 FA Cup final.
If the manager is popular, witchcraft rituals can help unite a team. If the whole team prepares for a match by taking a bath in oxen blood, it concentrates their minds—as long as the skeptics wash in the blood too. As manager of Kaizer Chiefs, Palacios had forced another strict Christian to join in the rituals. As manager of Lecce in Italy, Zbigniew Boniek ordered his team to attend mass before a match, and when Pietro Paolo Virdis refused, Boniek exploded. Julia Beffon of South Africa’s Weekly Mail even suggests that African muti rituals, if cleverly hyped, could unsettle European opponents, as the New Zealand All Blacks’ haka dance does in rugby.
Gaborone (or “Gabs”), Botswana.. As World Cup qualifiers go, Botswana vs. Niger lacked glamor. Nonetheless, with my Dutch photographer, Willem, I crammed into a minibus, a type of vehicle that is constantly involved in fatal accidents in South Africa, and drove the five hours north from Johannesburg to Gaborone, capital of Botswana.
A former British colony with just 1.3 million inhabitants and 26 percent of the world’s diamond wealth, it is usually counted as the one stable democracy in Africa. However, the Botswanan national team, the Zebras, are possibly the worst in Africa, and had just lost their first ever World Cup match 6-0 to the Ivory Coast. F.S. Chalwe wrote in the Botswana Sports Magazine that if his experience was anything to go by, “I would say we have eight to ten years before we can be considered to be among the best in Africa.” The Nigeriéns are better at soccer than the Botswanans, but are poorer and live in an even larger desert.
The little Gaborone National Stadium lies between a tennis club and a mosque. The stands are pretty, in their light blue and white, but they lack a roof. Not to stop the rain—sadly, it never rains in Botswana—but because watching a soccer match in 95-degree heat is irksome. Some supporters carried umbrellas against the sun. I sat in the only covered stand, which was considered so desirable that even the footrests between the seats were packed.
Life on the field was more relaxed. We watched various officials traipse across the field, most spectacularly the obese Ashford Mamelodi, secretary-general of the Botswanan FA, while the Niger players had a kickaround with Willem. We stood for the two national anthems. Then we sat down, but Ismail Bhamjee, president of the BFA, gestured to us to stand again. It seemed that the first anthem had not been Niger’s. The fans remained seated, and no new anthem was played, so the Niger team sang their anthem without accompaniment, their hands on their hearts.
The kickoff was scheduled for half past three, not by chance. The Botswana Sports Magazine was frank: “It is not hard training alone that wins international games.... There should also be something prepared for the visiting team so as to make it difficult for them to win.” The magazine suggested that Botswana make use of its hot weather by scheduling games in the afternoon. As it was, the match only kicked off at five to four, and since Niger lies in the Sahara the ploy could have only limited effect. But the heat certainly did for Willem.
The match was poor. The ground was bone hard and, despite Mamelodi’s walkabout, desperately uneven, so the ball bounced like an unpredictable jumping bean. Both teams seemed to have decided to play without tactics, but the players were astoundingly athletic: flying volleys abounded. Without any further evidence, I could have deduced from the match that the British had colonized Botswana and the French Niger, for the Botswanans played like an English third division team while the Nigeriéns showed distaste for all physical contact. African soccer has its Dover-Calais divide too. Against the run of play, Niger scored just before the final whistle to win 1-0. “Niger don’t deserve winning,” protested the Botswanan manager, the Zambian Freddie Mwila. What about the next match against the Ivory Coast? “They’re the African champions; we are part of Africa.”
In Niger’s dressing room I met a man in robes and a high West African hat who was rolling a soccer around beneath his shoes. “Are you the Niger manager?” I asked. “No,” he replied, “I’m the minister for sport.” I was impressed. In Africa, a sports minister is at least as senior as the minister for home affairs. I suggested that the match had been a clash between the British and the French styles of soccer. “The Francophone style,” corrected the minister, by which he meant the French-speaking African nations. I asked whether he picked the team. “It comes with the job,” he said.
It is hard to buy a pair of soccer shoes in Gaborone that is not sold by Ismail Bhamjee. The day after Botswana vs. Niger, I interviewed him across the counter of one of his sports shops.
An Indian who left South Africa for Botswana to escape apartheid, Bhamjee is one of the men who run African sport. He is, among many other things, an executive member of the Confederation of African Soccer, CAF. “I have so many hats, I’m always away, I’m never here,” he sighed, giving me his Botswanan Olympic Committee card. “That’s why I don’t even know the prices in my own shop.”
He told me CAF was lobbying FIFA (“we always are”) for more World Cup places for African teams. Currently, the continent has only three of the 24 places at the World Cup. (An American Peace Corps volunteer in Niger complained to me that while in Africa he was challenged on this issue all the time.) Africans reckon that Nigeria or Ghana could have given Costa Rica as much of a game in 1990 as Scotland or Sweden did. As they see it, the West excludes them from the World Cup just as it does from the UN Security Council—but the World Cup matters more.
I asked Bhamjee to outline his case for me. “FIFA’s argument has always been standards, and now we’re as good as the Europeans. FIFA says, “But African sides have never got past the quarterfinals”—but obviously they’re not going to excel that much with only two teams out of 24. The Europeans had 14 teams and so they had far more chances to win it. Those boots are 75 pula, sir.” Look at FIFA’s youth tournaments, said Bhamjee. The Africans have a fairer chance of qualifying for those, and both Ghana and Nigeria have won youth World Cups. Yet he remained pessimistic about the real thing. When it came to a vote, he said, “the white countries gang up to stop the black countries.” On the FIFA executive, “the vote just goes black against white.” So he was ‘very, very upset, but not surprised,” when FIFA awarded the 1998 World Cup to France rather than Morocco. Why did he think the Europeans were so recalcitrant? He said that though he understood that more places for Africa would be at Europe’s expense, he also felt that racism played a part.
“Racism” is a vague word, but it takes specific forms, and in this affair I can suggest two. Firstly, Europeans are used to treating Africans as beggars with nothing to offer. The World Cup is ours, and we let in outsiders only if we so desire. We are the world. The second form of racism was best expressed by Brian Clough: “If the African nations get their way, and only one British team plays in tournaments in future, I think I’ll vote Conservative. Think about it, a bunch of spear throwers who want to dictate our role in soccer. They still eat each other up . . .” Old Big ‘Ead was merely echoing the soccer journalist who once explained to Papua New Guinea that the British were entitled to four national teams because they were playing soccer when the Papua New Guineans were still running around in woad. Many less cultivated people than these sit on FIFA committees.
The first lesson of the African history of the World Cup is that the Africans have done better than we realize. The second is that only rich
, stable African countries do well. The seven African nations that have reached the World Cup since 1970 are Morocco, Zaire, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Cameroon and Nigeria. Of these, measured by African standards, only Zaire—the one World Cup flop—is a poor country. The spread of wealth in Africa closely matches the spread of soccer success.
The four nations that founded CAF in 1957 were Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt and South Africa. Of these four, the only one to succeed at soccer in the decades since is Egypt. South Africa was excluded from the international game by sanctions, and Ethiopia and Sudan quite as effectively by famine and war.
Ethiopia was one of just 27 African countries to enter for the World Cup of 1994 and to complete its qualifying fixtures. The team’s first game was away to Morocco. The Ethiopians flew via Rome, where their five best players sought political asylum. That left a squad of eight players to play the match. The reserve goalkeeper, the assistant manager and a friend filled in, and Ethiopia began the game with a full side. By halftime, however, two of the ringers had dropped out exhausted, and Morocco led 5-0. Early in the second half three more Ethiopians gave up, and with just six away players left standing, the referee stopped the match. Ethiopia did not qualify for the World Cup.
But the nation that suffered most for its lack of funds was Zambia. The Zambian national team died when their plane crashed into the Atlantic off the coast of Gabon, on April 28, 1993. They had been on their way to play a World Cup qualifying match against Senegal. It turned out that the plane designated to carry them 3,000 miles from Lusaka to Dakar was a short-haul military carrier: the Zambian FA had been unable to afford a regular airliner. The news incensed Zambians at home, particularly as cabinet ministers and investigators had flown to pick up the bodies in a presidential DC- 8. “I will never forgive the Soccer Association of Zambia for what has happened,” said Albert Bwalya, who had been left out of the squad thanks to a quarrel over money.
Money was not the sole cause of death. Burkhard Ziese, a German who had managed Ghana, explained: “For the officials and players it’s more lucrative to travel in a military plane. Then they don’t have to go through customs and everyone can buy unlimited and cheap luxury soap, perfumes, gin and whisky, and sell them at a profit in Ghana.”
Next to African FAs, European FAs look organized. Senegal is a rich nation and good at soccer, but its FA clean forgot to enter for the 1990 World Cup. (People shrug and say, “C’est l’Afrique.”) Or take Nigeria, another rich country, with more than 100 million inhabitants, where from time to time the government fires all the officials of the FA. This last happened a couple of years ago, when the Nigerian kit manager forgot to take the team’s shorts along to a home match against Burkina Faso. People ran about looking for spares, but none were found. Instead, tracksuit bottoms were cut off at the knee, and in that outfit Nigeria won 7-1. But the wire services sent the story around the world, and another batch of officials fell.
Nigeria qualified for the 1994 World Cup by beating Algeria away. A few days later, the sports minister, one Chief Akinyele, appeared on national TV to sack the team’s manager, the Dutchman Clemens Westerhof. Then there was a military coup. Akinyele lost his job, and Westerhof was given back his.
In all, over 20 African nations either did not enter for the World Cup of 1994 or failed to complete their qualifying matches. For most, the obstacle was poverty or civil war (or both), while Libya could not travel due to a United Nations air embargo.
An African nation that is not at war, and that can afford to enter the World Cup, and that remembers to do so, and that completes its schedule, turning up at every match with at least eleven able-bodied men, has already outdone most of its competitors and has a fair chance of reaching the finals.
It is hard to fathom what it means for an African nation to have to withdraw from the World Cup. For come the tournament, the entire population of every quartier in Africa spends a month in front of the local TV set. Soccer is the one chance Africa has to beat the world. Before the crash, the only time in recent history that Zambia had made international headlines was when its soccer team beat Italy 4-0 at the Seoul Olympics. After the game, one Italian newspaper published a map of Africa to show its readers where Zambia is. “Before the match, the Italian players were walking straight past us. Afterwards, they came to our hotel to ask for autographs,” said Kalusha Bwalya, who hit a hat trick in the match and who is still alive. The World Cup matters to Africa, and not only to Africans but also to black Europeans like Frank Rijkaard. Politicians understand. Chief Moshood Abiola, a candidate in the Nigerian elections of 1993, vowed that if elected he would ensure that Nigeria reached the World Cup. He won, but the election was annulled by the Nigerian dictator, General Ibrahim Babangida. Babangida was nicknamed “Maradona,” in tribute to his skill at evading challenges.
Walter Winterbottom, in 1962, became the first man to say that an African country would win the World Cup. Richard Möller-Nielsen made the same prediction to me in Latvia, Graham Taylor made it to the Independent on Sunday, and almost every article on African soccer cites Winterbottom. It is a prophecy that pundits like to make: it sounds grandiose, is kind to the Third World, and cannot immediately be disproved. Also, at every World Cup Africa surprises us.
But Joachim Fickert thinks African soccer is going to get worse, and he should know. Fickert, a German, is the technical director of the Congo national team, and he has been coaching in Africa for over a decade. “The scissors of European and African soccer will separate even further,” he told me.
I met him in Gaborone, just before Botswana vs. South Africa. He was spying on the South Africans, the “Bafana Bafana,” who were sharing the Gaborone Sun hotel. We spoke just two hours before the match, as South African players, journalists, fans and officials ate and chatted and mingled around the pool. Fickert, who was sitting inside, a neat figure, told me he disapproved: the sorrows of a German in Africa.
He thought African soccer would decline because Africa was getting poorer. “Soccer is not on an island. In terms of medicine, of feeding, these countries will have ever greater disadvantages. If you talk about winning the World Cup, well, it’s just possible that one of the North African states could do it one day, because of their better economies.” For the same reason, he tipped South Africa, currently a weak team. Elsewhere, times were hard. He told me the Congo’s neighbour, Zaire, could no longer even afford to call its players together for training in the capital, Kinshasa. The coach of Ghana has to beg gasoline from the minister of sport before he can drive into the bush to look at players.
I asked Fickert whether ministers interfered with his work. He replied: “Not in Congo. I have had six ministers of sport in two years, and the top civil servants change all the time too. Ministers just give speeches and don’t bother about daily affairs. There is no positive intervention either. This is the sixth month in which wages have not been paid.” For the recent away match against South Africa, his FA had only been able to afford to fly over two of Congo’s European-based players, and the pair got no match fee. The young Congo team lost 1-0 and were knocked out of the World Cup. Their forthcoming home match against South Africa was meaningless.
So how could Fickert afford to fly to Gaborone and stay in this fine hotel, just to watch the Bafana Bafana play? “African nations take these matches very seriously,” he replied. Here was another official on a junket.
CHAPTER 13
ROGER MILLA AND PRESIDENT BIYA
CAMEROON HAD SLIPPED OUT of the news rather since the 1990 World Cup, so until I visited their embassy in London to ask for a visa I had no idea how bad things had got there.
When I rang at the embassy, a man opened the door two inches and peered around it. “What do you want?” “A visa.” Wait here.” He shut the door again, returned with forms to fill in and explained the procedure to me on the doorstep. Each time I visited the embassy I was blocked at the door. At the time I took this for rudeness, but as I found out later, the embassy was barring strangers for
fear that they might be creditors demanding money.
Not the colonists, but a Sierra Leonean photographer named Georges Goethe brought soccer to Cameroon, when in the 1920s he started juggling a soccer in the streets of Douala after work. We were all grateful to the great German poet in 1990. Recall the images the Italian World Cup has left in your mind: there is Gazza in tears, and Lineker pointing at his own eyes to alert the England bench; the mad glint in Toto Schillaci’s eyes; and Frank Rijkaard spitting at Rudi Völler; but most images you have will be of Cameroon. There is Roger Milla tackling the Colombian goalkeeper Higuita, and grinning massively even as he dribbles towards goal; Benjamin Massing clogging Lineker; the three consecutive Cameroonian assaults on Claudio Caniggia, timed like gags in a comedy routine; and Milla’s post-goal corner-flag belly dances.
The Indomitable Lions fell in the quarterfinals, when they lost 3-2 to England despite outplaying the English for great swathes of the game. England’s fans rendered an inapposite “Rule Britannia,” and the Italians gave the Lions an ovation. “They’re unlucky to be out,” Bobby Robson conceded.