The tragedy of Togo and the Cup of Nations

If Karl Marx, the communist ideologue and the father of modern communism, were more open-minded and observant, he would have described sport (particularly soccer) as the opium of the masses.

But then Marx could be excused because in his time, soccer was not the big global enterprise it is now. A global “opium trade” run by a coterie of retired initiates with a little more decorum than the Italian Mafia runs its global narcotics operations.

Take the Confederation of African Football and the history of Africa together. Until recently, Africa was plagued by tin pot dictators and military tyrants who bestrode the land in jack boots, khaki and swagger sticks. The current of public opinion turned against them and one by one they crumpled like a pack of cards, and now they have become an endangered species. But their traces are far from gone – one relic still bestrides Africa with the same swagger, but without jackboots and khaki. He is Issa Hayatou, the president (or life president, as some sports journalist derisively refer to him) of the Confederation of African Football. The last of the breed!

Recently, in a Mafia-like display of insensitivity and arrogance, Hayatou slammed a four year ban and a fifty thousand dollar fine on the Republic of Togo for pulling out of the Africa Cup of Nations in Angola. The Togo contingent had run into an ambush by Angolan rebels in Cabinda, on their way to the tournament. They lost two members of their contingent and several others, including their first choice goalkeeper, were critically injured. The players were understandably traumatized and the Togolese Government recalled the players to come back home, bury and mourn their colleagues. The country declared a day of national mourning.

While they mourned, CAF paid them scant attention and did not even send condolences to Togo. Contrast CAF’s passiveness with the fact that the Premier League club Manchester City FC, which considers Emmanuel Adebayor, the Togolese captain, one of the most important players in the club, decided to give him a time-out to resolve his trauma and recover from the shock. The club urged him not to return to club football right away. Not Hayatou, who would, perhaps, have wanted the Togolese players to play the same day they were attacked and some of them died. Hayatou is either a football cyborg who has only football feelings, not the milk of human kindness.

The West African country, Togo is a small country. It is bounded on the north by Bukina Faso, on the south by the Gulf of Guinea, on the west by Ghana and on the east by Benin Republic. It has an area of 56,785 sq km (21,925 sq miles). It has a population of 5,858,673 (2008 estimates). It’s population is lower than that of the world’s most populous cities like London (7.5 million), Tokyo (8.3 million) and New York (21.2 million). Given its size, and lack of economic or social clout, the senseless killing of the Togoleses, which would have led to a major diplomatic row had it involved a country like Egypt, South Africa, Nigeria or even Hayatou’s Cameroun, was treated like a minor blip in a badly-scripted movie.

Hayatou’s conduct reminded me of a scene in the spaghetti western, “The Good, the Bad, the Ugly.” The bad, Sentenza (Lee Van Cleef), a bounty hunter and hired gun, had been hired to kill a man. He turns up in the man’s house and after having dinner with the man, guns him down in cold blood. The man’s teenage son pops up with a long rifle and Sentenza kills him too. On his way to his horse, he hears the man’s wife crying and wailing over the murders of her husband and son. Sentenza steals a glance and discovers that she is a young and pretty woman. He lazily jumps on his horse, lights a cigar and mutters under his breath, “Women, they always cry over small change, she is still young and she could remarry and have many more children.”

Hayatou seems to have Sentenza’s mentality – only that Sentenza appears more gentlemanly. Hunkered down in his lavish hotel room in Angola he must have shaken his head and must have muttered under his breath, “Togo, they always cry over small change. They forget that several people are being born in the countryside and losing only two is no big deal.” Unlike Sentenza who left the woman to mourn her death, Hayatou wants the “woman” (Togo) to bear the cost of his “trip” (fine).

Of course the world has risen against Hayatou but he is as defiant as dictators usually are. Dictators are the same all over the world; they simply have different faces so that you can tell them apart and hide from them. The African Ministers of Sport have condemned the decision. Togo has lodged a complaint with CAF. There is an online campaign for a million signatures against the move. Many countries have condemned the action. But Hayatou is adamant that Togo should not have pulled out of the competition.

Hayatou was there when Cameroun wore something like swimming trunks to play football in the 2002 African Cup of Nations and turned up later in the same attire for the World Cup in Japan. FIFA stopped them from using the attire and Cameroun escaped with a fine from the FIFA – the world football body. The light-handed treatment of Cameroun and the high-handed and insensitive treatment of Togo shows an odd sense of proportion on the part of “Emperor” Hayatou.

Of course, there is no morality or ethics in football – so Hayatou is right. That is why FIFA has Norwegian spoilsport, referee Tom Ovrebo, who denied Chelsea four clear penalty appeals, on its shortlist to officiate in this year’s World Cup in South Africa. And of course the referee who failed to spot Thierry Henry’s handball, Martin Hansson, is also on the shortlist.

Hayatou is fortunate to have a coterie of yes-men who whenever he sneezes, catch cold. No CAF official has ever been man enough to fault Hayatou’s actions or decisions because he is the Stalin and Idi Amin of African Football. And so Togo would have to suffer the ban and pay the fine – not for doing anything wrong by burying their death, but for being a tiny small country that no one reckons with. But added to this FIFA (and it affiliate bodies like CAF) is proof that “power corrupts and absolute power (like FIFA has over football) corrupts absolutely.”

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