By Charles Onyango-Obbo
In Summary
- If you can play football with someone, then you can live with or make peace with them if you are in conflict. Killing them for watching football is to say you can never live together, that one can only live when the other is dead.
This World Cup season is changing East African,
and indeed, African politics. You could say it all started in the Uganda
capital Kampala in July 2010.
Bombs went off at a sports pub where Kampalans
were watching the World Cup final match between the Netherlands and
Spain. Nearly 80 people were killed and hundreds wounded.
Football is the only mass sport in East Africa
that overcomes tribal, religious, and all sorts of political rivalries,
so many were truly puzzled that the Somali militant group Al Shabaab,
which claimed responsibility for the attack, would kill fans watching a
football game. It was the sports equivalent of desecrating a holy
temple.
That was then. The age of innocence is long over.
Last weekend, terrorists (Kenyans are still arguing about their
identity) went on the rampage in the coastal town of Mpeketoni. In a
spree of killing and burning, they left 60 people dead. Many of the dead
were at various entertainment spots watching World Cup 2014.
On Tuesday, an explosion ripped through a
football-viewing centre in Damaturu, northern Nigeria, where fans had
gathered to watch Brazil face off with Mexico. About 30 people were
killed, and dozens wounded.
Public screening of the World Cup at “viewing
centres” in northeast Nigeria had already been banned in the face of
heightened terror threats by Boko Haram.
In May, three people were killed in a blast in the
city of Jos in central Nigeria as they watched the Champions League
final between Atletico Madrid and Real Madrid.
That was only one of several deadly attacks on sports venues and football fans.
That was only one of several deadly attacks on sports venues and football fans.
I am always prepared for Africa to surprise, but I
never thought it would deliver us football martyrs. Watching football
in a public viewing place is now stuff for the brave.
Because fans are being killed for watching football, the game has also become a cause to die for.
The extremists see terrible things in football: It
is sinful idolatry; it distracts the faithful from the godly path and
worship; it is a Jewish conspiracy, name it. All baloney.
The really striking thing, though, is how much terrorist attacks on football are challenging fundamental values.
The really striking thing, though, is how much terrorist attacks on football are challenging fundamental values.
At the start of the 2000s, Uganda and Rwanda’s
allied forces fell out in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, and
fought a series of deadly short battles.
Though hostilities had been building up and the
generals in Kampala and Kigali had been involved in a war of words for
weeks, the soldiers on the ground still played cards and football
together in the city of Kisangani.
In the first major clash between the two sides,
soldiers who had been playing together were called to arms, abandoned
their games, and minutes later were killing each other.
In Liberia and Sierra Leone, rebels and government troops would pause from killing other for a bit of football.
Here is the thing. If you can play football with
someone, then you can live with or make peace with them if you are in
conflict. Killing them for watching football is to say you can never
live together, that one can only live when the other is dead.
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