Zimpapers Logo

The chaos on the dirty and overcrowded roads in Ouagadougou, the dilapidated buildings and the markets that sold just about everything, including meat, were all images of a city that looked to have been plucked from another planet.

The huge number of motorcycles that dominated the streets, and could be hired for a taxi ride that would test your nerves to the limit in that traffic jungle, all added up to the confusion and the long time it took me to settle in Ouagadougou.
The searing heat compounded to make this city unbearable and every day, during that month-long tour of duty, I truly missed my beautiful Harare and the 30 days appeared to drag on so slowly they looked like a year.

The road trip that we undertook from Ouagadougou to Bobo-Dioulasso, the second largest city in Burkina Faso, covered about 350 km but it looked like the journey went on forever and ever.
Try as I did, I never fell in love with Burkina Faso because this was a completely strange world to the comforts that I had been used to in Southern Africa.
And there were many journalists from this part of the continent who would probably have hosted a party had the tournament been called off at the halfway mark.

The relief, to most of us, kept coming from the comfort that in two years time the Nations Cup would be played in a decent place as it was set to come to Zimbabwe.
I always felt back then, no matter our shortcomings as a people, we would certainly hold a better Nations Cup than Burkina Faso and, to me, if this tournament could come to a place like this, then it could be hosted anywhere, even in a desert.

We clearly had the infrastructure in place, when I compared our facilities to Burkina Faso, and our stadiums looked in good shape, needing just a touch or two, and our roads – as bad as we repeatedly said they were – were in far better shape than the ones I was seeing in that West African country.
Our hotels, clearly, when compared to what these Burkinabe had then, were from a different planet.

So, at every given opportunity, I chose to tell anyone who cared to listen that Zimbabwe would be a new charming experience for the Nations Cup finals and, while we did not have the financial muscle to do it the way South Africa had done in ’96, we would put up a better show than the Burkinabe.
Sadly, Zimbabwe never got its chance as the politics, related to the rebellion by Southern African countries against Issa Hayatou’s bid to get Africa to back Lennart Johannson for the Fifa presidency in ‘98 instead of Sepp Blatter, back-fired badly.

Southern African countries chose Blatter and, in his hour of humiliation, Hayatou cracked the whip against the rebels.
And the first victims of that fallout became Zimbabwe who were stripped of their right to host the 2000 Nations Cup finals on the flimsy excuse that the country was not ready.

Predictably, the 2000 Nations Cup finals were shifted to West Africa and Ghana and Nigeria were given the mandate to co-host the tourney as the Caf leadership sent a bold message to the Southern African rebels that they could not have their cake and eat it, too.

The tournament would only return to Southern Africa, 10 years later, when it was held in Angola in 2010 as scandals weakened Hayatou’s hold on power and the anger towards the rebels, which was at boiling point in ’98, began to fade away and give way to reconciliation.
I have never forgiven Hayatou and his cronies for the way they stole our right to host the Nations Cup finals and, even worse, for the load of lies they cooked up to back their sick decision.

And, therefore, when I ran into Hayatou again in November ’98 in Abidjan, during the second leg of the Champions League final between Dynamos and ASEC Mimosas, I wasn’t surprised at all to see the Caf president ignoring the headbutt which sent Memory Mucherahowa to hospital.

Not even a word of criticism from the Caf boss for the violent conduct of the ASEC Mimosa players that left the visiting captain fighting for his life and missing the biggest match in his team’s history.
Try to imagine that happening in Europe and Barcelona captain Carlos Puyol being floored by a headbutt, in the pre-match warm-up, during the Champions League final and Uefa president, Michel Platini, keeping quiet as if nothing happened?

But, after having spent a month in Burkina Faso in ’98, I got to understand some dynamics of African football and, crucially, that things are not always what you believe you are seeing on the ground.

Another Nations Cup Is Here
So, here we go again, and yet another Nations Cup showcase explodes into life tonight and, for the next three weeks, Hayatou and his men will be feted like kings as they oversee their tournament.

But you get a feeling they are overseeing a tournament that is losing its sparkle, year after year, and there are now genuine questions as to whether the African stars, based in Europe, really give it their best show when it comes to this tournament.
We all know that given a choice, Yaya Toure, would have preferred to play in that FA Cup tie against Manchester United than be in camp with Cote d’Ivoire preparing for this Nations Cup finals.

You feel the Nations Cup is almost a distraction, a sideshow for these boys that has become a burden rather than an experience to fulfil their football dreams.
And it’s fair to conclude that most of their minds would be in Europe while their bodies are in Gabon and Equatorial Guinea.
A number of analysts have claimed that the absence of the traditional heavyweights like Nigeria, Cameroon and Algeria from the 2012 Nations Cup finals, coupled with the presence of lightweights like

Botswana, represent a change in the power dynamics of the game on the continent.
Surprisingly, what these analysts have missed, deliberate or otherwise, is the fact that there is a growing resentment towards this tournament by a lot of Africa’s top players based in Europe and their commitment to it is now questionable.

The Yakubu who plays for Blackburn Rovers and the Yakubu who plays for Nigeria, especially in the Nations Cup qualifiers, are two totally different players and you get this feeling the Yak puts in more effort playing for his club than his country.
When people tell me that Cameroon have become so bad overnight and Samuel Eto’o, Alex Song and company have become so terrible overnight they cannot even take their country to the Nations Cup,

I ask them to think again and analyse the situation better.
Even Roger Milla finally lost his patience with Eto’o, before the 2010 World Cup finals, with the legendary forward saying the Cameroon marksman did not play for his country with the same spirit he plays for his clubs in Europe where he has earned a huge fortune.

But Cameroon football hasn’t been helped by the chaos that is in its administrative arm and now and again the players arriving from Europe, coming home to serve their country, have found themselves faced with a mountain of challenges just to play a single game.
It’s something that is prevalent in most countries in Africa and we are not immune to that, either, because we also pressed the self-destruction button ahead of the big game against Cape Verde when

we left the chaos in the Warriors’ technical team to crush the spirits of the players.

Our bothers across the Limpopo even failed to read the rules and regulations governing the tournament and, rather than fight for a win against Sierra Leone at home, battled for a draw and, worse still, led an entire nation into celebrations believing they had done it when, in reality, they had flopped.
The situation in African football today is not helped, too, by the way matches are handled, especially for the home teams in West and North Africa, where the referees transform themselves into the additional playing staff of the hosting nations.

With most of these matches not covered by SuperSport, so that the referees’ performances can be analysed, the diabolical decisions that are given to the home teams by these match officials are shocking.

And, gradually, this erodes the spirits of the leading players and it shatters their confidence in getting a fair deal from the adventure of representing their country.
That Caf has repeatedly turned a blind eye to such refereeing madness to the extent that you get a feeling the organisation’s leadership is a part of the rot, has not helped matters either.
Visiting teams are still being sent into hostels, disguised as hotels, for their accommodation, all sorts of psychological wars, including giving the visitors sub-standard pitches to train on, are still being fought, and some of the strangest penalty decisions are being given to the home teams in African football.

For some of the top players based in Europe, these regular visits back home to play in the Nations Cup qualifiers, where the playing field is not level and where results can be fixed by referees playing for the home team, with Caf turning a blind eye to all this nonsense, has become a burden.

And, doing it again and again, in a tournament that is still played once every two years rather than once in four years, as is the case with some of the leading football tourneys in the world, has increased both the burden and the negative attitude towards this tournament.

Little Botswana In The Area
If there is a nation whose appearance at the 2012 Nations Cup finals will put our failures into perspective, then that country has to be Botswana.
Every minute they will spend on the pitch at this showcase will be a definition of how far we have fallen, as a football nation, and the mountain that we have to climb to be back there.

Incredibly, Botswana are there at the Nations Cup finals when their leading goal-scorer is clubless because he has problems, related to his contract, with modest South African Premiership club, Santos.
Interestingly, we are not there when our leading striker’s profile is growing with each passing month and, a few months ago, he became too good for Super Diski and was sold to the Bundesliga.
Incredibly, Botswana are there at the Nations Cup finals when all that they did was invest their trust, in the leadership of the team, to a local coach after a disastrous flirtation with European coaches.

Interestingly, we are not there because our football leadership, when it mattered most, chose a disastrous experiment with a European coach who belonged to the Nambian Football Association and, in the confusion that followed, we lost the focus we needed to beat Cape Verde at home in a big game.

Incredibly, Botswana are there at the Nations Cup finals even when they also had to deal with their Asiagate fiasco, which led to the firing of the BFA chief executive Tosh Kgotele, after questionable things happened when the Zebras toured the Far East.

Interestingly, we are not there at the Nations Cup finals because we failed to handle our Asiagate challenges with the same professional touch as the BFA and loaded our players with a burden of uncertainty that affected their performance in the qualifiers.

Incredibly, all the leading coaches in Botswana football are our own men – Madinda Ndlovu, Elvis Chiweshe, you name them, because there is that belief in that country that the real technical people, when it comes to football, are found in Zimbabwe.

But, for all that we have in terms of player resources, in terms of technical brilliance, in terms of a loyal spectator support base, we have to watch from the sidelines while little Botswana dances with the best teams on the continent at this showcase.
There are probably more players in Zimbabwe today, old enough to play for the national team, than the entire population of Botswana but, somehow, we just can’t get it right and these Zebras can gallop to Gabon and Equatorial Guinea while we watch from a distance.

We can’t hide behind the finger of Asiagate, as the reason why we aren’t at the 2012 Nations Cup finals, because Botswana had a similar challenge but found a better way to handle it while we foolishly claimed Ronaldo was paid by the betting syndicates to fake injury ahead of the ’98 World Cup finals.

We can’t hide behind the finger of lack of financial resources because, as we saw ahead of our friendly against Botswana, the Zebras have similar challenges and their players went on strike and the BFA announced to the world that its coffers were empty.

We can’t claim that we are not there because we invested all our trust in a local coach because Botswana also did the same and went all the way.
I have my own reservations about Botswana and its people but I will support their Nations Cup campaign because they are there on merit and their BFA have provided a template to our Zifa leaders about how to handle a senior national football team.

By just being there, Botswana have won a big battle and everything will be a bonus and, even if they fail to win a single match, so what?
After all, noone thought they would be here in the first place.

DeMbare Simply Amazes Me
The Dynamos leadership announced this week that they will not take part in an invitational tournament in Polokwane simply because the R100 000 offered to them for that one-day tournament is not enough.

Simple calculations will show that it translates to about US$12 000 and if that is not enough the cover the costs of playing, at most, two matches in one day, then maybe I’m getting lost somewhere.
Given that Dynamos are preparing for the Champions League, they should look beyond making a profit and should be a club that is even prepared to run the losses as long as that adventure, ultimately, helps them in their preparations for the tournament.

A cool US$12 000 is enough to cover transport, accommodation and player allowances and, even if it meant that Dynamos were to spend another US$2 000, it’s worth it as long as playing in that tournament has benefits, in the long run, to their Champions League campaign.
A club that played 30 matches last season, to win US$75 000 as league champions at an average income of US$2 500 a game, suddenly finds the muscle to tell us that US$12 000 isn’t enough for a one-day adventure.

Dynamos should have been guided by a technical report, from Calisto Pasuwa, to say whether playing in the tournament would boost his preparations or not and any decision should have been based on that rather than on the financial considerations.
If everything was based on financial considerations then why will Dynamos spend about US$30 000, to play their first round in the Champions League, without any guarantee that they will win the match and get something in return should they qualify for the group stages?

Dynamos should grow as a brand and they should have gone to South Africa because playing Mamelodi Sundowns will help them better, in the long run, than playing Qealaton at Ascot in a friendly that doesn’t make sense to me.

What do Dynamos intend to gain from playing the Premiership newcomers? Ah, hameno!
Come on Botswanaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
Chicharitoooooooooooooooooooo!
Text Feedback – +263772545199
Email – [email protected]
Skype – robson.sharuko10
You can also interact with ROBSON SHARUKO on Facebook and Twitter