African Nations Cup raises apprehension over World Cup

The ongoing African Cup of Nations in Angola is a final window to the continent before the World Cup this summer. But the attack on Togo has raised some serious questions...
Questions are being raised about the African dawn. Nelson Mandela’s dream of a continent at peace with itself appeared a long way off as news of a terrorist attack on the buses carrying the Togo national team briefly overshadowed the African Cup of Nations kick-off in Angola.There were death and injuries. The Togo team returned home after apparently agonising over whether to stay in Angola or not. The team was officially disqualified from the tournament and criticised for ignoring directives not to travel by road.
Angola has been preparing to host the Cup of Nations with enormous investments, new stadia and infrastructure, and for the continent as a whole it is a chance to attract world attention one final time before the World Cup kicks off in South Africa in June - the first time the world’s biggest international football feast will take place in Africa. As is always the case, football acts as a magnet: we all watch, we all see. If anything else is happening we may also accidentally catch a glimpse, in circumstances in which without football we would never even turn our heads in the same direction.
Now, intriguing match-ups are getting more prominent space than political analysis. At the time of printing, Essien-less Ghana narrowly avoided the ignominy of becoming the first World Cup qualifiers not to make it past the Nations first round, Samuel Eto’o was banking on Cameroon’s fighting spirit to survive the cut, the Ivory Coast players were dubbed as heroes, the host marched on while six-time champion Egypt was lording over the rest. In short, the game goes on.
There are conflicting reports as to whether Togo’s withdrawal from the Cup was the result of their own decision, with some claims that the team simply requested three days of mourning before being allowed to take part in their group matches. According to the BBC, Togo’s Prime Minister Gilbert Huongbo was critical of African football’s governing body CAF. "Our analysis is that they want it (the shooting) to be seen as a non-event and the show must go on as planned; there must not be an official change and Togo is causing problems to the festival," Huongbo was quoted as saying.
Louise Redvers, the BBC’s Angola correspondent, says whereas the attack on the Togo bus is not particularly uncommon in the area where it happened "few such attacks reach the headlines because of an ongoing clampdown on media activities in the province of Cabinda and the government’s refusal to acknowledge Flec’s actions." In Cabinda, Angola, Flec has taken to violence over oil. All over the world people endure daily life under armed disputes over natural resources, religion, political tendencies and power. What happened to the Togo team is only gathering media interest worldwide because it involves football.
Late last year I heard of a development organization considering attending the Cup of Nations in a quest to use football as a platform to promote their campaign. The head office decided not to, on the grounds that Angola was too dangerous. This is anecdotal rather than official, yet it highlights the perennial issue we face as consumers of the beautiful game. Whether it is a view that Argentina’s 1978 World Cup should have been more harshly condemned because of the dictatorship ruling the country at the time, or whether South Africa's Apartheid days’ cricket events should or should not have been boycotted, or even China’s Olympics - talk to the athletes and more often than not they will adhere to taking part. Talk to political activists and the debate gathers momentum. Talk to those who can benefit from the propaganda machine which inevitably sets in at such events and they will defend it vehemently.
In 1970, the World Cup was due to be hosted in Colombia, a South American country which 40 years on continues to hold disproportionately high world figures for murders and kidnappings. At the time, Fifa decided to shift the event to Mexico, at the eleventh hour, because the security guarantees were not up to scratch in Colombia. Now, Angola is not South Africa and it’s perfectly plausible that the World Cup will become a true festival of colour and tactics. We should not place undue criticism on the continent as a whole because of this one incident. At the same time, I repeat, most of the world is subject to these tensions one way or another and we are light years away from learning, as a global community, to optimize the potential of the power of football and not get sucked into the detail of lineups and scorelines.
It was none other than Mahatma Gandhi who classified the roots of violence as, "Wealth without work; Pleasure without conscience; Knowledge without character; Commerce without morality; Science without humanity; Worship without sacrifice; Politics without principles". It’s a pretty tall order to attempt to address all of these, worldwide, and apply them to major football events. But listening to Togo captain Emmanuel Adebayor, Manchester City’s record £25 million signing this summer, and one of Africa’s most emblematic players, after he held the national squad’s media officer in his arms while he died, is a lesson in humanity. He spoke before Togo withdrew from the Cup of Nations, stating the squad needed to discuss this decision carefully. The essence of his message was that they wanted to play, not die.
Agonising seems an apt word to describe what those men have just been through - it’s a bad reflection of humanity if we now all turn our attention to the Cup of Nations fixtures, replaying the best goals and highlighting the prowess of one team over another but forgetting that we are all part of the same game: on and off the pitch. We have a huge challenge as members of the human race, as inhabitants of this planet, and as consumers of the beautiful game. It would be amazing if we succeeded, and almost unthinkably naïve to hope that we might. But to quote Nelson Mandela, "It always seems impossible until it’s done".