Between satisfaction (off the pitch) and despair (on the pitch)

With the 2010 World Cup at the halfway point, the blogosphere has begun taking stock of the performance of Africa’s six representatives and the host country.

Tomathon.com writes that contrary to what the doomsayers, particularly the Western media, predicted, the World Cup has gone on thus far without any major organisational or security, glitch; the World Cup has not turned out to be a chaotic crime-ridden fest:

‘I’ve so far noted one shocking fact: The South African World Cup is not riven by crime, corruption, shoddy workmanship, or terrorism. In fact, things are going swimmingly, the stadiums operations and infrastructure are beautiful, and the only deaths among the 450,000 visitors have been from road accident and falling off a mountain while admiring the scenery… so much of the press run up was so negative — even years of rumors that FIFA would move the cup at the last moment — that it may come as a shock how happy foreign fans are with what they’ve found in South Africa.

‘One report quotes a puzzled German fan. Puzzled because, despite the foreign press hysterics, he can go to a local bar and discover “I’m the only white guy in the room but I feel very safe.”

‘South African sports reporter Peter Davies has a wonderful piece entitled An Open letter to our Foreign Media friends, marveling at the gloom of foreign media outlets who quake in terror of “machete-wielding gangs roaming the suburbs in search of tattooed, overweight Dagenham dole-queuers to ransack and leave gurgling on the pavement.” But surprise! There’s no fear in walking the streets provided you don’t hang a wad of cash out your back pocket. There are also a surprising shortage of wild animal attacks and collapsing stadia. “For instance, you will find precious few rhinos loitering on street corners, we don’t know a guy in Cairo named Dave just because we live in Johannesburg, and our stadiums are magnificent, world-class works of art.”’

This is Africa analyses the poor performance of African representatives in what was billed as Africa’s World Cup:

‘I don’t find this all terrifically surprising. Much was made of the fact that this is “Africa’s World Cup,” and I suppose that on some level, playing on South African soil could have given some added inspiration to the African nations. But for all the rabid support of South African fans, the African teams left their staunchest supporters behind for 2010. Between the high cost of travel and the various ticketing fiascos with FIFA, most Ghanaians and Cameroonians are watching this World Cup from their couches, like the rest of the world.

‘More importantly, there’s the simple matter of tactical football (or lack thereof). I’ll leave it to the pundits to pile on with their usual criticisms of “undisciplined” African squads, but the fact is that absent-minded defense, poor finishing, and some shockingly bad decisions have led to the dreadful specter of a second round in the 2010 World Cup without a single African squad. In twelve matches so far, the six African teams have combined to score a total of six goals. As an Ivorian man put it to me last week, watching his country’s scoreless draw with Portugal: “You have a woman, you must make a baby. You cannot say, ‘She is always on top.’ You cannot make excuses.”’

Ethiopian Review is despondent over the fact that African states are drifting toward a new age of authoritarianism:

‘To a casual observer, the tens of thousands of people who poured into the central square of Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on May 25 to peacefully celebrate the country’s elections might have been mistaken for a massive symbol of democratic progress in a poor and troubled part of the world. In fact it was quite the opposite.

‘The demonstrators were there to denounce Human Rights Watch for criticising the victory of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front and its allies, who claimed 545 out of 547 seats in Parliament following a massive campaign of intimidation against opposition supporters…

‘In country after country, the recipe for the new age of authoritarianism is the same: demonization and criminal prosecution of opposition leaders, dire warnings of ethnic conflict and chaos should the ruling party be toppled, stacking of electoral commissions, and the mammoth mobilization of security forces and government resources on behalf of the party in power.’

Nigerians Talk joins the ongoing debate in Nigeria about decreasing the number of states to reduce corruption:

‘On the surface, I get it: If you want to reduce corruption, which tends to happen mostly at the local and state level, reduce the number of, well, local and state levels. Decreasing the number of states makes for a more effective federalism, and ensures that our oversight mechanisms work better.

‘Of course, one must ask: Does having less states mean having less corruption?

‘First of all, you’re trimming the number of states, not the size of the country, so basically you’ll be giving government officials wider mandates and, effectively more power. You can actually argue that this on-the-surface “pruning” is actually enlarging our government, so much so that it’ll make corruption easier. If Jigawa and Kaduna cannot run their individual corners competently, what makes you think it’ll be better to add Kano and Zamfara to the mix? What makes you think it’ll be easier to catch inefficiencies in larger, bloated states?

‘I don’t think having less police commissioners will make policemen stop being corrupt until they get some benefits with their jobs and get paid well and not live in squalid police quarters in Ikeja. I don’t think we’ll get much progress with our public education system by shrinking the number of state systems if the teachers aren’t paid well and don’t get enough benefits.’

In Africa Rising, Gregory Simpkins explains the factors that hinder inter-African trade:

‘The reason it’s easier to get from Lagos to London than from Lagos to Nairobi is that air linkages between the colony and colonial power were arranged that way because Nigeria and Kenya were intended to trade with the United Kingdom and not each other. This situation is slowly but surely being addressed, but old habits die hard, and African regional airlines have not been successful in competition with stronger European airlines.

‘It isn’t that there are no efforts to trade between African countries, but that trade which exists is plagued by four trends. First, there is a narrow pattern of trade involving unprocessed primary products. What incentive is there for one country to buy fruit from its neighbor that it already produces? Second, Europeans still dominate African trade. Gambia has historically traded almost exclusively with the United Kingdom even though it is surrounded by Senegal, whose major trading partner is France. If the former colonial power buys most of your products, how much do you have left to trade with your neighbors? Third, much of the intra-African trade that exists is done so informally and is untaxed and unregulated, so we really can’t say what the true level of intra-African trade is beyond estimates. Fourth, African payment systems are inefficient and costly. Electronic fund transfers taking minutes facilitate international transactions elsewhere, but checks for payment in Africa can take a month to clear. Given this discrepancy, who would you rather do business with?’

Loomnie posts a reader’s reaction to Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s new book, ‘Nomad: From Islam to America. A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilisations’:

‘Without undermining the intellectual capabilities and the personal achievements of Ms Hirsi Ali, she often comes across as self-overestimating and excessively self-benefitting. Since she stepped out of the Islamic faith, she seems extremely obsessed with projecting Islam in a negative light… She is celebrated in the West because of her anti-Islam crusade. I reside in the Netherlands and I know that she avoids public debates and discussions with people of authority and experts on Islam who do not share her views of Islam. My attention was drawn to Ms Hirshi Ali in the early nineties when she was a young member of the PVDA (The Workers Party in the Netherlands). As a young politician, she was out-spoken, well articulated and determined. She later cross-carpeted to the VVD (Liberal party). Following political scandals surrounding her acquisition of the Dutch citizenship, she had to quit her seat in the parliament. Since a few years she has been working for the extremely conservative American institution: The American Enterprise Institute. For a self-proclaimed liberal individual, her taking up a job position with this institution, suggests a great degree of contradiction to me, knowing the goals and objectives of this institute.’

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* Dibussi Tande blogs at Scribbles from the Den.
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