Reserve Togo goalkeeper, Kodjovi Obilale, arrives at Lanseria airport after being evacuated to Johannesburg after the attack on the team in Cabinda. Reuters By GEORGE OGOLA (email the author)
Posted Wednesday, January 13 2010 at 18:47
As dramatic as the opening match in the African Cup of Nations between Angola and Mali was, the shooting of the Togolese team in Cabinda last week remains the talk of the sporting world. It was a tragedy that was rightly condemned within the continent and beyond. But it also gave cynics, afro-pessimists and closet bigots plenty of reason to return to the usual anthropological reading of Africa. The Cabinda attack has given much of the international media reason to caricature the continent. It has been a tragic blend of ignorance and prejudice passed as news coverage.
Culturally and politically, Africa is perhaps far more diverse than Europe, in part a function of its very complex history. A widely shared skin colour does not reflect this diversity yet very often misconstrued and used either unwittingly or deliberately to qualify certain homogenised narratives about the continent. As a matter of fact, Angola may have more in common with Portugal than South Africa.
Not for the first time, the continents heterogeneity has been disregarded by much of the international media who continue to look at Africa as an undifferentiated aggregate. In the coverage of the attack, a region no more than 7,300 square miles became face of a continent with a land mass of about 3,0221,532 square miles. It was a coverage that reinforces the need to strengthen the continents individual national media or support pan-African media initiatives which can ably tell the story of the continent, cognizant of its peculiar historical complexities and cultural differences. African countries must realise that the Western media will do it no favours.
Once the attack happened, the media template to be used was drawn, and indeed followed to the letter. In the popular Soccer Saturday sports programme on Sky Sports watched by millions in the UK and beyond, it was left to former white footballers, who had perhaps never heard of Angola let alone Cabinda to talk about the shooting. Expectedly, the amiable but clearly ignorant host Jeff Sterling immediately framed the subject as an African problem and wondered whether this was going to be an issue for South Africa hosting the World Cup. Like members of a choir, his panel sang in unison calling the region insecure. Others even hinted at the idea of moving the World Cup away from South Africa.
It was left to the rather inarticulate former Arsenal player Paul Merson to appear like a genius reminding his colleagues that Angola is not South Africa and indeed that if a similar thing happened in Germany during the last World Cup, the world would not blame Europe.
At the BBC, a news organisation that has broadcast from the continent for decades, the analysis was also left to former footballers, recast as knowledgeable pundits. They all called for the tournament to be cancelled and for the African players to come home, the irony of the latter statement notwithstanding.
Soon after the attack, this media got a hero in Manchesters Citys Emmanuel Adebayor. Not long ago savaged by the British media for taunting Arsenal fans following his rather disreputable celebration of a goal against his former club, he become the most sought-after source after his remarks following the shooting. Adebayor, it must be noted, has always appeared in need of some kind of affirmation he never received at Arsenal and must have realised this was an opportunity to grab with two hands and feet.
It would be wrong to ignore the shock and the fear that must have gripped the player and his colleagues following the attack. But this ceased being a sporting issue at that very moment. It was certainly not for Adebayor to analyse. It became a matter for the Angolan and Togolese governments and the tournament organisers the Confederation of African Football (CAF) to handle.
While Adebayor rightly condemned the attack, he also overreached himself arguing that Africa must do something about its image considering it was about to host the World Cup. Cabinda is not Africa and Africa is not Cabinda.
Keen to confirm their template, Adebayor became to the media, the Holy Grail whose words hogged column inches from Paris to London and radio stations across Europe. He provided the very legitimating voice this media was seeking.
It was the Africans saying these things. We are only providing the platform. The focus was firmly planted on the failure of the tournament and the fears about the World Cup. Premier league managers such as Martin O Neill and Phil Brown were widely quoted when they called for the FA to demand that their players return to England. Meanwhile, it was fascinating seeing the BBCs Karen Allen, sending her report on the Cabinda attack standing outside Soccer City in Soweto, South Africa.
Significantly, the report relied disproportionately on Adebayors comments. Was it so hard to get quotes from the Angolan government or from CAF or perhaps from political analysts knowledgeable about the Cabinda conflict? Danny Jordan, the Chair of South Africas World Cup Organising Committee gave a powerful rebuttal on the double stands being applied to the coverage of tragedy, reminding the international media that it would be unfair to draw comparisons between Cabinda and South Africa. He argued that conflict in Kosovo did not mean Germany was unsafe to host the last World Cup. His comments were not carried by the flagship BBC TV news programmes much less Sky. Instead, he was given a brief mention on BBC sports programme.
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:bash::ohno: