Don't blame our boys for slapping officials doing ugly things at the beautiful game - Comment
The only reason African government officials travelling abroad do not routinely get slapped by members of their entourage is because they are not accompanied by the people they steal from.
Contrary to those leading sportsmen to international events, who have to travel with the very sportsmen they have defrauded.
The state officials do their wasteful gallivanting — complete with business class travel and unjustifiable sitting allowances — completely unseen by the poor peasants and labourers whose taxes they squander.
Fifty delegates will go to "attend" a meeting designed for 1+2, as they say in their conference-speak. This means there will be seats for the delegation chief — head of state or minister — and two other persons.
If the meeting does not comprise work in specialised committees or "breakaway" sessions, the surplus 47 will often be very present at breakfast and, afterwards, in the hotel lobby where they will be lounging, milling and chatting, as they await transport to take them shopping.
They are stealing money from their people, but the people are none the wiser because they are not there. Matters foreign are matters strange to the majority of our people, even when these concern their wellbeing, and certainly they should be concerned at the levels at which their taxes are being abused.
The sportsmen, on the other hand, are given the opportunity to see for themselves how their money is being "chopped" because they are there physically and they get aggrieved to witnessed the excesses in which their officials indulge with the sportsmen's money.
So, they slap them, often with rude words and threats of applying a five-knuckled treatment. As happened during this World Cup tourney in Brazil. A certain player of a certain African team in the competition considered that an official had gone too far and proceeded to give him a hiding.
I hear people saying he should have given him some more. I mean, these young men are sweating blood to train for a most bruising battle, from which they may not emerge with their limbs intact. We even know that a certain Fabrice Muwamba died for a while. These boys are risking their lives to do their countries proud.
But for the officials, these occasions are opportunities to carry their wives, girlfriends and concubines to see the beautiful game while doing ugly things. And then they neglect to feed the goose that lays the golden egg for them.
That these bureaucrats abuse their positions by travelling unnecessarily — in one case the officials outnumbered the players two to one — and carrying excess baggage when they are themselves already excess, is bad enough.
That they can have the cheek to "eat" the players' meagre allowances justifies the slapping of some cheeks.
There is no doubt, for instance, that in the case of the three countries with these shameless officers, allowances had been disbursed from home. Fifa, itself a crooked organisation, has the habit of paying all qualifying nations quite well. It understands the chop-and-let-chop philosophy better than our stupid officials.
No wonder, then, that the rest of the world treats our poor young men playing soccer abroad as monkeys because, honestly, we are doing monkey things.
How does anyone explain the carrying of suitcases full of cash dollars to Brazil because the president ordered it so that the players end their strike? Where was everybody up to the time of the strike? We render ourselves into apes when we behave like primates.
It is in this way that the continent with arguably the most beautiful practitioners of the beautiful game is also the first to exit the competition. I've always said that football being a tropical dance, no one can dance it better than the Africans. But even dancers have to eat, and when they are cheated they will strike out.
Which is what is likely to happen one of these days with our other set of officials who travel unnecessarily to go and do heavens know what. They too may find out that continuing to squander money you are not producing deserves a spanking, a mighty one.
Jenerali Ulimwengu is chairman of the board of the Raia Mwema newspaper and an advocate of the High Court in Dar es Salaam. E-mail: ulimwengu@jenerali.com
http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/OpEd/comment/Don-t-blame-our-boys-for-slapping-officials/-/434750/2372800/-/f4lwcu/-/index.html
