Sports fans, grab a pen and paper or log into e-mail and send this
message to the heartless bureaucrats who run African football:
"Sirs, shame on you for totally mishandling the terrorist attack on
Togo's team."
Their decision this weekend to ban Togo from the next two
editions of the Africa Cup of Nations, punishing the shell-shocked
squad for pulling out of this year's competition, heaps injustice
upon death.
It multiplies the suffering of Togolese footballers still
haunted by the machine-gunning of their bus on Jan. 8, as they were
en route to their matches. The attack killed three people, wounded
eight and rendered utterly meaningless and irrelevant everything
that happened on-field in the tournament that ended this Sunday.
Nearly one month on, Togo captain Emmanuel Adebayor says the
memories give him nightmares every night. He found the perfect
choice of words to condemn the banning of his team: "This decision
is monstrous," he told French sports daily L'Equipe.
Like petty apparatchiks everywhere, the Confederation of
African Football conjured up a rule to try to justify the
unjustifiable.
Its statement said Togo was banned "in conformity with
article 78" - as if that somehow makes it right.
It provided a Web link to the now infamous regulation. The
rule says teams that withdraw at short notice from the biennial
tournament can be suspended for two following editions and be
fined.
It says nothing about the need for compassion and common
sense.
Climbing on the highest but lamest horse it could find, CAF
portrayed the punishment as an effort to preserve the independence
of African football. It said the Togolese players themselves wanted
to compete in the tournament despite the attack on their bus but
that Togo's government forced them home. Such political
interference in footballing matters breaks CAF rules, it argued.
Talk about picking the wrong moment to take a stand. Trying
to prevent politicians from meddling in sports could be commendable
... in other situations. Not this time. Not when people have been
killed. Not when Abebayor notes that Togo assistant coach Abalo
Amelete was being buried on the same day that CAF's executive
committee took its decision.
"As we speak, his loved ones are at the cemetery," Adebayor
said. "Can you imagine their reaction when they find out?"
No surprise then that the Manchester City forward reserves
his bitterest words for CAF president Issa Hayatou. From the moment
the gunmen opened fire on Togo's bus to now, the organization that
Hayatou leads has acted poorly.
"He must clear off," Adebayor was quoted as saying. "The only
thing Mr. Hayatou and his friends know how to do is to award the
organization of the Africa Cup to countries that give them the most
money."
Making this worse is that CAF, in its statement, recognized
that Togo's dazed and confused players were in two minds about
whether they should compete in the tournament following the attack
by suspected separatists in the oil-producing Cabinda region of
Angola, which hosted this cup.
Some players initially said that they no longer wanted to
take the field. Who can blame them? Others later said that they
wanted to play to honor their dead teammates and their Angolan bus
driver, who also was killed.
Togo President Faure Gnassingbe apparently tipped the balance
by calling Adebayor and urging the team to come back.
"We have to mourn our dead. We go back home to do this,"
Adebayor said as he boarded the presidential plane sent by Togo's
government.
Could the players have refused? Should they have played even
while their goalkeeper Kodjovi "Dodji" Obilale lay with bullet
fragments in his stomach in a South African hospital? Should
Adebayor simply have ignored the "deep despair" he said he felt
after the Togo team's media officer, Stanislas Ocloo, died in his
arms and focused instead on the business, so inconsequential in
comparison to life and death, of scoring goals?
Only a bully would punish Togo for not having done so.
Instead of doing a service to African football, barring the players
from the Africa Cup for the next four years seems mean, cold and
grossly unfair.
John Leicester is an international sports columnist for The
Associated Press. Write to him at jleicester(at)ap.org.
