The power of sport to quell violence in Africa

The continent’s premier soccer tournament has pushed this year’s host, war-torn Cameroon, to be a showcase for peace.

The Monitor's View

Usually when Cameroon is in the news, it is for something negative. The Central African country is one of the poorest and most corrupt. The Islamist militant group Boko Haram has displaced hundreds of thousands over the last decade. A low-level civil war festers in two provinces where English-speaking separatists feel marginalized by the Francophone majority. But in recent days, Cameroon has become the stage for something different: the power of sport to open what Nelson Mandela described as “a crucial window for the propagation of fair play and justice.”

As host of the biannual Africa Cup of Nations, the continent’s premier soccer tournament, Cameroon has become a showcase not just for the passion Africans have for the beautiful game, but also for their aspirations for stability and economic achievement.

The contests on the field provide a background for contests of ideals. One is Africa’s ongoing pursuit of self-confidence. Even before the pandemic Cameroon struggled to show it could host an international sporting event. In 2019 it failed to have venues ready in time, and the tournament was moved to Egypt. This year soccer clubs in Europe were reluctant to release their African players to play in the Cup due to concerns about the pandemic resurgence. As late as last month the Confederation of African Football (CAF)was divided on holding the event.

Those fears, argued CAF President Patrice Motsepe, deserved to be met. “We have to have confidence and belief in ourselves as Africans,” he said.

Now that the games have started, something more significant may be unfolding in Cameroon as well.

The conflict in Cameroon is a vestige of the country’s peculiar history of divided colonial rule under both the French and British. That cleft was never resolved, and in 2017 the current war broke out when lawyers in the two English-speaking provinces demanded greater autonomy. Since then more than 3,000 people have been killed.

Human rights activists and the International Crisis Group saw the Africa Cup as an opportunity for goodwill gestures and a truce. Instead, tensions have escalated. Rebels have vowed to disrupt matches in their strongholds with violence. The military has responded with increased deployments. Yet while both sides flex the harder forms of power, ordinary Cameroonians are finding strength in softer means.

Bombings in separatist strongholds ahead of the tournament prompted Muslim and Christian clerics to gather in mosques and churches in Yaoundé, the capital, to lead worshippers of both faiths in united prayer. Early on Wednesday, gunfire in the separatist town of Buea, where one grouping of teams is based, failed to derail the competition.

Human rights advocates have questioned how an international sporting event can be justified in a country where internal conflict has killed so many. In their determination to host and celebrate the joy of African soccer, Cameroonians are making a different argument: that unity and fair play can do more than violence to expose injustice. The ebullient drone of vuvuzelas by fans could be a sweet herald of peace.