Angola Was No Surprise To Anyone
What did people expect from Angola? Nice warm football? Cosy hotels and efficient transport? To believe that would be to live in cuckoo-land.
When I was in Angola for a nasty two years of work I vowed never to return. It was a mad house fuelled on drugs and violence and all that mixed up with a tribal style politics that is a murder waiting to happen at any time of the day minute by minute.
The capital Luanda is perhaps the most civilised place in Angola but even there I would never go outside after 18.00 hours when darkness came along. Even here in Luanda is impossible to miss the beggars or the continuous military circulating around with guns and guns and guns. To drive a car in Luanda is to risk life and limb with the extra adventure of having the car stolen by officials – never to be returned.
For a visit to Angola you need two passports. If the officials decide to keep your passport, as they often do, then at least you have a back-up. In Angola there are few rules that a Westerner would understand easily. In fact Angola makes its own rules day by day and changes them day by day. Do not get sick in Angola either. Angola is a place to die.
The recent attack upon a football bus where death and violence resulted seemed to shock a few romantic souls. But such was no surprise at all. To go to Angola is to risk your life. The recent shootings were in Cabinda, in the northern part of Angola and Cabinda is even worse than Luanda. In fact Cabinda is a good example of a hell-hole on earth.
Why did people organise these African cup games in such places? Perhaps the political decision-makers have something to answer to here because any right thinking person knows that Angola is not fit to host any big sporting events. We can rightly doubt that Angola, given at least twenty more years of ”progress-time”, will be able to organise in anyway at all a decent sporting event let alone a safe one. Hard talk? No a basic truth.
It is impossible to blame the local Angolan politics because they have not yet reached a stage that moves beyond a Monty Python comedy sketch. However some big-wigs in African football politics need to take responsibility for this mad decision although we doubt that they will.
What of the summer World Cup? Well this is to be held a bit further south in South Africa itself but questions must arise now. Yet the big questions are not really getting anywhere at all right now. Most of the media are just to happy to publish official responses and PR words from the organising bosses.
One problem here is concerning the consequences for a reporter who writes the hard facts about these risks. The press are careful not to upset the African authorities.
The African authorities, in Angola especially, see all this as a global PR game to bring in more investment for their now oil rich sea and land. Best not to rock their boat you see.
Angola and especially Cabinda are, to be sure, much worse than South Africa itself. However it is difficult to get much worse than Cabinda in any case or in anywhere else in the world.
All this writer can say is that I will not be travelling to South Africa. The kind of reporter that needs to go to the World Cup this Summer in South Africa is one that knows the tricks and the dangers of crime and crime reporting. Football reporters are likely to be little boys lost in New York. In fact football reporters travelling to South Africa this summer had best learn a few basics of survival from crime reporters just as the reporters in Angola need lessons from those used to war-zones.
Really I make two big points. First Cabinda and Angola should never have been allowed to host a major international sporting event. Second the official reporting has been less than honest.
Steve Bowles
