Africa Nations Cup is Nation’s Holy Grail

Moses Banturaki

28 May 2011

I happen to be one of those people who get their release in sport and football in particular is my fix. It is what I run to when everything else is going down.

But I was also born in the 70’s and I therefore belong to a generation that knows little or no happiness when it comes to football. We had nothing to run to because like most things in the country sport was viewed as a vexing pass time, an annoying little sister who wants to hang onto your arm everywhere at a party loaded with devious opportunities.

I have heard and read that Uganda was once a football power house. I have listened to nostalgic accounts of that Cranes team from 1978 that almost charmed its way to the Africa Cup of Nations crown. But it is such a long time ago and the fact that there has been nothing of note in between makes it appear like we need to constantly remind ourselves that we were once good!

Listening to all these flowery tales from the past makes me feel like a woman whose youthfulness is starting to suffer under the combined strain of time and gravity. It must be too sad if your good times lie not ahead of you, but in the past! Maybe like the majority of my generation, being a child of the 70’s has turned me into a cynic, an unforgivable naysayer who is incapable of seeing anything positive? After all aren’t we CECAFA champions?

True we could be record holders of the CECAFA tournament, but that usually sits well until you realise that the region is not particularly ranked high on the continent. With all due respect, it is made up of among others, pseudo or failed nations like Zanzibar and Somalia. How Somalia even raises eleven players I know not.

Excuse my scepticism but I seek happiness and CECAFA doesn’t do it for me anymore. I want Uganda to move onto bigger and better things. I am fed up with us sitting with smug satisfaction in a small pond. I want us to be like Zambia who left to go and work on becoming a big fish in a big pond.

We don’t necessarily have to join another more powerful regional block, like COSAFA, it doesn’t even make geographical sense (like Japan playing in Copa America-what a load of nonsense) but I want to us qualify for the African Nations Cup and rub it with the big boys. Beating Somalia and Zanzibar frequently will not make us any better than we are.

This is why 4th June is particularly important for me. I can feel it in my old bones and I know it when a good thing is coming. If Uganda beat Guinea Bissau at Namboole next weekend we shall qualify for the African Cup of Nations finals next year, Kenya and Angola are so engrossed in each other to be of consequence. Besides we still have the fall back of the ‘Migingo’ derby, in September and it shall be in our own backyard!

I know that Namboole cannot hold 30 million people, and at Shs15,000 the game is priced beyond the ordinary Ugandan football fan. I also know that qualification is not an end in itself, but wherever we maybe, no matter our opinions or differences, let us all cheer on. In our own small individual ways we can raise the collective optimism of a nation and enable it step beyond the depression that litters the path it has travelled.

Football has done it for other nations before, you know.

AllAfrica – All the Time