Oa Hao Lipapaling – Yours in Sport

One of the coaches I am working with came into the office yesterday and asked if I could help him draft a letter of invitation for a tournament he is organizing. Formal letters of invitations are a fairly common occurrence here and I still haven't developed the literary skills to pull off such a letter, so I suggested the coach write a draft of the letter in Sesotho and then I would print it out on my computer.

He took a couple of minutes to write the invitation and then passed it over to me. My Sesotho still isn’t that great so as I was typing it up I would only pick up the occasional word or phrase. At the end of the letter, where you have the complimentary close – such as ‘sincerely yours’ (I actually had to do a google search to find the appropriate term for this) the coach had written ‘Oa Hao Lipapaling’. I recognized this pretty quickly as meaning ‘Yours in Sport’. I am not sure if this is a common way to close a letter in other parts of the world, but it resonated with me immediately because of a book I recently read during the World Cup.

While I was travelling around South Africa for the World Cup I used the time to stock up on some books. Fittingly, I ended up purchasing a number of books relating to soccer in Africa. I read two during the World Cup – ‘Feet of the Chameleon’ and ‘Football United’.

Both were quite good. The chapters covered a variety of stories relating to soccer in different African countries. Another book that I bought, but didn’t read until I returned to Lesotho was called ‘More than Just a Game’. It told the story of how the prisoners on Robben Island – the prison that was used during apartheid to hold political prisoners – organized and ran their own soccer league for a number of years. It detailed the struggle that they had to go through to have the ability to play and then how the league itself became a political tool for the prisoners in their negotiations for better living conditions.

The league was very well organized and incredibly formal. The author theorized that the inmates were governing their soccer league the way they expected their country to be governed. All correspondence had to be done through written means, which wasn’t easy since paper was difficult to access. At the end of each letter the sender would finish with the complimentary close ‘Yours in Sport’. Before reading this book I had never come across this expression, but when I read the Sesotho version of it I couldn’t help but smile.

Oa Hao Lipapaling

September 9, 2010

Diamonds, gold, oil, coffee and…football players

I actually wrote this before the World Cup, but I never got around to posting it. However, I read a couple of interesting news articles during my trip that were related.

At the conference I attended in Glasgow there was a lot of talk about how social enterprise could assist with sport for development programmes becoming more sustainable. A lot of the presentations were interesting, but I am not sure I agree with the overall idea. The founder of Magic Bus gave a presentation on what their organization has done. His presentation was great and I admire the work the organization has done in India, but he mentioned something at the end of his presentation that has stuck with me. Recently Magic Bus has established a professional football team and it sees the sale of players as a possible social enterprise. The Mathare Youth Sports Association, a very long running and effective programme operating in Kenya, has also sold some of the players it has produced. The presentation got me thinking more about the sale and movement of players.

I have always found the movement of players and the globalization of sport to be an interesting topic. I suppose African players moving to Europe is an inevitable aspect of globalization. The ability of players to move between countries fairly easily and the ability of clubs to search out and buy top talent create a fairly open market. Some argue that this ‘leg drain’ is not really an issue because there are systems in place to ensure that athletes remain connected to their country. Even if a player is bought by Manchester United that player will still return home to play with and represent the national team. This isn’t the same for doctors and nurses.

However, for some reason in my mind I see a lot of parallels between the migration of players to Europe and the extraction of many other commodities from Africa. A resource is taken out of a country with very little investment, value is added elsewhere, and then huge profits are made off of that resource. Sepp Blatter has mentioned the same thing, but with slightly stronger words – equating the process to ‘social and economic rape’. You could argue that there is some trickle down economic effect. Players who go on to make millions will return some of that money to their country’s economy. Also, Sepp Blatter made that statement a number of years ago and there are now FIFA rules which dictate that a small percentage of transfer fees must go to clubs who contributed to a player’s development. On the other hand a lot of European clubs are establishing their own development academies in Africa. This would in effect eliminate any compensation for African clubs.

Over the past couple of years this extraction of players has also become fairly market driven. There is a perception that European clubs are only really looking for a certain type of African player. If you look around the European leagues there seems to be a disproportionate number of African defensive-midfielders and African strikers. Some former players, coaches, and analysts point at this development as the death of African football. They argue that player development in Africa is now based on the needs of European clubs and what those clubs perceive to be African strengths. As a result, African nations are not producing the same types of players they did in the past and are not able to produce the same type of creative, spontaneous, attacking football that they have become known for - this logic seemed to act as a justification for the 'poor' performance of African teams at this World Cup.

If you are really stretching you could probably even draw parallels between this type of specialization and previous failed agricultural development efforts. African football is being ruined by the market demands placed on it from European football in much the same way that the agricultural sector in some countries was destroyed by structural adjustment policies that advocated production and export of specific crops. Like I said, that might be stretching a bit. I am sure that part of the process is also governed by African children wanting to emulate their heroes – in this way the system is self-perpetuating. It might be similar to how so many hockey goaltenders seem to come out of Quebec.

I have sort of departed from my original idea relating to sport for development organizations selling players as a social enterprise. Football is a business, so it is understandable that European clubs will look for talent in Africa and try to use that talent to their own advantage. However, having sport for development organizations capitalizing on this market comes across as incongruous. It is hard for me to comment because I have no direct experience with selling football players, but it seems like it could possibly create a number of contradictions within the field of sport for development.

July 8, 2010

Lesotho successful in U-17 and U-20 Qualifying

AGE CHEATING

The Under-17 and Under-20 Lesotho national football teams have made it through the most recent stage of qualification for their African youth championships and will move on to play Cameroon and South Africa respectively. These results have come just after LEFA (Lesotho National Football Association) announced it would not enter the senior team into qualification for the 2012 African Cup of Nations. They made the decision because of financial reasons and also because they wanted to focus on youth development. Obviously, LEFA is using these results to justify and celebrate their decision.

BBC has a radio interview here

The other side of the story is that a lot of people in Lesotho are laughing because they believe that the U-17 and U-20 teams are age cheating, which would definitely not be contributing to football youth development in Lesotho. Age cheating is not something I gave a lot of thought to before arriving here. When I was younger I would sometimes watch the Little League World Series and there would sometimes be accusations that players in that tournament were above the age limits, but it was something I never really encountered growing up. However, from what I have read, and from talking with football people in Lesotho and South Africa, it seems that in Southern Africa, age cheating is quite common place - I would also recommend checking out this article which is quite good regarding ‘football age’ in Africa. The authors of both articles link the problem of age cheating back to poverty and believe that players believe that if they can make their way onto development teams then they will stand a better chance of playing professionally. So, if an 18 year old can find his way onto a professional team’s U-15 development team then he will have a better chance of getting a contract with that professional team.

Today was a holiday in Lesotho, Ascension Day, and a U-15 tournament was held involving eight teams. I wasn’t involved in organizing, but was invited to watch. It is about the fourth local youth tournament I have been able to attend. At every tournament there have been issues with teams using over aged players. I am not sure what the reasons are here in Lesotho because there are no professional teams. I think it might be a combination of the rules not being explained adequately, a lack of underage players, and just over competitiveness.

Maybe it also comes down to cultural perceptions of age. I grew up playing youth sports where every chronological age was separated from Under-5 up to Under-19. Age categorization seems to be a little more flexible here. I think age is perceived less as a fixed number and more as a general time period based on your situation in life. I think this is also evidenced by Sesotho terms associated to people. Men are usually addressed as Ntate and boys are usually addressed as Abute. When I first arrived, I received a couple of introductory Sesotho lessons. During the first lesson the teacher asked if I was an Ntate or an Abute. I said I did not know, but since I am 29 I guess I am an Ntate. The teacher said eh-eh (No). She asked if I was married. I said yes. She then said that I was an Ntate.

During this recent tournament I was talking with some other spectators and they were trying to justify age cheating by saying that everyone does it. They even believed that European and North American athletes are also age cheating to the same extent. I tried to explain that it might be very difficult for Wayne Rooney or Lebron James to falsify their ages, but my arguments didn’t seem to sway them.

May 13, 2010