{UAH} Pojim/WBK: Women football fans yelling and behaving badly? Good! - Comment
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Women football fans yelling and behaving badly? Good!
This was the comment in the Daily Nation, after Uganda's national football team, the Cranes, won the Council for East and Central Africa Football Associations (Cecafa) Senior Challenge Cup in Addis Ababa last Sunday:
"[Kenya national side] Harambee Stars will have some vital lessons to learn from their bitter rivals, Uganda Cranes, who once again defied the odds to bag an unprecedented 14th Cecafa Senior Challenge Cup title…
"Though Stars whipped the Cranes 2-0 in their opening match of the competition they crashed out at the quarter-finals stage following a nervous penalty shootout against Rwanda.
"Kenya have battled the Cranes 88 times; winning 23, drawing 25 and losing 40 and it's a high time they took stock of their playing pattern, tactics, drive and motivation.
"By winning the Cecafa Senior Challenge Cup a record 14th time, the Cranes not only underscored their dominance in the region but also their pedigree. And to put the icing on the cake, they achieved the feat with what was largely a development side — a majority of the players are below 23 years of age.
"The Cranes have stuck to their philosophy of high energy football — pressing the opponent deep and being ruthless in their attacks.
"They have also been coherent…[and] have developed a possession game that enables them to execute their attacks with precision."
I am a little better versed with the politics of football, than with the fine points of the game itself.
It's worth noting that football in Uganda is usually at its best when the men in khaki with guns are in charge, and when everything else in the country is generally shambolic.
The most glorious period for the Cranes was the military dictatorship of Field Marshal Idi Amin in the 1970s.
They have enjoyed a comeback during the latter years of President Yoweri Museveni's 30-year rule. The Museveni years have been the era of men in khaki lite, a gentler half-civilian-half-military face, but equally big guns.
Today though, in Uganda as in the rest of East Africa and around the continent, football, especially the English Premier League, has become a religion. In Kenya, local clubs' rivalry brings out a fanaticism that is so frightening it is only matched in Egypt on this continent.
But beyond what football says about internal politics, clearly the recent boom tells us a bigger story about the social change that's underway.
For one, among the fanatic followers of Gor Mahia in Kenya, and the Cranes in Uganda, are young, educated, even middle-class, women, yelling and behaving badly for the team.
This growing army of female fans is possible because of the rising number of independent educated women with jobs, who don't have to be in the kitchen cooking like their mothers did when football is on, and who control the TV remotes in their homes.
In other words, it is a very good thing. It show some egalitarian advancement.
Second, it attests to the youth bulge in Africa.
Third, it reveals a change in African cities, where the explosion of middle and low-income housing estates is spawning local sports club traditions that have come to define the urban culture of these city dwellers.
Charles Onyango-Obbo is editor of Mail & Guardian Africa (mgafrica.com). Twitter@cobbo3
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