{UAH} Allan/Edmund/Pojim/WBK: Apartheid, free market were key to Kenya’s golds
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Apartheid, free market were key to Kenya's golds
Posted Sunday, August 28 2016 at 16:10
IN SUMMARY
- Athletes in Kenya were able to establish early spin-offs like international training camps, even stadia, from which they could make money when they were injured or retired. Not all of them went off to the village to die poor.
So the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro are over, and East Africa's sportsmen and women are back home.
It was a good outing for Kenya. It came home with six gold medals, six silver medals, and one bronze.
It was both the best Olympic result in Kenya's history, and also the best African team showing at the 2016 Games. The country ranked 15th globally in medals, and was second only to the US in track and field medals.
The next best EAC performer was Burundi. It bagged a solitary silver.
Uganda, after winning a gold in the 2012 London Olympics, lost its socks and shoes in Rio, so to speak. Tanzania came away empty-handed too. Rwanda, well, has never won an Olympic medal.
Perhaps we should not drag South Sudan into this matter. It's a baby nation, and the folks who can run are busy killing or being killed.
If you forget the silver and bronze, Kenya and Uganda are the only two EAC countries who have ever won gold.
It's a blow-away comparison, though, with Kenya bagging 31 golds since it started participating in the Olympics, and Uganda an extremely modest two.
Also, all these golds have been in running.
So the question has to be asked: Why can Kenya run, and the rest (Rwanda for example) can't, or seem to have forgotten how to (Tanzania)?
There is a popular view that because nearly all these Kenyan medals are won by people from the Rift Valley, the altitude and the genes of the Kalenjin people have something to do with it.
But Tanzania has the same altitude, and those Ethiopians who give Kenya a run for its money in the long distance races, are not Kalenjin.
Perhaps the economy? Well, yes, Kenya is the region's largest economy (although it won't be for much longer, some economists say). But the logic that a bigger economy helps falls flat because Tanzania's economy is bigger than Uganda's, and it's a gold medal pauper.
Burundi is a basket case, but it does better than Rwanda.
What Kenya has that the rest don't, is that it has a longer history of a market economy. It is possible that the fact that athletes could keep for themselves most of the fortunes they made from running, created an early pool of incentives for people to go into competitive sport, and the culture took root early.
But it's probably the local market that is most decisive. Athletes in Kenya were able to establish early spin-offs like international training camps, even stadia, from which they could make money when they were injured or retired. Not all of them went off to the village to die poor.
It seems history may also have a hand in it. Kenya was East Africa's only settler colony, with an unofficial apartheid system. The European settlers played golf, polo, and cricket. The Asians played cricket, hockey, and badminton. The "natives" played football, boxed, and ran.
Later, when our people came to towns, the sporting walls started to break down.
Running probably became a form of political expression. Maybe Kenyan nationalism became implanted in its athletic and footballing legs in ways it didn't in the rest of East Africa.
I am not sure any of this makes sense, but I will still put it out there anyway.
Charles Onyango-Obbo is publisher of data visualiser Africapaedia and Rogue Chiefs. Twitter@cobbo3
Democracy is two Wolves and a Lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed Lamb disputing the results.
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