Thirty-One Nil

by James Montague

  Only one sound can be heard over the periodic thunk thunk of the ball being struck: the growling, militaristic barks of the Rwanda national team coach Milutin ‘Micho’ Sredojević. Micho is shouting instructions to his players, the Amavubi, the Wasps. The forty-two-year-old Serbian is slightly built, with thick brown hair and a thin, drawn face set into a permanent scowl. I don’t see him smile once. The players are as quiet as the crowd, as if it is the first time they have met anyone quite as intense as Micho before. Even when he is shouting encouragement it sounds like a threat.

  Micho has only just arrived in Rwanda. He was employed earlier in the month after a series of jobs in African club football. He won the Ethiopian title with Saint George and took South Africa’s Orlando Pirates to the semi-final of the African Champions League. He has just spent time in Sudan, too. This, however, is his first national team job. ‘I want to tell you, talent is talent no matter in what country in the world. I’m happy we have the talent, but that talent needs strong matches, strong challenges,’ he says quickly and precisely in perfect, heavily accented English. Training has finished and we are standing by the pitch with close to 100 children crowding around us. His players look relieved to be leaving the field and Micho’s machine-gun orders. Unlike most other countries that have lived through war, spreading their children far and wide as they tried to escape, this is not a team that has called upon the diaspora for help. At least not yet. The closest they have to a foreign professional influence is striker Elias ‘Baby’ Uzamukunda, who left for Cannes in France when he was nineteen. That doesn’t mean Micho isn’t on the lookout. ‘Many people ran away from the problems and became the diaspora. We need to find the solution with anyone who has roots. We need to expose the players to this. Those players are probably playing in Europe right now.’

  Micho is a religious man. He talks about football and life as if he were a missionary, guided to fight on a long road by a higher power. Guiding Rwanda to qualification for the World Cup is part of his duty. ‘This country had a very painful experience in 1994 and football is a way of healing those wounds it made,’ he says. ‘In that note I am counting myself as a servant and soldier down that road to give the medicine of healing in the right direction. Football is one special religion in Africa and we want to be preachers of that religion.’ He also has experience of scouting in fifty African countries, but not Eritrea. They were largely a mystery to almost everyone, given that two generations of national team players have now fled and claimed political asylum elsewhere. ‘We are going to a country where even Nigeria drew 0-0. You cannot go for tourism,’ he says of his opponents. The team is due to fly to the altitude of Asmara, Eritrea’s capital, that evening. ‘Did you know, when Ethiopia and Eritrea played together when they won the 1962 Africa Cup of Nations, 90 per cent of the players were from Eritrea? It means they are very talented.’

  Rwanda may never have qualified for the World Cup before, but there was one Rwandan who had been part of the finals. The Rwanda Football Federation president Celestin Ntagungira was also watching the team’s final training session before the first game. Until recently Celestin was a FIFA referee. He had officiated at two World Cup finals, the Beijing Olympics and three Africa Cup of Nations. ‘We need young players, professional players in Europe, this is how we are organising a team who can qualify Rwanda. It is not easy,’ he says. He, too, has seen the way the wind is blowing, the short cut that can take the Wasps to the finals. ‘We don’t have enough players in top leagues but with local players and some European players we can do better than years ago.’ Unlike Micho, Celestin is loath to talk about the genocide. He is vague when I ask about his experiences of 1994. He was in neighbouring Burundi, he tells me, and returned after the troubles. Instead, like every official pronouncement in the press, he looks forward to the future.

  ‘After the genocide we built another nation, another generation of players and coaches and referees. It’s like starting a new nation. Everything was new,’ he explains when I ask how the league was rebuilt. ‘We have nice pitches now. A building for the federation. Football is now better than ten years ago. We have academies. I think we are happy but we have to do more to be in the top of Africa.’ That progress had seen Rwanda qualify for the recent FIFA Under 17 World Cup finals. Every player had been born after 1994. Qualification for Brazil, he reasons, will mean even fewer people asking about the genocide. ‘If Rwanda play in the World Cup all the news TV are talking, not bad things about Rwanda,’ he tries to explain tactfully, although clearly including me in his rebuff. ‘They will say: “Rwanda has good players, good talent” rather than: “In Rwanda, there was a genocide.” I think football can change and give Rwanda a good image.’

  But first there is Eritrea to contend with, a team Celestin had some knowledge of, not least because his former boss is Tesfaye Gebreyesus, an Eritrean who, back when he was technically an Ethiopian, refereed the 1980 Africa Cup of Nations final. He is also now president of the Eritrea federation. ‘I will be very happy, I hope he will be proud to see me in this position,’ Celestin says, beaming.

  Have the Eritreans asked for any special provisions to prevent their players from running away, I ask.

  His face freezes. ‘This is not our business, this is for the federation from Eritrea,’ Celestin replies mechanically. ‘But,’ he adds ‘if they need our help ...’

  Micho leaves with his players on the team bus and heads to the North Korea of Africa for the first leg.

  **

  Kigali’s streets are clean, ordered and safe. Every motorcycle taxi driver (or moto as they are known) that swarms the capital’s streets is wearing an identical helmet. In fact, they wear a helmet and keep a spare one hanging from the back seat. The fine for not wearing one is severe. The fine alone for not keeping your helmet in a hygienic state is 10,000 Rwandan francs, around $15, more than one week’s wages for many. There is no rubbish in the gutters, no ugly mass of brightly coloured bags stuck to the thorns of tree branches and bushes as they are in virtually every capital in Africa. That’s because plastic bags have been banned in Rwanda, to protect the environment and one of Rwanda’s biggest growth industries: eco-tourism. The biggest fine for repeated use of a plastic bag can reach 300,000 francs. Groceries are carried in biodegradable paper bags. Nobody double-parks, or leaves their car unattended or speeds. That’s because parking attendants issue tickets for the slightest misdemeanour. Yet the police and the military are barely visible on the streets. They are seen sparingly, in high vis jackets, holding speed guns or breathalysing suspect drunk drivers. These rules are accepted for the common good. There are no complaints, no protests from the guilty.

  The new Rwanda is an ordered, clean and law-abiding place. It is as far from the genocidal killing fields of 1994 as it is possible to travel in such a small space of time. That transformation is down, largely, to the country’s president, Paul Kagame. After leading the Tutsi forces that ended the bloodshed, he set about building a new Rwanda, based on the strict rule of law. No one talks of Hutu and Tutsi any more, nor the genocide. It is better to forget than to revisit the past, to question what your neighbour did during those frenzied months. Like pulling a thread from a jumper that keeps unravelling, who knows where it will end? The shopkeeper, the policeman, the teacher. Everyone has a story of how they suffered. But what about those who did the killing? Walking down any street in Kigali means almost certainly walking past people with unimaginable amounts of blood on their hands. But you will never know.

  Within less than two decades since 1994, Kagame’s government has introduced a national health service and reduced child mortality by 70 per cent, while overseeing a boom that has seen the economy grow by 8 per cent every year for five years. According to a New York Times profile of Kagame, he has overseen a rise in life expectancy from thirty-six to fifty-six years and cut malaria-related deaths by 85 per cent. But he has also been accused of being an autocrat, of stifling dissent and squeezing the free press to death. One evening the editor in
chief of the New Times, the biggest English-language newspaper in Rwanda which is seen as a pro-Kagame mouthpiece, is arrested after writing a series of stories looking at corruption at a dam project. Anyone you speak to on the streets has the same opinion. Paul Kagame has saved the country. Criticism of him and his policies is de facto support for the ethnic divisions that nearly destroyed the country in the first place.

  **

  I cannot travel to Eritrea. Eritrea does not like journalists, and especially not foreign ones. Instead, I go to a bar outside the Amahoro Stadium. Such is the paranoia of the Eritrean regime that only two Rwandan journalists are allowed to travel. One is a cameraman, another a print journalist. But no live pictures will be shown. Instead a small crowd is sitting in a bar outside the stadium listening to the radio. The single journalist in Asmara is commentating on the match down his mobile phone. It is then translated into English for me by the barmaid. I ascertain three salient facts from the game. Eritrea take the lead. Rwanda equalise. The match finishes 1-1. It is only the next day that we can see footage of the game. The cameraman has brought back the tape from Asmara. Only now is it being shown, as if live, on Rwandan state television. At a restaurant next to the stadium Rwanda’s sports journalists are waiting to watch the match on the big screen. ‘Most of the football teams here they were supported by people who were killed in the genocide so no teams had any sponsorship,’ said Abdul Jabar Gakuba, a sports journalist with the Voice of Africa Kigali FM radio station. ‘They were supported by individuals that were killed in the genocide. They had to start the league from scratch. The genocide had a huge role in the downfall of football.’

  Abdul Jabar has darker skin than most Rwandans I meet. He was sixteen in 1994 and only survived because his family sent him to Uganda to study. Both his parents, his two sisters and two brothers were killed. Not a single relative, close or distant, remains. ‘I have an idea how they were killed,’ he says, one of the few people I will meet in Rwanda who talk openly about the genocide. ‘They sought refuge in St Joseph’s School, it is a priests’ centre. They were there in February 1994 and they were all killed on 14 June. Two weeks later Kigali was captured. They almost survived.’ The match begins on the big screen. The reception is poor and the camerawork worse. The stadium in Asmara is a sandy colour, with mud banks at either end. There appears to be only a handful of supporters watching the game. It is being held at altitude and it is clear that Eritrea are making the most of their advantage. Eritrea take the lead through Tesfalem Tekle, a twenty-year-old midfielder.

  How can someone begin to forgive for a crime so heinous? Abdul Jabar talks calmly and rationally about his anger after the genocide, and his efforts to control it. He found Islam, too, which, he says, helped him. ‘It was very hard in the beginning. As time went by I realised I can’t change anything. I need to live on. To care and provide for myself and create a new family. Now I am happy. I have a family of my own. With three kids. Many people suffered the same consequences of genocide. We must live. We don’t need to keep thinking about the genocide. It happened. But we must keep on surviving. We need to earn a living. To me it was a lesson that people should not also keep thinking of the genocide.’ I broach the subject of Kagame and his style of rule. ‘You see how Rwandans are reconciling. In the government everyone is involved. If you are Tutsi or Hutu, if you are capable you are given a position.’ It is the first and only time in Rwanda I will hear anyone use the words Hutu or Tutsi. One of Kagame’s first acts as president was to ban printing whether a person was a Hutu or a Tutsi on Rwandan ID cards. ‘There is no division like before. In schools we used to suffer. Tutsis wouldn’t get into government schools. But if you are intelligent you can get into schools. It is totally different. It is unbelievable what the president is doing today.’

  In the second half Rwanda fight against Asmara’s thin air and manage to grab an equaliser. Micho brings on Cannes striker Elias ‘Baby’ Uzamukunda. His first touch is to chip the Eritrea goalkeeper Samuel Alazar who has rushed off his line. It is a precious away goal. ‘Everyone has their opinions,’ shrugs Abdul Jabar as the match finishes. The journalists are surprised by Eritrea and a little worried. ‘Those who say that, compare today to 1994. I can’t believe it. What you read in international media is totally different to what the situation is. To me I see what happened in the past and today and I am very proud for the vision of the country. There is no division like there was before. People should be proud of what President Kagame has done for the country.’

  **

  The light is beginning to fade at the empty Amahoro Stadium. The rain is still falling in intermittent waves and I am still sitting in the dugout, waiting for the Eritrea team. The only arrival over the past two hours is a groundsman with a spade. He takes one look at the downpour and scurries back inside. Just when it looks as if the stadium will be shut for the evening, and the match cancelled, a handful of young men in blue tracksuit tops walk gingerly on to the pitch. The Eritrea team has arrived three hours late and eighteen hours before kick-off. They got here as quickly as they could. Ethiopia would not grant, and neither would the Eritreans request, permission to fly over its territory. The team had to fly to Sudan instead and from there to Kigali. Coach Negash Teklit, a tall, barrel-chested presence, gathers the team in the centre circle. Under their tracksuits they are wearing a mismatch of training tops and English Premier League shirts. Negash has been their coach for eleven years and has seen team after team of players come and go. Unlike other national team coaches who have to deal with the orderly succession of one generation of players to the next, Negash builds teams from scratch. He was coach in 2009 when the entire team absconded after being knocked out of the CECAFA Cup in Kenya. Twelve of the players ended up at the UN High Commission for Refugees in Nairobi and claimed political asylum. Negash and a handful of officials had to fly home on their own and explain to the powers that be how he had managed to lose a football team.

  The incident even made it to the diplomatic level. Among the trove of dispatches among the WikiLeaks archive was this fascinating secret cable purporting to be from the US Embassy in Asmara.

  S E C R E T ASMARA 000429

  E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/10/2019

  TAGS: PGOV MOPS SOCI PREF ER

  SUBJECT: ERITREA’S SQUABBLING COLONELS, FLEEING FOOTBALLERS, FRIGHTENED LIBRARIANS

  Classified By: Ambassador Ronald K. McMullen

  Things are getting worse and worse in Eritrea. The regime is facing mounting international pressure for years of malign behavior in the neighborhood. Human rights abuses are commonplace and most young Eritreans, along with the professional class, dream of fleeing the country, even to squalid refugee camps in Ethiopia or Sudan... ‘He is sick,’ said one leading Eritrean businessman, referring to President Isaias’ mental health. ‘The worse things get, the more he tries to take direct control--it doesn’t work.’

  The cable then goes on to list a series of crazy incidents highlighting the deteriorating situation in the country. One of them is the fate of the Eritrea national team.

  Soccer team 1-0 Regime

  Eritreans are mad about soccer. Many dusty streets in Asmara are filled with urchins kicking an old sock stuffed with rags back and forth between goals made of piled stones. Senior government and party officials are avid fans of the British [sic] Premier League and sometimes leave official functions early to catch key matches. Despite tight control of the domestic media, satellite TV dishes are allowed, probably so folks can watch international soccer. Impressive numbers of senior regime officials attended the World Cup pool draw reception thrown by the South Africa embassy last week.

  Diaspora websites are reporting that the entire Eritrean national soccer team defected … If true, this will be stunning news for the Eritrean population. Only the coach and an escorting colonel reportedly returned to Eritrea.(One wonders why, given their likely fate.) (President) Isaias has previously claimed the CIA was luring Eritrean youth abroad; if the soccer team has in fact defected, he
will undoubted try to twist logic in some way to blame the United States.

  And defect they did. After months in a refugee camp eleven of the players were granted political asylum in Australia. One decided to stay in Kenya. Negash Teklit now has a new team of young men to coach, so young in fact that they look like boys. At the side of the pitch Kahsay Embaye is watching training intently with his one working eye. ‘This team is far better than before because we have started to work on the grassroots level,’ says the vice-president of the Eritrea National Football Federation, as if the defections were actually a handy opportunity to try out some new blood in the team. He is short, bald and wears a patch over his right eye. He lost it in 1979 during an operation to take a port from the Ethiopians. Embaye was a soldier for seventeen years, retiring only after independence from Ethiopia was secured in 1993 and President Isaias Afewerki was inaugurated. Afewerki is still in power today.

  I try to broach the issue of the missing players tactfully. ‘That is not a problem; as I have told you we are having so many players at grassroots level,’ Embaye replies cheerily. The team, he explains, comes from the Under 17 squad. ‘It is not a big deal. For a year it can touch you. But you can work with the grassroots.’ I ask why he thinks the players fled. ‘Ehhhh,’ he stammers. ‘Something must be mended. We are trying to know what is the cause. But sometimes it is a conspiracy.’

  A conspiracy? By whom?

  ‘Some people who are abroad,’ he replies, meaning the perpetual enemy Ethiopia, the United States, the CIA and its allies. ‘These people go directly to the UNHCR and they give them asylum. These are the tricks that are working.’

  Who is involved in the conspiracy, I ask.

  ‘I won’t say that.’

  So they had their heads turned?

  ‘That is 100 per cent sure.’