Cecafa in Darfur: Great move that

A very good friend of mine has this one line of defence he spells out every time his wife and kids label him disorganised. He says there is method to his madness, a rehearsed retort which he however justifies by eventually getting things done, and right.

‘Disorganised’ is way too harsh where this man is concerned though, a word used as part of some friendly ribbing, for on the contrary it is his meticulous attention to detail that has made him one of Uganda’s truly authentic success stories in business and sport.

While his is the tale of the single-minded pursuit of excellence of an individual, the ‘method to madness’ line he uses is one that best suits many of the organisations which run sport here and abroad.

For all the criticisms leveled at Sepp Blatter and Fifa for example, to my mind we will never be able to accord them enough credit for the series of decisions which eventually landed the World Cup on African soil.

Those who think them incompetent would never have gone for a move that worked out so perfectly, setting a precedent with far reaching implications for the future of sport. The counter argument of motive, that Fifa was only playing a numbers game of political patronage and money, doesn’t hold I am afraid.

Closer to home, Cecafa’s decision to take the Kagame Cup to the Sudanese expanse of Darfur is seemingly destined to have a similar impact on a smaller but still greatly significant scale.

With the several flaws that came to fore when Cecafa brought the Senior Challenge Cup to Uganda last time out, it is pleasantly surprising that the same group will pull off this literally ground-breaking move.

When, in the middle of a site tour of the ravaged region, Rogers Mulindwa confesses that “the place is far from what we hear about it, it is calm and peaceful”, one realises what this experiment could do; if two stadiums are ready and a few more underway in an area of six million mostly desperate people, you are talking jobs permanent and temporary, exposure to the world that could change the face of that region and its fortunes, as well as the unquantifiable humanitarian angle of giving people in that situation something to look forward to.

And the moral for our sports leaders and organisations is that, if they put their minds to it, they can produce a lot more method than their current madness.

mmssali@yahoo.com
@markssali on twitter