President’s Shs3.7b pledge: The Cranes have used the wrong channel at the wrong time

What you need to know:

  • And that therein lies the problem. We can call it any name we choose but the players request represents narrow interests. And even if the president has a clean record in honouring Cranes pledges, he is caught up in a season of competing priorities.

Make no mistake, the Covid-19 pandemic will spare no one. Careers will be wrecked. Redundancy will visit many. Soft economies like sports or leisure will suffer most but this suffering won’t be choosy.
So, instead of discussing how life is regressing for just about everyone and what could redeem us, what do we talk about?

We choose to remind the president of a $1m (about Shs3.7 billion) pledge he made to the Cranes. And as has come to be expected of the quick bitterness that is resident on social media, what started as a polite tweet by national team captain Denis Onyango and chorused by some of his team mates, has now been picked up by the angry crowd and morphed into a ridiculous row, pitting the Cranes versus those who won’t pay them.

Former captain Andy Mwesiga thinks the captain’s lone voice would have sufficed and that it was impolite to democratise the demand. The presidents’ handlers are asking for patience, a stance echoed by Fufa, which pointed to the president’s past of always honouring pledges to the Cranes.

The Cranes continue to be a silent negotiator, but their social media base isn’t helping matters. Social media warriors point out the ‘lesser’ crowd getting ‘paid’ or at least attracting the attention of people who have access to funds. They observe that all it takes are a few social media rants and threats and conclude that the Cranes have chosen a tried and tested path.

I wouldn’t say the Cranes players have threatened anyone, but they sure have learnt how to leverage social media. And as an attention grabber, social media has been an effective tool for many.

The thing though is social media also has a short attention span. This pledge was made in July 2019. Over the last 12 months a lot has happened to move attention away from the pledge. To refocus this attention, inside lane negotiation channels would have offered a much more central fire than the sporadic and brief intensity of angry tweets, which move on very quickly.

And when the twitteratti found new pet subjects, they left the Cranes nursing a moral headache. You see, the Cranes aren’t offering to share the pledge amongst all the 2000 registered professionals or any such thing. What the players are asking for is averagely 125m per head (team of 30). It isn’t the kind of ask that sits well in circumstances where people don’t have enough to eat. It sounds entitled and greedy.

And that therein lies the problem. We can call it any name we choose but the players request represents narrow interests. And even if the president has a clean record in honouring Cranes pledges, he is caught up in a season of competing priorities.

And if he is as calculative as they say, he will know he can ignore the ask with minimal damage. And when that happens there shall be little public sympathy for the Cranes. This wasn’t a battle to take to social media. Not now, at least.

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Twitter: @MBanturaki