The Cranes and why merit matters

Controversies off the field aside, the Uganda Cranes soccer team has showed remarkable improvement on the field.

Many Ugandans who are keenly watching the ongoing continental soccer competition were wowed by the Ugandan team’s impressive performance against DR Congo and the breath-taking display against Egypt despite the result going Egypt’s way. Ugandan soccer was in tumult for long. Successive administrations of the Federation of Uganda Football Association (Fufa) failed to do the basics.

For 40 long years, our national team could not make it to the continental showpiece, the African Cup of Nations, which for long, was disproportionately dominated by West and North African countries. This time East Africa is very well represented although falling short of matching the traditional big boys.

During qualifying games in successive years, it was pretty the same story for the Cranes: We did well at Nambole, our fortress, and never managed even a draw away from home. It was clear that at home, the players could ride on the power of the home crowd to win even when they didn’t deserve to. Away from home, it was a different ballgame and we always, without fail, fell short.

The root of the problem was two-fold. First, failure to think long-term and invest in a bottom-up process of nurturing talent and grooming players from an early stage. There was always a rush for a quick win, but which never quite happened.

Second, and perhaps the most important, was the disregard for merit and the proclivity for meddling. There were stories of powerful men prevailing over team managers to field one player and not the other. This undermined individual effort and motivation.

Like any other spot, football is a game of performance. In a pool of dozens of players, the best 11 are selected to start on the basis of tactical ability, physical fitness, team-spirit and overall attitude. These feed into the assessment that a manager makes in picking his first team. They have nothing to do with one’s ethnicity, region of origin or religion or who they know where.

This is important to underscore because our current rulers have superintended a system and process that blatantly disregards merit and equal opportunity. There is shameless tribalism, glaring nepotism and widespread cronyism in public positions, in the armed forces, the State bureaucracy and at the seat of power – State House. Little wonder that we end up with gross inefficiency in the public sector, mismanagement and decay.

The failure to develop and entrench a system of meritocracy and fairness in the public sector is partly the reason for the endless clamours for creation of unviable districts and pseudo ‘kingdoms.’
Many people realise that they can’t compete fairly and squarely at national level. The solution then is to get a localised opening where they can get access to a slice of the national resource envelope.

But this tends to be a poisoned chalice: Intra-ethnic tensions and sub-ethnic contests compound matters with one sub-ethnic group feeling short-changed by the other. And the story will go on and on. Creating districts and ‘kingdoms’ on the basic of ethnicity is perilous because there is not such a thing as a unified and common ethnic identity.

The Cranes team, regardless of what happened in the knockout game with Senegal and the controversy over money, presents an instructive yet simple message: sticking to merit makes a difference.
This team has representation across the breadth and width of the country. It is fervently loved by Ugandans not because of the ethnicity, region or region of origin of the players but for their sheer impressive performance on the pitch.

The biggest failure of the NRM regime has been establishing and entrenching the norm of merit and the tradition of being rewarded for what you have accomplished, not where you hail from or who you know.
This problem afflicts many African societies and is at the root of many social and political problems.

Dr Khisa is assistant professor at North Carolina State University (USA).
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