Will English-speaking East and Central Africa ever stage the African Nations Cup? Many in the region were beginning to wonder, following February's decision to drop Zimbabwe as the venue for the 2000 finals. As African Soccer went to press, it began to look as if the tournament might be saved, as the Zimbabwe government and regional allies rode to the rescue. Until then, though, the sequence of events carried all too many echoes of Kenya's unhappy experience as prospective host in 1996, and the abortive attempts by Malawi and Zambia to stage the 1984 and 1988 finals. Somehow, when a Francophone country finds itself in trouble - and none could have been in greater difficulties than Burkina Faso in the run-up to the 1998 tournament - the Confederation of African Football manages to turn a blind eye and everyone rallies round. But when the Anglophones fall foul of the timetable, there is no mercy.
For that reason, if for no other, an atmosphere of deep gloom hung over the CAF Executive Committee meeting in Abidjan on February 8. For by its decision, CAF had brought into the open what could, potentially, be the most dangerous split in the whole of the body's 32-year history.
Nobody will say so in public, but insiders acknowledge privately that Zimbabwe's role as Nations Cup host was in danger as long ago as last July. That was when the CAF inner circle met in France to decide how to whip its dissident members into line, following Sepp Blatter's victory in the elections to the FIFA presidency. The result had been a massive humiliation for the CAF leadership, which promised - and then failed - to deliver the continent's votes en bloc for the rival candidate, Lennart Johansson. Zimbabwe Football Association (ZIFA) chairman Leo Mugabe, who is thought by CAF to have voted for Blatter, is merely the latest to feel the heat.
Zimbabwe's lack of urgency in the preparations undoubtedly played into the hard liners' hands. The growing rift between the body's Francophone and Anglophone wings could, however, determine not only CAF president Issa Hayatou's own future, but potentially the whole direction of world football politics for years to come.
A Zimbabwe delegation was due to meet the CAF Executive, with improved financial guarantees, in Accra on March 6. Failing a compromise, the body will meet again eight days later to pick a replacement venue. Zimbabwean football is meanwhile in disarray. And the African game once more finds itself on a hazardous journey, in a political landscape without maps.
The crisis that erupted in Abidjan in February has been nearly three years in the making. Zimbabwe applied to host the 2000 Nations Cup at the CAF Congress that preceded the 1996 finals in South Africa. The gathering, attended by 41 of Africa's 51 federations at the time, voted between five candidate countries - the runner-up, in a second ballot, being Mali. The next step would normally then have been to set up a Local Organising Committee (LOC) and to begin the implementation of CAF's formal list of requirements.
In practice, however, almost nothing happened for the next two years or more. As CAF struggled with the organisation of the 1998 finals in Burkina Faso, and then turned its attention to politicking ahead of the FIFA poll, all that happened in Harare was the establishment of a committee headed by ZIFA chairman Mugabe. In April 1998 a tournament director was named, in the shape of Brian Harry. But no formal list of requirements was received, and apparently no follow-up attempted by CAF headquarters. It was only in August last year, when CAF announced its first inspection visit, that it became clear how deep the mutual mistrust between the organisers and CAF had already become.
Immediately after the inner circle's meeting in Paris, CAF informed the Zimbabweans that they would keep only 10 per cent of the tournament's overall receipts, instead of the 20 per cent previously understood. Suspicions were already beginning to be voiced that CAF wanted to remove the tournament to punish Mugabe for his pro-Blatter stance. (East African football federations were also soon to feel CAF's wrath, with the suspension of the Cecafa regional body on grounds directly related to the Fifa poll.) The LOC was thus careful to invite the continental press - including African Soccer - so that the CAF inspection in August took place in the most open conditions possible.
As we reported at the time, it was painfully apparent during the visit that the Zimbabwe authorities remained largely ignorant of the task that awaited them. Three out of the four prospective venues were in reasonable shape, but the fourth had not even been selected from among four candidate cities - none of which had facilities even approaching those required. Indeed, it appeared that CAF's list of requirements had still not been received in Harare, with the result that much time was wasted on hopelessly unrealistic plans.
More worrying from CAF's point of view was the lack of financial guarantees from a government beset by wider economic difficulties. The visit nevertheless concentrated minds in both Harare and Cairo, and was followed by a second, more successful one in December. As reported in the February issue of African Soccer, this appeared to hold out the prospect of a successful hosting, conditional upon work beginning at the fourth venue in Mutare, and appropriate financial guarantees from the government. Proof of both was to be presented to the CAF Executive in Cape Town at the end of January.
Despite the apparently favourable second inspection visit report, the Zimbabwe authorities were by then becoming increasingly suspicious of CAF's motives. With the local authorities in Mutare organising a whip-round of local businesses to underwrite the stadium works, Mugabe and tournament director Brian Harry travelled to Cape Town to present their case.
Ominously, they were not accompanied by the finance minister, and nor did they take with them the cast-iron financial guarantees CAF sought. Instead, they continued to argue that Zimbabwe could not underwrite a tournament without CAF's own guarantee that it would actually take place. The talks were adjourned to Abidjan, a fortnight later.
Once again, Mugabe - himself a CAF Executive member - travelled to the meeting on February 8, accompanied by Harry. They claim to have received only a cursory hearing - no French interpreter was provided and some members of the Executive apparently talked among themselves and even left the room during their presentation. Soundings by African Soccer suggest that by no means all Executive members were in favour of a switch of venue, but the hostile faction - led by Somalia's Farah Addo and Tunisia's Slim Alilou - won the day. At a brief press conference, addressed by CAF general secretary Moustapha Fahmy after Hayatou hurried away to an appointment with the Ivorian Prime Minister, alternative venues were invited to present their bids by March 10. The Executive would then decide on a new site at its meeting in Conakry four days later later.
Reaction from Harare was understandably furious. Both government and football association spokesmen homed in on the apparent contradiction between the version of events given by Fahmy - who referred to the timing and funding of stadium developments and shortfalls in television facilities - and the body's press spokesman, Vicken Djizmedjian, who gave a much broader interpretation of CAF's actions. "It is a matter of understanding the whole concept of staging the African Cup of Nations finals," he said. "They are a very important event and the whole world will be watching you. So, they don't need to be supported financially by the private sector. They have to receive full government support, which was not the case in your country."
Tournament director Brian Harry meanwhile underlined the bitterness on the Zimbabwe side: "This is totally unfair and an injustice to Zimbabwe," he said. "I was actually shocked and dismayed."
Reading between the lines of these exchanges, however, it appears that some genuine misunderstanding existed between what the Zimbabwean side thought they had agreed to - hosting the tournament more or less at whatever cost - and the formal commitment being demanded by CAF. And that, in turn, rested on a lack of communication between the local organising structures and the government.
Not surprisingly, Sports Minister Gabriel Machinga wanted more information on which to base an appeal. "We have summoned ZIFA to get an official letter from CAF detailing their reasons so that we can respond as a government. Meanwhile we cannot rely on press releases." Urgent meetings were called between the government and federation, and between key members of the Cosafa regional grouping.
In a desperate effort to save the tournament for the region, and to postpone whatever settling of accounts remains within CAF, it was learned just before we went to press that the government, with the backing of heavyweight regional allies, was ready to supply the improved guarantees CAF sought.
CAF will surely heave a sigh of relief if a solution is found to a potentially intractable situation made far more difficult by the decision taken during the Burkina Faso finals, that future Nations Cups should take place in four distinct venues. But, as with everything else in CAF these days, the choice of venue has become an intensely political matter. Nobody knows exactly who voted for which FIFA presidential candidate last June. It is widely assumed, however, that southern and eastern Africa voted for Blatter, with some of the Francophone west and central bloc firmly behind the Johansson candidacy as endorsed by the CAF Executive. The very fact that the CAF leadership was unable to carry the whole membership with it, is evidence of unease in several quarters about the body's lack of accountability.
If most of the dissident nations were indeed Anglophone, it also reflected a growing sense that the English-speaking nations - which include sub-Saharan Africa's three football heavyweights in Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa - do not get a fair hearing in CAF counsels. That can be literally true - the working language of the Executive Committee is French, and only three of the body's 13 members can be described as fully Anglophone.
At a global level, the position taken by the CAF leadership in FIFA's presidential poll rested on the recent rapprochement between the African body and its European counterpart, Uefa. Instead of accepting defeat with good grace, as indeed Johansson himself has done, the CAF leadership has stuck firmly by its European allies and embarked on a crude campaign to re-establish control over its errant members. Since visits by Sepp Blatter to Johannesburg and Nairobi marked turning points in the FIFA election campaign, Kenya and South Africa have found themselves in the front line. Hence, it might be supposed, Issa Hayatou's lukewarm backing for the South African World Cup campaign and promotion of a hopelessly unrealistic eight-way joint bid. Hence, too, the suspension of Cecafa, the East African regional grouping, in September, and withdrawal of support for Zimbabwe's Nations Cup.
Such developments place in sharp relief the presidential election that Hayatou himself must undergo on the margins of the 2000 Nations Cup. For if the CAF president's control of the Executive Committee is nearly complete, the same can certainly not be said of the overall membership which makes up the CAF Congress.
Saving the tournament, and hence the Congress, for Harare would defuse the immediate crisis, but it would oblige Hayatou to face his electorate on what must be assumed to be unfriendly soil. Moving it to Egypt would be that much worse, given that the Egyptian federation chief has already announced his intention to challenge for the CAF presidency. Morocco would have been the dream ticket, were it not for the jealousies aroused by the likely alternative candidacies of Algeria and Tunisia. Choosing Nigeria would at least have the advantage of appeasing opinion in Anglophone Africa south of the Sahara.
The final decision lies on March 14 with the CAF president and the 12 men who make up his Executive Committee. Never can their decisions, taken behind closed doors, have had greater import for the future of the African game.