Michael Mundia Kamau

Michael Mundia Kamau P.O. Box 58972 00200 City Square Nairobi Kenya 26th September 2005 RED CARD The cancellation by the Kenya Hockey Union (KHU), of the Kenya Hockey Team tours to South Africa for the Africa Championship, is another severe blow to sport in Kenya as a whole, and is indicative of very worrisome decline and stagnation. That the Kenya Hockey Union was unable to take both teams to South Africa by road, is a resounding death knell. Not since the sterling performances of the 1980s, including Kenya’s sterling performance at the 1987 All Africa Games, Gor Mahia F.C.’s clinching of the 1987 Africa Cup Winners Cup and Kenya’s five gold medals at the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games, has Kenyan sport shown any real sparks of brilliance and development. It has been a steady decline and the nation’s conscience needs to be pricked into determining the fate and future of sport in this country. We are living in times where sport has grown into a global multi-billion dollar enterprise. There is growing intensity and pressure in the sporting industry. For instance, the Professional Golfing Association (PGA), pretty much runs a 12 month season now. This has been brought about by mounting pressures to expand and mounting expenses, not least player remunerations. Greater demands are being made of everyone inside and outside the global sporting industry. For instance, no less than Nelson Mandela was present during South Africa’s unsuccessful bid to host the 2006 Soccer World Cup, and South Africa’s successful bid to host the 2010 Soccer World Cup, despite Mandela’s ill-health and his doctor’s advise to drastically tone down his schedule. British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, was present to support the United Kingdom’s successful bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games. Last year, U.S. entrepreneur Malcolm Glazer, successfully acquired controlling stake in the U.K.’s high profile Manchester United F.C. In Kenya, South Africa’s MultiChoice Corporation has made successful inroads into the Kenyan market over the last eight years, with it’s mainly subscriber based Super Sport channels. Even lowly regarded Kenyan establishments now subscribe to Super Sport, if nothing more. Sport is now an established way of living worldwide, but in Kenya it is treated with disdain, ridicule and contempt, and this has greatly hampered the institutionalisation of sport in Kenya. After independence, sport was viewed as an inferior occupation for those who could not proceed with formal education. Football in particular, was balkanised into a sport for Western Kenya. The Kikuyu, Kenya’s leading indigenous community, did little to spare it’s disdain and contempt for football, referring to as the “childish” occupation of “Jaruo” and “Baruyia”(the Western Kenya Luo and Luhyia communities), so that even when Gor Mahia F.C. won the Continental Africa Cup Winners Cup in 1987, it meant little to many Kikuyus. When Kikuyu Kenya sneezes, the rest of Kenya has a cold, and here lies the significance of this disdain. Sadly, these biases towards sport have not changed in Kenya, despite sweeping changes in sport worldwide. For instance, many of us have witnessed African soccer grow into an institution over the years, and we can now confidently state that an African nation will win the Soccer World Cup in our time. Star African soccer players that have helped this proud and significant progression included Liberian presidential candidate, George Weah, Roger Milla, Abedi Peli, Rashid Yekini, Thomas Nkono, Anthony Yeboah, Nwankwo Kanu, Daniel Amokachi, Tijana Babanginda, Rigobert Song, Augustine “JJ” Okocha, Ibrahim Babayaro, Samuel E’too, Henri Camarra, Didier Drogba, El Hadj Diouf, and a host of numerous other brilliant players. Over the years, we have loudly cheered these elite soccer African players while watching them on screen, seen the opportunities that they have created for themselves and their countries, but failed to adopt the strategies that have enabled progress in these players and their mother nations. Our attitude towards sport in general in this country is depressing and all wrong. We are no longer a threat in any sport worldwide. We lost the chance to host the 1996 Africa Cup of Nations, and Kenya’s once prestigious Safari Rally has been off the World Rally Championship (WRC), calendar for some time now. Employment in Kenya has stagnated, but we still insist on treating sport with disdain, as the global sporting industry transforms in leaps. Rather than carry on in pursuits that are not beneficial to the general population, sport in Kenya should either be revolutionized to catch up with modern trends, or be scrapped altogether, so that we can fully devote our energies to the Premier Soccer Leagues across the European continent, equally of no benefit to this country. Michael Mundia Kamau