Juma Kwayera
1 April 2002
analysis
A DOG is an always an unusual sight at any soccer stadium. But when one appeared on the pitch in October last year during a premier league match between Kenya's AFC Leopards and Mathare United at Kasarani Sports Centre, lifted one hind leg and urinated on the corner flag before ambling away, Leopards' supporters read witchcraft into its actions.
An irate fan sneaked onto the pitch past the security men and raced after the "messenger of evil," forcing the referee to temporarily stop the match.
Leopards lost the match 2-1, and the fans were quick to blame the loss on the bizarre incident just before half time.
Juju is big business and many African teams maintain a special vote for "research." Of course, this research has nothing to do with skills. The allocation goes into payments to witchdoctors to ensure that the team's stars are not "crossed." The researchers, also known as jujumen, are worshipped by soccer administrators who would rather fail to pay players and coaches than shirk the expense of consulting soothsayers.
At the Africa Nations Cup finals in Bamako, Mali on February 10, a TV camera picked out a fan on the terraces with a Bible in his left hand and a chain of beads in his right. For every pass his team made, he moved his fingers on the beads. He gnashed his teeth when the team conceded possession. The fan was certainly praying for divine intervention to save Senegal, whichlost the match and missed the cup in a 3-2 defeat on post match penalties.
The two cases of attempting to swing football results, bring to mind the question of the influence of magic in soccer.
Prior to this year's African Nations' Cup, the Confederation of African Football (Caf) banned jujumen or sangomas (Southern Africa medicine men). Nigeria, Cameroon, Cote D'Ivoire and South Africa, which have in the past made no secret of their reliance on juju for soccer glory were affected by the ban.
In the 1998 World Cup qualifiers, Nigeria suspected that Kenya used charms to force a draw in Nairobi. The Nigerian technical bench believed that the Kenyan juju was particularly powerful, and consequently barred a renowned Kenyan jujuman from travelling to Lagos for the return match. Kenya had outplayed the fancied Super Eagles, which was lucky to have drawn the World Cup qualifier 1-1, at the Moi Sports Centre Kasarani, Nairobi.
The Super Eagles were also instructed to ensure that the top of Kenyan coach Reinhardt Fabisch's tracksuit was "treated" before Harambee Stars took to the field. The top was taken forcibly from Fabisch as he was checking in at the Murtala Airport with the Stars from Germany, where the team had been in camp.
The Kenyan witchdoctor, now dead, did not travel to Lagos and Fabisch's top was never returned. The outcome of the match was a 3-0 debacle for Kenya. And with that Nigeria had one leg in the France 1998 World Cup finals. According to Total Football magazine, Nigerians were sure Kenya had used voodoo, not skill, to force the draw, and that the Kenyan witchdoctor had inspired Kenya to a nine-month unbeaten run.
So why did CAF ban these team "advisors," or "wise men" as they are euphemistically called? According to a communication from CAF to the teams that had qualified for Mali 2002, the ban on jujumen was intended to "avoid presenting a Third World image during the most high profile tournament on the continent."
In spite of the ban, Mali, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, South Africa and Cote d'Ivoire got round it by buying the "spiritual advisors" tickets for the games. When their teams played, they would be strategically placed in the stadiums "to spread juju in essential places."
Under instructions from their fortune tellers, some members of the host team entered the stadium with the backs to the field, or had their heads half-shaven. Their fairy run to the tournament's semi-final is attributed to the use of powerful charms, especially by the Cameroon, the eventual winners in the semi-finals.
In Kenya, the use of this "third force" to win matches is common. It was rampant when AFC Leopards, Gor Mahia, Motcom and Kenya Breweries ruled the soccer scene in the 1970s and 1980s. Juju pervades the 22-team premier league even today.
Even some schools in western Kenya and the Coast, for example, pay witchdoctors to "fix their opponents." In the 1970s and 1980s, Kakamega High School, famous for their flair for samba soccer, was a team capable taking on any side in East Africa. Coached by Brazilian-trained Chris Makokha, the school won the secondary school title for a record 16 times in a row, from 1970 to 1986. But former members of the Green Commandos - as the school's team is known many of whom later turned out for the national team, say they had to lace their skill with juju to ensure that their opponents did not get the better of them.
"At Shabana FC, the consultation is done by team officials, who on returning, insist on meeting certain players first," says Flemming Jocobsen, a former coach of the Kisii-based premier league side.
Jacobsen, now in Nairobi coaching Kakamega United, a provincial league side, also coached four Zambian clubs before coming to Kenya in 1997. He says that superstition in African football is rife and has a strong bearing on teams' preparation for matches.
"It has everything to do with the mental preparedness of the team. Under pressure, most players feel insecure and yearn for special intervention for good results," he says. Despite his sentiments on witchcraft, Jacobsen did not stop teams from going to consult witchdoctors.
Gynaecologist William Obwaka who used to play for Gor Mahia says, "We would be assigned roles on the pitch according to the witchdoctor's divination. Common among these was smearing our bodies with swine fat or powder concoctions." The players would also be advised against using the main entrance to the stadium "lest their opponents had tampered with it," said Obwaka, who alongside his elder brother, Enock, played for Gor Mahia between 1984 and 1992.
One of the most memorable incidents of juju in Kenyan football was in 1986 when Gor Mahia lost six league matches on the trot. The loss was blamed on the team's refusal to "see a
man." Worried, team officials invited a jujuman from the Kibera slums to cleanse City Stadium, the only stadium in Nairobi at the time, of the evil spell. The wise sman "exhumed" a dead fox at the centre of the field. And true to his divination, Gor went on to win their next match, outclassing their opponents by six goals.
An intermediary used by AFC Leopards for research into the fixing of match outcomes says that depending on the importance of the match, some teams placed the ball to be used during the match on a grave overnight. "It hardened the ball for our opponents," he says. It was usual in those days for suspicious players or officials to deflate such balls.
Juju prescriptions include cleansing action against the hooting of an owl on the eve of a match and avoiding coming across a woman first in the morning. Some teams carry with them human skulls, bits of tortoise shell, dead chameleons, geckos or the sloughed offs skin of a snake.
For reasons linked to witchcraft, Gor Mahia's "home ground" in the Kenyan league is City Stadium, and AFC Leopards will never agree to play their home matches away from Nyayo Stadium in spite of the poor state of the pitch. And when it makes economic sense, one would expect Kenya Breweries at any of the three stadiums in the city, but the team believes that luck sits well with it at its Ruaraka Stadium!
"Witchcraft is used by some people, especially in the management of soccer to explain things away. When the team fails to practice or there is disagreement, it can never play as a cohesive unit. We were rusty and that is why we lost the six matches," Obwaka explains. Obwaka, a born-again Christian, says that he never believed in juju. "I took part in it as an expression of solidarity with the rest of the team. It was no more than psyching up of timid players.
"Some players may simply be intimidated by the crowd or their opponents' reputation. The invocation of the supernatural powers helps the players to keep their balance mentally. Once convinced that they can win, there is no stopping them," Obwaka says.
"Belief in black magic can make a team complacent. Players do not train hard and the possibility of bad results is always looming for a team that invests less in hard work and more in witchcraft," he says.
Affluent clubs in developed countries hire psychologists to shape the players' mentality ahead of a major challenge. "That is what African soccer needs. However, the teams run on shoestring budgets. They cannot maintain coaches, physiotherapists and players. Hiring a psychologist would be stretching their budgets," he says.
Psychologists have failed elsewhere.
After a string of poor performances at the World Cup, England was in need of something special to tilt fortune in its favour at the 1995 European Championships, a prelude to the 1996 World Cup.
In response to the England coach's refusal to hire a renowned Kenya witchdoctor, who had offered to help the team win the Cup, a sportswriter, Terry Lyttleon, lambasted coach Terry Venables for his decision!
In the previous World Cup, Brazil had licked England 3-1, besides two of its players being shown the red card. Against this backdrop, the Kenyan witchdoctor, the late Sheriff Abubakar Omar, had warned Venables in a letter, "Unless you do something special to change luck in your favour, there is no hope of reaching the semifinals."
A similar offer had been turned down in 1974 by Sir Alf Ramsey, Venables' predecessor, as "primitivity." Before he died last year, Omar predicted that England - rated highly at this year's World Cup - would not win the tournament unless its luck was "fixed" with juju.
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