Bonnie Mugabe And Agencies
14 July 2008
Kigali — President Paul Kagame has urged administrators of the Council of East and Central Africa Football Association (Cecafa) to ensure a peaceful regional club championship (Kagame Cup) which got underway on Saturday in Dar es Salaam.
According to a Tanzania newspaper, the Citizen, Kagame made the remark through the Minister of Sports and Culture, Joseph Habineza at the two-day Cecafa/IOC peace seminar in Dar es Salaam that was held on Friday and Saturday.
Habineza said that football played a big role in eliminating the genocidal ideology in Rwanda whose peak ended in the 1994 Tutsi genocide.
"Sport, especially football, is a tool for conducting or restoring peace and harmony in the world. After the end of the Rwanda genocide, people turned up at stadiums and played soccer.
"They forgot the war between the two major tribes, Hutus and Tutsis; they played and danced," Habineza was quoted by Citizen Paper as saying.
He added, "President Kagame failed to come to honor the tournament, but he sent me (Habineza) to deliver his message about peace in the region as well as in the Kagame Cup."
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