As it rained incessantly over Mashonaland this past week, the weather forecast predicted that the rain would not stop throughout the night, I was convinced of one thing, the electricity wouldn’t switch off. This probably sounds strange to my readers from the first world or second world (insert South Africa) but the probability of having rains and the lights staying on is very low in ZImbabwe. The reason for this was that the Zimbabwe Mens’ National Football team, nicknamed the Warriors was playing in the African Cup of Nations (AFCON).
Without a shadow of a doubt, the most loved and followed sport in Zimbabwe is football. Its significance is stated in the fact that a Warriors game at AFCON is a national issue directives are put in place to ensure that on that day they are playing, electricity is available to all households so that families and friends can be glued to their television screens hoping, praying, and urging the Warriors on. Supporters will talk for hours about the memories of Peter Ndlovu dancing past defenders in the National Sports Stadium, Benjani Mwaruwari’s famous pointing celebration after scoring, Knowledge Musona’s ‘smiling assassin’ face. The general public hold such as emotive connection to the Warriors, very few do not know the jingles that go with the words, ‘Go Warriors Go’.
Mao Zedong is famous for saying ‘politics is war without bloodshed. One can say, sports is war without politics. Most autocratic nations now understand that sports is a war-front and they have taken it up as that. They have done this through sports-washing. Sports-washing as defined by Amnesty International is “the use of sports by oppressive governments to legitimize their regimes and distract from their human rights abuses.” Instead of constantly defending themselves against human rights abuses, oppressive government host large sports events to distract us from their despicable acts. With Qatar hosting the 2022 FIFA World Cup, China hosting the Winter Olympics, 2022 is a huge year for sports-washing. A lot of people do not know that while AFCON is currently being hosted in Cameroon, the large Anglophone community since 2018 has been fighting for their rights. For them, AFCON has become another sports-washing event. In most of the nations mentioned, LGBTQI, minority, labour and religious rights are severely curtailed and/or non-existent.
The masters of sports-washing without a shadow of a doubt is Saudi Arabia. Over the last 10 years, Saudi Arabia has made concerted efforts to beam their state through marquee sports events. From snooker, boxing, horse-racing, wrestling (where women were banned for participating until two years ago), Formula One and now football through their acquisition of the English club, Newcastle United, Saudi Arabia is now one of the go-to places for sports finance, sponsorship, and investment. While all the glitz and glam that comes with sports events shine on the state, rights abuses such as flogging a woman for wearing a pair of trousers remain legal and murdering journalists such as Jamal Kashoggi fall into the shadows. The sports events then gleam the brilliant real estate built under poor labour rights. The world slowly but surely tames the severity of these abuses.
At risk of giving the ZANU government ideas, they have failed to properly implement sports-washing. When Kirsty Coventry was appointed the Minister of Sports, Arts and Culture, there was an assumption that the sports industry was going to be given a strong shot in the arm. This has not happened. Over the last three years, administrative and financial crises have rocked sports in general in the country. Zimbabwe Cricket was suspended from competing in the T20 World Cup qualifiers due to ‘political interference’, a criticism the football governing board has received regularly. The degradation of sports infrastructure is the current embarrassing storyline, the football team struggling to have one stadium to host international games.
The problems in Zimbabwe’s sports governance are melting down to ZANU PF’s autocratic nature wanting to airdrop political puppets to control sports administrative bodies. Instead of sports-washing, they are washing sports in politics. Unlike their autocratic counterparts such as China who can get away with abducting a female tennis player, or Saudi Arabia who can oil the hands of governing bodies with huge amounts of cash, Zimbabwe cannot get away with that. As a result, international sports bodies use it as an example of rules being enforced whenever it acts in ways other autocratic nations act.
While government has failed to implement sports-washing, private citizens such as Kuda Tagwireyi has understood the idea and fully embraced it. Kuda Tagwireyi’s name in the society is generally cloaked in disgust and corruption. Seen as someone who is the business partner and one of the major financial beneficiaries from the Mnangagwa government, he took the step of sports-washing by buying cars and houses worth USD5.3 million to the two biggest local football teams, Dynamos and Highlanders. This stroke endeared him to a large segment of the football-loving society. All of a sudden, the argument was not that he was corrupt. It became although he is corrupt, at least has donated some of the money back. Even though the main reason for that act was probably to receive tax cuts, it was an effective move.
Since sports, especially football is viewed as the public face of the nation, one can only wonder how public sentiment would turn if the ZANU-PF government spent more money in sports. Would the urban populace feelings turn from hatred to indifference? Would Mnangagwa taking pictures in a Zimbabwe Warriors regalia shirt swing from being a meme to being an iconic picture likened to Nelson Mandela wearing the South Africa Springboks jersey in 1995? We will never know. What we can say for now is that besides keep the electricity on during Warriors games, ZANU PF has failed at implementing a key strategy used by modern autocratic nations, sports-washing.