FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Sports

The Africa Cup of Nations Will Be Hosted by One of the World's Worst Dictators

In a week that saw FIFA confirm its status as the world’s most farcical sports authority, the CAF, as though in solidarity, showed that it’s not far behind.
Photo via WikiMedia Commons

Last week, when Morocco made its last-minute decision to back out of hosting the Africa Cup of Nations over concerns about Ebola, the Confederation of African Football (CAF) responded by kicking the Moroccans out of the tournament altogether. It's not often that a host country backs out of a major tournament just two months before it's set to begin, and it's easy to imagine chaotic scenes inside the CAF's Cairo headquarters as the search for a new host got underway: papers strewn about, people in suits shouting into phones before slamming them down and cursing.

Advertisement

Read More: How Ebola Made a Mess of Africa's Biggest Soccer Tournament

The franticness of the search for a new host was reflected in how quickly potential host countries, like South Africa and Nigeria, made it clear they wanted nothing to do with hosting the tournament. Here at VICE Sports, we speculated that Qatar might end up as host. Such a move would have been interesting in both a practical sense and as a genius bit of defiant PR theater. But late last week, the CAF announced Equatorial Guinea would host the tournament, not Qatar.

At face value, there's nothing wrong with Equatorial Guinea hosting the Africa Cup of Nations. The country is one of Africa's smallest, by both land mass and population, with less than 700,000 residents. (Interestingly, it's also Africa's only country with Spanish as an official language. The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic also lists Spanish as an official language, but the SADR's status as a country is disputed.) But size alone shouldn't be a disqualifier. The country has just as much right to host the tournament as any other of the CAF's 56 member associations. In fact, Equatorial Guinea co-hosted the 2012 tournament with Gabon.

But Equatorial Guinea is a much more controversial choice to host the tournament than the above suggests. For one thing, in July, the CAF expelled the Equatoguinean national team from the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations after a preliminary qualifying match against Mauritania. In that match, Equatorial Guinea played Thierry Fidieu Tazemeta, a Cameroon native who was ineligible to represent the team.

Advertisement

But because tournament hosts traditionally qualify automatically for international tournaments, we're left with a strange situation. Like a kid rejected from a college only to find out he's in after his rich parents donate a new wing to the library, the CAF has guaranteed participation to an already-disqualified team in exchange for a favor. Integrity be damned; thanks for the help! In this case, the favor comes from Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, Equatorial Guinea's mega-rich president, who was specifically thanked in the CAF's announcement last week.

In addition to being a fan of soccer, and the Africa Cup of Nations in particular, Obiang is Africa's longest-serving dictator, having taken office from his own uncle, Francisco Macias Nguema, in a 1979 military coup. (Nguema was later executed by decree of a military council.) Since then, he's presided over one of Africa's most corrupt and repressive governments.

Here's how Amnesty International responded to the CAF's decision:

The situation in the country is as bad - in some ways worse - as during the 2012 tournament. Anyone who looks past the shiny new construction near the stadiums will see that nearly half of the population lacks clean water and basic sanitation. Housing conditions, schools, and health care are poor.

[…]

His government jails and tortures political opponents and those who threaten powerful interests, despite proclaiming that it issued a political amnesty in October.

Amnesty's report, which you should read in full, goes on to discuss the country's problems with corruption and press freedom, among other troubling issues.

The CAF was obviously in a tight spot when Morocco withdrew. If the tournament didn't take place, the CAF would have lost millions in sponsorship revenue. It looks like it has avoided taking that loss, but at what cost? In a week that saw FIFA confirm its status as the world's most farcical sports authority, the CAF, as though in solidarity, showed that it's not far behind.