Possible turmoil?

I've been watching highlights of all the Africa Cup matches--if the games were on television, I'd be trying to watch them in full--and it's been surprisingly very exciting to follow. While Africa may be lacking in infrastructure and good governance, the continent certainly is not lacking in quality soccer. I'm no expert, but the quality of play seems to be very high. I would not be surprised if an African team like Cote d'Ivoire or Cameroon pulled off some upsets in the World Cup this summer.

This Monday, Angola will face off against Algeria while Malawi will take on Mali. The host nation, Angola, is currently at the top of its group with a slight edge over Algeria and Malawi. However, with two group games left, any two teams could move on. Angola has the best chance to advance, but there are no guarantees.

What I find most interesting/startling about Monday's matches is that if Angola finishes second in the group, then they will have to travel to Cabinda for the quarterfinals. Cabinda was the sight of the Togo tragedy which opened the tournament. If Angola travels to Cabinda, it could put a lot of pressure on an already tense situation; Cabinda's instability could brim over into another flare of violence. After all, the target of the FLEC rebels were the Angolan security forces escorting them--not the Togolese team itself. At the very least, if Angola's team travels to Cabinda, the government could begin their (inevitable) harsh security crackdowns on the Cabindan populace. In all likelihood, Angola playing in Cabinda will be a non-story. Angola purposefully scheduled games in Cabinda to show the stability of the separatist province and Luanda's control over it.

Nonetheless, Angola playing in Cabinda would highlight the tensions that Angolan officials would much prefer to keep hidden and dormant. As Angolan defender Rui Marques told al-Jazeera correspondent, Paul Rhys, "We would like to stay here because we feel used to it. But there's no problem. If we have to move town I'm sure the people there will support us. We'd like to be first in the group though." I imagine Angola's government feels the same.

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Some other notes, these matches don't seem particularly well-attended. For the second game of the tournament, Malawi versus World-Cup bound Algeria, there were only 1,000 people in attendance. When you look at the highlights of the game, the stadium looks even more deserted than an MLS game. Why is this? Expensive ticket prices? I doubt its due to lack of interest. Based on info from ESPN, Angola's two matches have had an average of approximately 47,000 people in attendance; all other matches have had an average of just under 12,0000 fans.

The Africa Cup: Cause for Optimism, Cause for Despair

Last Friday, FLEC rebels opened fire on the bus of the Togolese national soccer team which had been travelling from their training facilities in the DRC to Cabinda for the start of the African Nations Cup. Three were killed in the ambush, and 8 were injured. And this weekend, the Togolese team flew home, to mourn their dead and await improved security.

The event is terribly sad. Angola's hosting of the Cup was meant to showcase Africa's fastest growing economy, a debut after decades of civil war. Instead it had showcased the steep domestic problems that Angola faces.

In September, I wrote a post on Cabinda. The odd geography of the Puerto Rico sized province, and its contested history interested me. Cabinda formed in the later 19th century, as three independent African kingdoms (sandwiched between Belgian, French and Portugues colonial ventures) fearing King Leopold's cruel rule, asked to be a protectorate of Portugal. Tied as a Portuguese colony to the rest of Angola, Cabinda nonetheless considered itself independent and culturally distinct from the rest of Angola. Yet immediately following the nation's independence in 1975, MLPA troops occupied Cabinda. Since then the separatist conflict has persisted. What's more the discovery of oil off the shores of Cabinda has only heightened the stakes and the fierceness of the fighting. Some might say, offshore oil is the conflict, although FLEC rebels claim that their fight is for cultural and political freedom rather than exorbitant resource wealth. Nonetheless, its necessary to acknowledge that, today, 71% of Angola's oil revenue comes from Cabinda. And as John Ghazvinian, author of Untapped, writes, while the conflict between UNITA and MLPA may have ended, there has been little resolution to the Cabinda conflict.

I revisited Ghazvinian's book, and found this quote which seems relevant:

The only people given a voice throughout Angola's history have been those with guns. Perhaps nowhere is this tortured legacy more visible than in Cabinda, where the only political discourse available to young activists is one of hatred and violence.

Crackdowns on Cabinda rebels have been harsh. In 2004, "Human Rights Watch issued a briefing paper that included reports of gang rapes, torture, and sexual humiliation carried out by the Angolan Armed Forces" (Ghazvinian, 160).

While seemingly unrelated, what I take from the tragedy at the Africa Cup, is the extreme difficulty for oil-rich nations to positively harness their resource wealth. Although Angola experienced insane growth rates (its GDP grew by nearly 20% in 2008!), a number of substantial obstacles have arisen. The cost of living in Luanda has skyrocketed to Central Park South-levels; the national government is heavily centralized and does not disclose the amount of oil money it is awash with; and, as sadly shown last week, a separatist movement that is perhaps fueled by harsh crackdowns still simmers bringing the nation's stability into question.

This is not say that Angola is doomed; quite the contrary, many African nations envy the potential Angola has. At times, it seems fitting to compare it to rapidly-growing, lusophone Brazil; in optimistic moments, BRIC seems a more likely future than MEND. But the difficulty of oil persists.

I don't want to call it a curse, but oil (combined with Angola's history which offers conflict rather than multiparty politics or democracy as a model) presents substantial political and economic challenges. And while the Africa Cup does certainly highlight the incredibly exciting potential of one of Africa's pivotal nations, it also highlights the substantial and frustratingly sad obstacles that a bright future must overcome.