Hello Africa!
While searching for a word to describe African football, I asked people on various social networks for their input. The answers ranged from starstruck, to saccharine and starkly negative. One person said "optimistic" was the best word he could think of.
Somewhere in between that spectrum are the real words to describe African football - something that's so mesmerisingly mythical it could never be real and so uniquely aberrational it exists only as a freak show.
They are the words spoken in Swahili, Hausa, Yoruba, French, Arabic, Portuguese, and the other 2,994 languages used across the continent. That fact alone should provide an idea of how vast and diverse Africa is. Disregard what the marketing tells you, Africa is not a country.
It is, just like Europe or Asia, a collection of nations that could be worlds apart. Some of the borders are not where they should be because colonial powers simply imposed them and some of Africa's economies don't function as they should because they were crippled by said imperialists. But that is a discussion for another time.
Of course, that is not to say Africans don't have things in common. From a shared, scarred past to similarities in food, music and culture, people on the continent have shown an increased interest in finding things that link them to each other and set them apart from the rest of the world. Football is one of those things.
All but one of Africa's 55 countries is affiliated to FIFA. The one who is not is the disputed territory of Western Sahara, which you may not have heard of until now. The country is the most sparsely populated in the world and sits on the north-west of the continent. It is bordered by Morocco, who have had administrative control over the territory despite continuing demands for independence, as well as Algeria, Mauritania and the Atlantic Ocean. Most of its people are Sahrawis, a Bedoiun ethnic group.
And guess what? They play football too. Three months ago, they competed in the VIVA World Cup. A tournament organised by the Non-FIFA board which allows teams like themselves to participate in a multi-team event. Western Sahara lost 6-0 to Iraqi Kurdistan in their first match and 6-2 to Occitania in their second.
Few will ever remember those results but what should be etched in the footballing forevers is that despite the continued struggles of the half a million people in Western Sahara to get their country recognised, they found the time, the resources, however scant, and the inclination to form a team.
In Africa, football is also a political tool. It is a way of including and excluding, dividing and uniting and a way of spreading a message. In Egypt, the Al-Ahly Ultras were instrumental in last year's revolution and the current ruling party has declared its "full support" for them and their cause. Mali's Seydou Keita used the African Nations' Cup earlier in the year to create awareness of the famine in the Sahel. At the same tournament, Libya's players were received as heroes of change.
Football is a way of expression. It was the way Zambia finally lay to rest the dead of the 1994 plane crash that killed the country's best footballers. It was one of the ways South Africa celebrated becoming a nation again after the end of Apartheid.
Next year, South Africa will host a continental tournament for the second time, after agreeing to swap hosting rights with Libya. After the first round of the final stage of qualifying for the 2013 African Nations' Cup, Zimbabwe and Mozambique are two of the teams who are likeliest to be in attendance. Two neighbours of mighty South Africa who are thought to have nothing but could finally have something.
That is African football, and we will chronicle it here.
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