Hooliganism stifles the growth of football clubs

There are few people in this country who are afflicted with the horrible Kenyan disease called impunity than the football hooligan. To this creature, harming other people – or even killing them – and destroying private and public property is a right and go jump in a river if you think otherwise.

There is no better country in the world for this creature to thrive than Kenya where everybody knows their rights but precious few know their obligations. It is a legalistic redoubt where the unfettered freedom of the individual is held sacrosanct. It is a condition that the famed Russian Nobel Prize winning novelist, Alexander Solzhenitsyn once described of the United States.

He said: “The defence of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society as a whole defenceless against certain individuals. It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.”

Hear. Hear. Hear. Where he says “the West”, I will substitute with Kenya. What makes me despair the most about my country is how weak it is when it comes to the small things that don’t cost money. Like common courtesy on the road. Like avoiding to litter the place. Or turning down the party or kesha music volume because the neighbours need their sleep.

Football hooliganism, with all its destructiveness, could be with us for a long time to come because of our mindsets. There are enough people in positions of authority who do not see anything wrong with it. Have you noticed that that whenever there is a mayhem caused by known groups of fans, their club officials always jump to their defence?

What did AFC Leopards officials say when last Sunday’s match against Gor Mahia was stopped by their fans? Have you ever heard Gor Mahia officials condemn the actions of their rioting hotheads and take action that can be seen by everybody? It is always a knee-jerk defensiveness. I shake my head in sorrow when people who call themselves leaders cannot find it within themselves to be appalled by the destruction wreaked by thugs who profess allegiance to them. No condolences, no sympathies, no pledge to stamp it out once and for all – just excuses.

When you come to think of it, isn’t this utterly strange? Hooliganism is always perpetrated by very few people. It is this tiny minority that gives everybody else a bad name.

What is gained by holding them in your embrace? It is amazing that some people don’t see the connection between behaviour that hurts innocent citizens and inability to attract corporate sponsors. Who wants to attract a consumer backlash because their product is on the shirt of people associated with violence against innocent bystanders?

This is my advice: stop looking for sponsors. Instead, identify the trouble makers amongst you. Sanction them, like banning them from the stadiums. Make sure you have an incident-free season. Attract families to your matches and publicise the fact. Have pictures of small boys and girls with their parents attending your matches.

The sponsors will come as a matter of course. In fact, they are dying to do so – it is just that you are rejecting them with your actions which, as they say, speak louder than words. There is enormous work to do here. One monstrous headache is the utter ineptitude of the police. I have heard the term police reforms for...10, 15 years? Anyway, an eternity but I still cannot tell the difference.

Nairobi is full of technological gizmos like CCTV cameras but I have never heard that somebody went to jail following photographic evidence from one of them. Somebody might suggest that some should be installed in the stadiums to nab the bad guys but I am not enthusiastic. What have the ones Kidero installed in the streets done? People are still getting robbed and the criminals go scot-free.

In the matter of the police and their reforms, I guess we can pray although I fear that God will say He has more deserving cases to attend to.

Hooliganism has stifled the growth of the two biggest clubs in this country. Unfortunately, their inward-looking and defensive leaders cannot see it. This is the real tragedy. England is where the very name of the country had become so soiled by the behaviour of its hooligans abroad that it just had to act.

“Football riots are nothing less than outbursts of savagery; they threaten the future of football and they smear the country’s good name abroad,” Leon Brittan a one-time Home Secretary said ruefully. Today, a combination government, FA and fans’ associations have virtually stamped out this problem.

England said: “We have a problem” and acted on it.

The time for our club officials to say the same things and mobilise concerted action is here. They must abandon their defensive attitudes towards hooligans who attack innocent people in the name of their clubs.

If they don’t act, their clubs are condemned to remain small fry and attracting sponsorships will stay what it is now: a pipe dream.

Furthermore, as is already happening, they will never be able to hold on to their best players. They will remain a way station for those.

Our game deserves better than this. It is also in the interest of peace-loving fans to make their voices heard. It is not good to be painted in the same brush as maniacs who have no respect for life and limb and the sanctity of other people’s property. Isn’t all this enough to jolt somebody somewhere awake?

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REQUIEM FOR DEMOSH

Last Saturday, they buried Demosh. I remember him very well. In 1982, shortly after arriving in the eastern Australian port city of Brisbane for the 12th Commonwealth Games, we rose to disembark from the plane when I heard a loud voice haranguing people behind me. I turned to look. It was Demosh. He was threatening a mystery transgressor with dire consequences.

“Let him understand that I don’t trifle with anybody,” he was swearing. “Whoever has taken it better return it right now! If I get hold of him, he will see. And I am not joking. You people take too many liberties! Huyo! Ataniona! (That one! He will face me!)” I never got to know what had been taken from him when he was not looking and how it all ended up.

Charles Anjimbi, the national boxing coach was trying to calm him down with disappointing results. Demosh only kept peace when he had gotten all that out of his chest. Meanwhile, other boxers maintained a studious silence through the tirade. Later, I learnt that life in the Kenya boxing camp could be trying when Demosh was in a foul mood.

He wasn’t your run of the mill heavyweight. He was always a cut above the rest. Kenya boxing doesn’t produce great heavyweights in abundant supply.

Its best boxers have come from middleweight down to light flyweight. If you look through our history and come across names such as Robert Wangila, Stephen Muchoki, Philip Waruinge, David Attan, George Oduori, Dick Tiger Murunga and Modesty Napunyi, you will see that this is true.

Before the advent of Demosh, the only other heavyweight I really admired was Muhammed Abdalla Kent (once upon a time Simon Kent) who had a nice smile, a pleasant personality and quick hands. Of course, there was Chris Sande, too. But Demosh changed the equation. He was a lot faster than his big bulk, both with his hands and his feet.

He started off in the army and left in a cloud. Then he joined Kenya Railways and stayed there a goodly five years, the best in his career, before joining the professional ranks in his sunset years.

They made him overall team captain of the1984 Los Angeles Olympic team in a move that Charles Mukula, the legendary Dallas coach, told me was informed by the need to tame him. “By giving him flag bearing responsibility, they thought he would behave. And they were right.”

It is after his retirement, when he was strumming on his guitar and singing rumba rather well that I began to understand where his inner wildness was coming from.

Who among us truly understands the convulsions within that spark the greatest musical compositions? Maybe Demosh should have tried to make a career of a musician earlier. Maybe he could have turned out better. And maybe death, when it finally came, could have done so in a kinder way than it did when it finally came calling.

But he belongs to the pantheon of our great sportsmen and women now gone for all time. When he was not remonstrating with one colleague or the other, he was simply a joy to watch. One of the most enduring images of him was leading a procession of boxers from downtown Nairobi to Kariokor Muslim Cemetery on Robert Wangila’s last journey. They were shadow boxing in the hot noonday sun.

Last Saturday, it was his turn to make a similar journey. James “Demosh” Omondi, find the peace up there that eluded you down here. Go well.