Lessons Kenyans can learn on peace from the great Weah, Drogba

This file photo taken on September 25, 2017 shows former football player and candidate in Liberia's presidential elections, George Weah posing during a photo session in Paris. Weah and Liberia's Vice President Joseph Boakai will face a runoff for the country's presidency on November 7, the electoral commission announced on October 15, 2017. PHOTO | JOEL SAGET |

What you need to know:

  • Weah started by funding the Lone Star, Liberia’s national football, while Drogba has remained the great humanitarian who assumed a central role in the affairs of his war-torn country in 2006

Two African football stars with a keen understanding of the unifying power of sports inserted themselves between the warring factions in the ruinous civil wars ravaging their countries and came out with magnificent results.

They did it with patience, focus and most important of all, a neutrality that won them the confidence of their compatriots. Their sincerity was beyond question.

One of them, George Weah, may very well become the new President of Liberia when the run-off election takes place next month. The other one, Didier Drogba of Cote d’Ivoire, is one of Africa’s highest achieving footballers.

People read the newspaper in order to find provisional elections results, in Monrovia, on October 13, 2017. Liberian presidential candidates George Weah and Vice-President Joseph Boakai dominated partial tallies released by the country's electoral commission on October 12, 2017 but the results showed the vast majority of votes are yet to be counted. PHOTO | CRISTINA ALDEHUELA | AFP

Once admired as an outpost of prosperity on the West African seaboard in a region characterised by chaos, military coups and poverty, Cote d’Ivoire had collapsed into civil war and Drogba was credited with playing a vital role in bringing peace back.

The courage and patriotism of these two sportsmen must reverberate in the hearts of Kenyans bewildered at the complete absence of people like them at a time when their own country is hurtling uncontrollably towards the edge of a cliff.

The sporting giant that Kenya has been since it ran its first Olympic race 61 years ago has unfortunately not given us even just one person who could command the respect of his compatriots across all the nation’s ethnic groups and make them pause in their career of self-destruction.

Weah and Drogba didn’t fit the description of your distinguished peace maker: they attended no school of diplomacy and had the most modest of formal education. None possessed a university degree. As a matter of fact, Weah lost his first run for the Liberian presidency in 2005 precisely because he was accused of being uneducated.

GO TO SCHOOL

“Weah! First go to school!” These were the taunts that he endured from the supporters of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the Harvard-educated former World Bank employee and eventual winner.

But he proved bigger than all this prejudice, remarking perceptively: “With all their education and experience, they have governed this nation for hundreds of years. They have never done anything for the nation.” Liberia, if we may remember, is Africa’s oldest republic, having been founded by freed American slaves in 1847. Together with Ethiopia, it is one of only two African countries that have never been colonised.

This file photo taken on September 25, 2017 shows former football player and candidate in Liberia's presidential elections, George Weah posing during a photo session in Paris. Weah and Liberia's Vice President Joseph Boakai will face a runoff for the country's presidency on November 7, the electoral commission announced on October 15, 2017. PHOTO | JOEL SAGET |

Where some saw limitations, Weah and Drogba only saw possibilities. And neither the huge size of their bank accounts nor the prestige of their names made them arrogant. With humility, they remained in touch with the slums of Monrovia and Abidjan from which they emerged even as they were feted by kings, queens and presidents. And they perfectly understood the eternal power of sport to soften hardened hearts.

It is as if they had read the works of Thucydides, the historian of antiquity who wrote about how the ancient Olympic Games always brought a truce between the warring ancients. In fact, at that time, around 770 BC, that was the code: total ceasefire during the Olympic Games. It was inviolable.

Since then, people have tried to use this power to soften the hardened hearts of political warlords and clergymen who bless them to go and kill.

Pele noted this power. In “Pele: The Autobiography”, he wrote: “In early 1969 we went over to Africa again. It was another extraordinary tour. We first flew into Brazzaville, in Congo, and I remember there were tanks and guns in the street. While we were there I remember the possibility arose of a quick hop to play a match in Nigeria. Yet there was a worrying issue: Nigeria was involved in a civil war with Biafra, an area in the south east of the country.

‘Don’t worry,’ said our business manager. ‘They’ll stop the war. It won’t be a problem.’ I told him he was crazy!

“All I know is that we went to Nigeria, played a game which we drew 2-2, and then flew out again. It was said that there really was a 48-hour ceasefire in the war, made just for us and my teammates remember seeing white flags and posters saying there would be peace just to see Pele play.”

Weah and Drogba took two different paths to public service. Weah, the only African to win the World Footballer of the Year award and who ranks alongside stars such as George Best and Alfredo de Stephano as the greatest footballers never to have played at the Fifa World Cup, went directly into politics. He had started by funding the Lone Star, Liberia’s national football, in its international campaigns and eventual fruitless attempt at the World Cup.

Former international Liberian football star turned politician George Weah, addresses supporters during a campaign rally in Monrovia on October 8, 2017, three days ahead of the country's elections. PHOTO | ISSOUF SANOGO | AFP

He is a three-time African Footballer of the Year - 1989, 1994 and 1995 – and alongside Pele (South America) and Johan Cruyff (Europe) was in 1996 named by Fifa as the African Player of the Century. He also made the Fifa list of the 100 greatest living players. If he wins the Liberian presidency next month, this will surely be a story that will inspire generations of children to come, as indeed it already has.

PLEA FOR PEACE

Drogba has remained the great humanitarian. He assumed a central role in the affairs of his war-torn country in 2006 when he captained Cote d’Ivoire to a place in the 2006 Fifa World Cup. He took advantage of that role to make a passionate plea for peace in his country, a plea that was heard around the world.

It was powerful enough for the combatants to lay down their arms.

He followed up this by influencing the transfer of a critical Africa Cup of Nations qualifying match from his birthplace, Abidjan to the rebel stronghold of Bouake in the country’s central region. During the civil war, this city had been under sustained government bombardment as the religiously fractured country threatened to break up into two countries.

Drogba’s initiative helped promote feelings of inclusivity and the peace process went forward. Bouake is the birthplace of his fellow Elephants – the brothers Kolo Toure, Yaya Toure and Ibrahim Toure.

Ivory Coast's forward and captain Didier Drogba controls the ball during a past match. PHOTO | JAVIER SORIANO | AFP

Drogba, a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador made Time Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2010. He donated all his £3 million (about Sh420 million) signing fee with Chelsea to the building of a public hospital in his native Abidjan through his Didier Drogba Foundation to, as he said, “give people basic healthcare and just to stay alive.”

Chelsea reciprocated his gesture by giving the money they got from the deal to the same project. Like Weah, Drogba is a former African Footballer of the Year, having won the accolade twice in 2006 and 2009. He scored more goals for Chelsea than any other foreign footballer, becoming the club’s fourth highest scorer of all time. He also remains the highest scorer for his national team, the Elephants of Cote d’Ivoire.

Galatasaray's Didier Drogba from Ivory Coast wears a t-shirt with text reading "Thank you Madiba" in honour of late former South African President Nelson Mandela, during a Turkish super league match between Galatasaray and Elazigspor match on December 6, 2013, at Turk Telekom Arena, in Istanbul. PHOTO | FILE | AFP

These two great African footballers provide us with the examples that we sorely lack. We can only hope that we don’t find them soon turning their attention to help us save us from ourselves. We are in the worst political shape possible.

Our situation is bizarre. It reminds me of stories I read about the Central American country of Nicaragua. In 1990, the country’s revolutionary leader from 1979 to 1990, Daniel Ortega Saavedra, lost in national elections to a woman called Violeta Chamorro. Ortega’s supporters accepted and didn’t accept the result at the same time. They coined a slogan: “It’s alright Daniel, let them rule from above and we shall rule from below!”

There followed a period of turmoil when Nicaragua was run from two centres of national power. Decisions from Chamorro would be made and immediately countermanded by Ortega. Eventually, in 2006, Ortega was elected back to the presidency which he holds to date.

Kenya cannot go on like Nicaragua. It must find a just settlement acceptable for all the people who were born in it. And those, of course, who were not born here but are its citizens. There is simply no alternative short of dismembering it.

The thought crossed my mind to write to the newly elected president of our National Olympic Committee, Paul Tergat, to request him to organise an international athletics meeting similar to the one we held here in 1979. There would be no shortage of athletes willing to run for peace in Kenya. And the effort would be worth the while.

At the very least, such a meeting would provide a distraction. It would knock politics from the front pages of our newspapers and as lead items on our nightly television news – even if temporarily. It certainly would douse the fires of tribal hatred raging in millions of Kenyan hearts. That would be the authentic prayer for peace. It would not need any decoding whether it is a Jubilee or Nasa prayer.

Can it be done? I don’t know.

New Nock president Paul Tergat (left) with Tegla Lorupe during the Nock Elective General Assembly on September 29, 2017 at Panari Hotel. PHOTO | CHRIS OMOLLO |

Paul Tergat (left) and Kenya Rugby Union chairman Richard Omwela in brief conversation during the Nock General Assembly on September 29, 2017 at Panari Hotel. Tergat is the new National Olympic Committee of Kenya( Nock) president. PHOTO | CHRIS OMOLLO |

The example of human tragedy cited most by Kenyans is that of Rwanda. I understand. I have been to the Kigali Genocide Memorial and was so stunned I was lost for words and sat on a bench for a long time listening to the silence raging in the pit of my stomach.

But another experience shaped my experience in an equally profound way. It was in Sierra Leone. I watched a football match between children of about eight years. They were using crutches because their legs had been amputated by gangs of warring militias. I left that country without understanding how human bestiality can get to that level. I have since read enough on this subject to understand that with politics, people can become mad enough for fathers to do that to their own children.

Any effort to counter a slide into this abyss must be made. And the sportsmen and women of this country should follow Weah and Drogba’s example and step forward.