Following the African Cup of Nations tragedy in Angola’s Cabinda province, which saw the Togo football team come under attack – three men in the convoy were killed – longtime Africa correspondent Alex Perry calls for the world media to show restraint when tying the development to the FIFA 2010 World Cup. “The distance between Paris and Kosovo is around half that between Cape Town and Cabinda,” he writes:
South Africa’s success or failure shouldn’t be written off five months before the first ball is kicked. But that’s exactly what has happened following a Jan. 8 attack on a bus carrying the Togolese national team in the northern Angolan province of Cabinda, where an Angolan rebel group killed three people — the bus driver, a coach and the team’s press officer —, and injured at least two players on their way to an Africa Cup of Nations match. Even though the attack took place in a country other than South Africa, Britain’s Daily Mirror declared the incident “a disaster for the forthcoming first-ever World Cup in Africa. The machine-gun attack on the Togo players may have taken place in northern Angola last night but the shots would have been heard around the world.” Fox NewsCHK said “the fatal attack on the Togo national team in Angola has increased concerns the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa will be targeted by terrorists as violence continues to rage on the troubled continent.” The London Daily Telegraph told its readers that “Africa’s dream is in tatters.” “It is hard to measure the damage that has been done,” it intoned.
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January 11th, 2010 @13:31 #
I never thought I'd agree with anything Danny Jordaan says, but in this case I do: "We urge the world not to play double standards. When a terrorist incident happens in any European country, no other European country is linked to it."
This reminds me of the time a senior academic at the Business School at Emory University asked an African researcher where he came from. On being told "Togo", his unashamed response was "Never heard of it!" It turned out he thought it was a city, 'cos Africa's one big country, right?