A classic metaphor that has been widely used by cognitive psychologists goes as follows: “A drunken man was looking for his car keys under the street lights. When a woman passing by asks him if he dropped his keys by the street lights, the drunken man answers ‘no, but the light is better here.” This metaphor helps me into disagreeing with many football analysts in Uganda. To me many are like the drunken man, providing us with easy though plausible and pre-conceived arguments that resonate with their audience’s emotions rather than going beyond the obvious.
Scholars such as Sniderman Paul argue that human beings are by nature cognitive misers, meaning that they prefer to do as little thinking as possible. This leads them into relying on pre-conceived frames and schemas to arrive at quick and easy ways to process information and to draw conclusions. Under many circumstances, people make judgments in notably unreliable ways without realising that they are doing so. Psychologists distinguish between peripheral and central logic production.
In peripheral logic production, most people rally on simple, heuristic, top-down and stereotypic conclusions. In central logic production, people will employ more mental resources, think more systematically and allow data to shape their conclusions. With this brief introduction I now move into my reasons why Uganda Cranes does not perform well on the international stage. I have about five reasons that I intend to give but will focus on one. The five reasons however are not independent of each other. In fact all the reasons intersect, re-articulate and cross-fertilize each other to produce and re-produce the recurrent failures of the Cranes. So I urge my readers not to make a conclusive judgment based on my first reason.
Like the drunken man who is looking for his key in a place that has light and not in a place where he could have possibly misplaced his keys, explanations about the Cranes failure to qualify for the 2012 Africa Cup of Nations trickled in like wild-fire. Some claimed it is the distractions from the visits of high profile people such as the President, the Prime minister, the speaker of parliament and the first son. I actually think this was the greatest motivation ever and one of those rare opportunities that the Ugandan football has over years yearned for. Had the Cranes qualified the visits would have been the very reason that people would have attached to the qualification.
Some have claimed that it was David Obua’s suspension. Though I agree that Obua is such a great talent, with or without him the Cranes can prosper. From the analysis of those who watched the match, I am told the team played excellently though the vital goal was elusive, just like it can elude any other team anywhere in the world. Some have resorted to conspiracy theories like what I saw on the face book account and website of Kawowo sports that four of the Cranes players had shared a US$200,000 paid out by Angola. In this regard I will attempt to go beyond the obvious.
For starters, there are no saboteurs as FUFA President Lawrence Mulindwa may want to tell us, and it is not because of the poor administration that Mulindwa heads as his natural rivals would want to raid-on. It is not the weakness of the Cranes and it is not the strength of our opponents either. My reasons are neither administrative nor technical. I rule out the dual because in all honesty Uganda has a very decent football administration if weighed against other football administrations of countries that continuously qualify. I have to stress it here that I am only talking about Africa. I have been following football on the African continent for quite some time and have learned that countries such as Nigeria, Zambia, Togo, Ivory Coast and South Africa have some of the most disorganised football federations – even worse than FUFA.
This does not mean however that I am singing praises for FUFA. For example I vehemently disagree with FUFA when it comes to the Super League. FUFA has acted so unprofessionally on a number of occasions such as the relegation of Boroboro and the use of unorthodoxy modus-operandi in trying to block the kick-off of the otherwise much well-packaged and anticipated Super League. I argue here that for the good of football let FUFA give USL a chance to manage the league. I also think that Mulindwa’s self-glorification such as what I read in the press that his spokesman, Rodgers Mulindwa, referred to him as “the father of football” in Uganda is unforgiveable, reckless and could only have made meaning in the medieval times.
On the technical side, Uganda has a high-quality coach in Bobby Williamson and a group of highly talented footballers. The Cranes with Bobby can beat any side on the African continent. Furthermore our players have the capacity to play in the best leagues in Europe. They are not doing that now. Mark Ssali wrote a eulogy of the Cranes’ failed campaign pointing to luck of structures, absence of football academies and short-termism. I agree with Mark that we need the structures and academies. Having stayed here in Europe for a couple of years I know the impetus and professionalism the structures and academies can inject into the game of football. However I disagree that the absence of the two is the reason for the recent failed campaigns.
I would like us to cautiously contextualise our failed campaigns within the parameters of those we compete against. There are no football academies and structures to write home about in many of the countries that continuously qualify for the Nations cup such as Zambia, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Togo and Angola (the last two having even qualified for World cup in 2006). Let the reader not get me wrong: I want the football structures and academies as soon as yesterday. However, their absence cannot be used to explain our recent failed campaigns.
My first reason as to why the Cranes are not qualifying is grounded in our own media. But first, a caveat: Football journalists in Uganda are superb, very patriotic, and the coverage of the Cranes is amazing. This is illustrated by the number of stories and number of images that our media produces before every vital game. The fans’ enthusiasm has been constructed largely by the media. In this direction the media scores highly. However, on the flip-side the journalists in a sub-conscious mode are producers and re-producers of the Cranes failed campaigns. We all know that the journalists are opinion molders, shape mentalities, shared meanings and beliefs and they can actually construct social reality.
In what one French thinker Pierre Bourdieu calls the habitus, the journalist are located in the same habitus as the football fans, administrators and the players. In as far as our football habitus is concerned there is a deeply rooted shared mentality that the Cranes will always fall short of qualification. This is inscribed and embodied in the players’, in the journalists’ and fans’ subconscious or in what Bourdieu would call the psychologism or subjective structures of the mind characterised by acquired schemata and dispositions that shape ways of acting and perceiving. The habitus itself is mothered by history and memory.
In my opinion the media in Uganda mediate the shared mentality that the Cranes cannot qualify. The journalists do this in mostly sub-conscious modes. How does this come about? For every campaign the media will give overwhelming attention of the past failed campaigns. For example, Adam Ssemugabi missed penalty in 1993 qualifier against Nigeria. For endless times this narrative has navigated and percolated to the prime pages of our sports news. Many of the current Cranes players may have been babies and some perhaps were not yet born when this happened. For a journalist this is just reporting a historical fact. But in this fact the journalist is equally re-freshening and re-evoking the ghost that Uganda is not meant to qualify. In this regard a mythology premised on the missed penalty that the Cranes cannot qualify has been constructed, kept alive by the media and sadly turned into reality in the hearts and minds of the people including the players.
The over consumption of these stories by the players influences their subconscious and dis-empowers their self-belief that they can do the needful. The players may not express this in public nor are they fully aware that these stories influence their shared mentality but it is reflected on the match day of the ultimate games that are to deliver the Cranes to the Nations cup. For the most obvious reasons our newspapers are well replete with the failure stories especially on the eve of the ultimate games. The players enter the pitch after the over consumption of failure narratives and this in an indirect mode disadvantages them into beginning from a losing point hence the underperformance.
In our next campaign I urge the journalists to drop the over coverage of the failed campaigns and focus on nurturing winning mentalities of our players. The journalist can write about the failed campaigns every after the cranes have qualified not on the eve of an ultimate game. Let these stories not shape our approach to every of our ultimate qualifier and I wish the stories die a natural death, but this will only happen with the complicity of the journalists. This is my initial conception number one of the five reasons why the Cranes don’t qualify and I strongly argue that the reasons are not out there (finger pointing), but also in here (in our minds and all Ugandans have a role to play). I intend to write a thesis aided by Empirical data in order to accurately point out the to-do-list for the Cranes to be regulars are the Africa Cup of Nations and perhaps the World Cup. Many may disagree with me, but that is expected and I would be disappointed if everybody agreed with me. We need to develop an intellectual forum to debate the way forward for our national team.
Jude Kagoro is at the University of Bayreuth in Bayern, Germany
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