THE COMPLEXITIES OF ‘DEMOCRACY’: THE UGANDAN FOOTBALL ASSOCIATION AS POLITY*

By

Michael G. Schatzberg Department of Political Science University of Wisconsin-Madison 1050 Bascom Mall Madison, WI 53706 USA [email protected]

*I wish to acknowledge the generous support of the African Studies Program of the University of Wisconsin-Madison which allowed me to travel to Uganda during June-July 2001. This brief period of fieldwork enabled me to interview, formally and informally, a range of Ugandans involved in the soccer community. I am also grateful to the Makerere Institute for Social Research for its warm hospitality, and the Uganda National Council for Science and Technology for research clearance. Preliminary versions of parts of this paper were presented at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER) at the University of the Witwatersrand. I thank Susann Baller, Martha Saavedra, Aili Tripp, Crawford Young, and several anonymous reviewers for thoughtful criticisms. Any remaining errors are solely my responsibility.

THE COMPLEXITIES OF ‘DEMOCRACY’: THE UGANDAN FOOTBALL ASSOCIATION AS POLITY

Abstract:

Centered on a case study of the political fall of Denis Obua, a long-serving president of the Ugandan Football Association, FUFA, this article explores the complicated and murky relationship between the state, ostensibly non-political societal organizations such as FUFA, and international institutions through an examination of the microcosm of football. It argues that

FUFA belongs to a larger class of liminal organizations that fit comfortably under neither of the two of the broad rubrics of contemporary political analysis — state and civil society.

Employing an older term, I argue that FUFA is a polity. Although polities are intensely political, political scientists rarely devote attention to their internal politics. Instead, these organizations are usually subsumed under the rubric of civil society and viewed mostly as organizations interacting with the state in a variety of ways. Neither fully of the state nor of civil society,

FUFA (and other polities such as chieftaincies, kingdoms, corporations, or religious organizations) exists in a liminal position that further blurs the analytical frontier between state and civil society. Such polities may be contributing to a different sort of political pluralism in the politics of daily life.

THE COMPLEXITIES OF ‘DEMOCRACY’:

THE UGANDAN FOOTBALL ASSOCIATION AS POLITY

In 2003 an important African Cup of Nations qualifying match between Uganda and

Rwanda dissolved into violence between the players, recriminations between the football

authorities of both states, and accusations of sorcery.1 Uganda’s defeat and elimination from the

major continental competition prompted a wave of critical commentary on the part of ordinary

citizens who were angry at those officials primarily responsible for managing the sport.

Although seen internationally as a football “backwater,” the outrage of ordinary Ugandans was

all the more palpable because Ugandan success under Idi Amin in the late 1970s had passed into

the nation’s sporting imaginary. The only time Uganda had ever made the finals of the Cup of

Nations tournament was in 1978 and this was a constant reference point against which the

football community measured the current dismal situation.2 At least in the media, much of the blame for Uganda’s repeated failures was heaped on the sport’s national administrators. For example, one letter to the editor after the disputed match noted that the correspondent was having a “nightmare” because the then current administration of the Ugandan Football Association, or

FUFA (the Federation of Uganda Football Associations), was taking the game in an unhappy direction. He concluded that, “I am of the view that we shall achieve some thing in football only

1For details of this match see M. G. Schatzberg, “Soccer, science, and sorcery: causation

and African football”, Africa spectrum, vol. 41, no. 3, 2006, p. 351-369.

2D. Goldblatt, The ball is round: a global history of soccer, New York, Penguin, 2006, p.

651-652, and M. G. Schatzberg, “Soccer, science, and sorcery,” art.cit., p. 361-362.

1 when these people are out of office.”3 The writer was aware that officials of FUFA could be removed from office through periodic elections. As we shall see, however, elections in FUFA in some ways closely resembled those in the larger political arena. These elections and the institutions responsible for overseeing them were fundamentally flawed.

In 2004-2005 a group of concerned members of the wider football community in Uganda launched a movement to unseat Denis Obua, FUFA’s president, who had been in office since

1998. This movement, Save Our Soccer (SOS), was motored by young Kampala professionals who genuinely wished to redress the abysmal situation of Ugandan football. Members of SOS were angry and frustrated at the corruption and mismanagement prevalent in FUFA and, working largely through the courts, were able to exert legal pressure on Obua and the FUFA executive committee. As we shall see, the Ugandan state was involved as well, eventually intervening in the affairs of FUFA at several different junctures. Finally, FIFA (the Fédération Internationale de Football Associations), football’s world governing body and an international non- governmental organization, felt obligated to intervene because some of the revenues it had provided to FUFA could not be accounted for and because its statutes prohibit state intervention in the affairs of football associations.4 While its own practices were more than occasionally

3A. Senteza, Kampala, “FUFA Has Upset Me,” New Vision, 11 August 2003.

4For the international dimensions of these monies and the role they play in the election of the president of FIFA, see P. Darby, “Africa, the FIFA presidency, and the governance of world football: 1974, 1998, and 2002”, Africa today, vol. 50, no. 1, 2003, p. 3-24; and also, P. Darby,

Africa, football and FIFA: politics, colonialism and resistance, London, Frank Cass, 2002. For a

2 flawed,5 the resources FIFA provided to Ugandan football were channeled through FUFA and became themselves the object of an intense political struggle. In effect, many wished to gain office in FUFA because it would give them access to these monies from the international system.

Although small by comparative standards, in the local context of Ugandan football these resources were substantial. Moreover, these funds, in conjunction with football’s overwhelming political importance in contributing to a sense of national identity often prompt state intervention in the affairs of various football associations throughout Africa. In this regard the Ugandan experience was certainly not unique and there have been cyclical problems of this sort in Kenya as well as other African states.6

We will show that Obua’s ouster was both politically complex and ambiguous, involving an international dimension through an intervention of an international non-governmental organization (FIFA), a national dimension through the involvement of the Ugandan state, and the mobilization of a local private sector interest group operating mostly through the judicial system to hasten change in the institutions of Ugandan football. This combination of global, national,

journalistic account of some of FIFA’s flaws, see A. Jennings, Foul!: The secret world of FIFA,

London, Harpercollins, 2006.

5For example, on allegations of vote-buying in the 1998 FIFA elections, see Darby, art. cit., p. 12.

6FIFA interventions in African football associations are regular occurrences. For but one case among many, see the seemingly cyclical problems of this sort in Kenya. “Hatimy pledges to

‘clean the KFF,’” BBC, 18 May 2007; O. Obayiuwana, “FIFA reaches Kenyan deal,” BBC, 21

July 2004.

3 and local forces successfully toppled Obua who, like many of his presidential counterparts in the realm of national electoral politics, tried to change FUFA’s constitution so as to prolong his term in office and remain in power.7 The outcome was not readily predictable, and none could have foreseen the convoluted path that led to the end of Obua’s tenure as FUFA president. Electoral politics within the world of Ugandan football was, as we shall see, only one of the causal vectors involved.

Centered on a case study of the political fall of Denis Obua, this article thus explores the complicated and murky relationship between the state, ostensibly non-political societal organizations such as FUFA, and international institutions through an examination of the microcosm of football. I assume throughout that what occurs within the daily life of the world of football reflects the same political and social fault lines that we can observe in the wider universe of Ugandan, and African, politics and society. Furthermore, I argue that FUFA belongs to a larger class of liminal organizations that fit comfortably under neither of the two of the broad rubrics of contemporary political analysis — state and civil society.

7On change the constitution movements in African politics see, Peter Von Doepp, “Party cohesion and fractionalization in new African democracies: lessons from struggles over third- term amendments”, Studies in comparative international development, vol. 40, no. 3, 2005, p.

65-87; and A. M. Tripp, “In pursuit of authority: civil society and rights based discourses in

Africa”, in J. W. Harbeson and D. Rothchild (eds.), Africa in world politics: reforming political order, 4th ed., Boulder, Colorado, Westview, 2009, p. 147-149.

4

I shall refer to organizations such as FUFA with an older term, polity. Although they are

intensely political, political scientists rarely devote attention to their internal politics. Instead,

they are usually subsumed under the rubric of civil society and viewed mostly as organizations

interacting with the state in a variety of ways. Neither fully of the state nor of civil society,

which in any case is a binary distinction I find misleading, FUFA (and other polities such as

chieftaincies, kingdoms, corporations, or religious organizations) exist in a liminal position that

further blurs the analytical frontier between state and civil society.8 More specifically, a polity is a small-scale, semi-autonomous locus of power and resources which provides an organized or associational shell for political activity. Polities are thus often the site of the intense micro- political activity that occurs on a daily basis. Polities range from highly formal organizations to extremely informal groupings. They also vary in their degree of democratization. A football side, for example, might be a polity with a highly authoritarian manager with relatively little democratic space, while certain club formations can have genuine elements of democracy such as the regular elections of club officials.9 Such polities exist everywhere and often combine

8See M. G. Schatzberg, Political legitimacy in middle Africa: father, family, food,

Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2001, p. 101-110.

9On the existence of democratically run clubs and the role of socios in them in parts of

Latin America and Southern Europe, see R. Giulianotti, Football: a sociology of the global

game, New York, Polity Press, 1999; and C. Bromberger, Le match de football: ethnologie d’une

passion partisane à Marseille, Naples et Turin, Paris, Editions de la Maison des sciences de

l’homme, 1995. On non-democratic authority inside the team itself, see S. Kelly and I.

5 elements of both democratic and anti-democratic practices and procedures. These micro-level complexitie