I am absolutely delighted by the brilliant displays by Africans abroad, from Brazil, where the beautiful game is still on, to the American capital of Washington DC where Kenya was given the pride of place in a 10-day cultural fest.
At Smithsonian festival, Kenyan singers reaffirmed the most authentic art can only stem from succinct truth. So they bared their all by withholding their labour until their wages and allowances were paid. This was a spectacular performance that exposed stone-cold bureaucrats who like to hide public funds in private fixed deposit accounts.
The artists' message: There is no way one can survive in a foreign land without a coin in their pocket, unless of course one is being hosted by their grandmother who gently packs sweet potatoes every morning before they set forth. But before we dismiss the explanation offered for delayed payments as simply asinine, let's admit there are available alternatives to deliver instant cash to those who need it.
From the Ghanaian experience, we now know cash can be jetted across the oceans and escorted all the way to the locker rooms before players can rouse from their slumber and threaten, can't pay, won't play! For those who may have forgotten, the Ghana national team, Black Stars, flatly declined to play their last game against Portugal at the World Cup unless all their appearance fees were paid.
The monies are normally paid by FIFA, after the games, but the Ghanaians simply said they wanted their cash earlier. The players are not exactly paupers; most of them are professional footballers plying their trade in Europe and elsewhere, but they must have had some good reason for demanding the cash, as we say here, pesa pap!
When the news from Brazil reached Accra, President John Mahama panicked. Even his reassurances that no player would leave Brazil without his dues fell on deaf ears. The young men insisted they wouldn't play without pay. That's when Mahama lived up to his name, kuhama (moving) and moved with haste to the Ghanaian Treasury and retrieved some $3 million (Sh260 million) which he jetted to Brazil.
With money on their mind, the Black Stars re-launched their must-win campaign against Portugal by scoring an own goal. The Black Stars had already accorded Portugal other advantages like skipping a crucial training session and having two of their best players sent off for misconduct over money.
Then there is Cameroon's Indomitable Lions who refused to take the plane to Brazil before their allowances were paid. Most claimed they had been paid less than they expected, so they delayed their trip for some 12 hours.
Maybe they shouldn't have made the trip at all. That could have saved them what folks here call aibu ndogo ndogo (little embarrassments) like losing all their matches, even to minnows like Croatia who thrashed them 4-0. That specific game, however, was a major triumph for a convicted booker who accurately predicted not just the score line but also foretold a player would be sent off!
It is a safe bet that the Lions sold the game to the highest bidder when their Government dithered over their allowances. The enduring lesson to bureaucrats accustomed to hoarding cash in fixed-deposit accounts as our artistes and sportsmen wallow in pecuniary embarrassment is that time is up, for they are willing to score an own goal to drive the point home. That's the greatest display of patriotism.
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