Out of Africa
Ni Yanshuo

FOR a continent that hits the headlines most often for wars and famine, the Olympics offered Africa a chance to make the news for more positive reasons, and its athletes obliged with a host of outstanding achievements. At the closing ceremony held on August 24 at the National Stadium, or the Bird’s Nest, the main venue for Beijing Olympics, three African athletes, Sammy Wanjiru from Kenya, Jaouad Gharib from Morocco and Tsegay Kebede from Ethiopia, walked to the winning podiums of the men’s marathon event to receive medals from Jacques Rogge, President of the International Olympic Committee. They were the final three medal winners of the Beijing Olympic Games.
African athletes not only made outstanding achievements in track and field, an area they are traditionally strong in, but also in other sports events. To compete in Beijing, African countries dispatched large athletic delegations. More than 10 state and government leaders and several dozen ministerial-level officials came to Beijing to encourage their teams.
African athletes demonstrated their strength in various sports events. The top eight in the 10,000-meter race were all from Africa; Ethiopian female athlete Tirunesh Dibaba broke the world record in the 10,000-meter race with a time of 29 minutes and 54.68 seconds; and of the top eight men’s football teams, three were from Africa. Kenya was the most successful African country in Beijing with 14 medals, including five golds. The result was much better than at the Athens Olympic Games four years ago, where the country only won seven medals, including one gold.
“Our youth program has really increased and it’s really helping. It’s a very good buildup toward these kinds of events,” said David Okeyo, head of the Kenyan Olympic Committee, in Beijing. Kenya will host the Africa Championships in 2010 in Nairobi. Okeyo said in anticipation that Kenya is working hard on track and field events.
Harare’s swimming champ
Thoughts of Africa often conjure up an arid image, and it’s true that the continent does not have abundant water resources. However, Africa still managed to provide a world record-breaking swimmer to the Olympics in the form of Kirsty Coventry from Zimbabwe.
Coventry attended four swimming competitions. After finishing second on three occasions, she finally made history by defending her Olympic title and winning a gold in the 200-meter women’s backstroke on August 16, with a world record time of 2 minutes 5.24 seconds, the 22nd swimming world record at these Olympics by that time. “I just can’t wait to go back to Zimbabwe to celebrate with my compatriots,” recalled Coventry excitedly in an exclusive interview with Beijing Review. “I was so happy when I heard the national anthem of Zimbabwe in Beijing.
“I have trained hard for four years for the highest competition in the swimming world so as to be on top form,” said Coventry, adding that her success will surely encourage more Zimbabweans to take up swimming.
Born in Harare, capital of Zimbabwe, in 1983, Coventry showed great interest in swimming as a child. “We do not have indoor pools, so swimming in winter is very hard,” said Coventry.
In 2000, the 17-year-old high school student entered the Olympic delegation of Zimbabwe and participated in four competitions in Sydney. It was her debut in Sydney that caught the attention of Auburn University, Alabama, in the United States, which is famous for swimming education. The university granted her a scholarship for four years.
“It was really a good opportunity for me, though it was very hard for me to leave home,” she said. She won a gold, a silver and a bronze at the Athens Olympics in 2004. This was the first gold medal for Zimbabwe since the country’s hockey team won an Olympic gold medal in 1980 in Moscow. In Beijing, her efforts took Zimbabwe to the seventh place on the swimming medal list, behind the United States, Australia, China, Britain, France and Japan.
Coventry is currently studying in the United States. “I go back to Zimbabwe at least once a year and my parents, grandparent, uncles and aunts and cousins are living there,” stressed Coventry.
Judo potential
African athletes also showed potential in other traditionally weak sports across the continent. On August 10, Algerian judoka Soraya Haddad won the first Olympic medal for Africa, taking bronze in the women’s 52kg category. Three days later, her compatriot Amar Benikhlef won a silver in the men’s 90 kg judo competition, and the bronze medal in this category went to Egyptian judoka Heshan Mesbah. African countries won more judo medals in Beijing than they have in all previous Olympics combined.
Benikhlef’s breakthrough was cultivated by the International Judo Federation (IJF), established in Morocco, where judokas were coached by former Italian judo star Ezio Gamba, who was Olympic champion in Moscow in 1981 and won silver in Los Angeles in 1984. “The International Training Center in Morocco was a test project which proved in a short period of time to be very successful. IJF will soon open a training center on each continent to develop judo all over the world,” said IJF President Marius Vizer.
African countries sent 41 Judokas to compete in Beijing, mainly from northern Africa, including Algeria, Tunis, Morocco and Egypt. Some 10 African countries sent just one judo competitor each, among them, is Mozambique. “Judo only came to Mozambique 10 years ago via Portugal,” said Coach Omar Omar of Mozambique.
“Judo is a booming sport in our country. We are considering putting the sport into our school education system.”
With a population of 20 million, Mozambique has 2,000 people in the country’s Judo association and, according to Omar, the figure is increasing by around 75 percent each year.
Olympic dream
Only the FIFA World Cup rivals the Olympics as a world sports event. In two years time, the FIFA World Cup will be held in South Africa. Could an African country also host the Olympic Games in the near future?
To date, Africa is the only continent that has not hosted the Olympic Games, among the five inhabited continents. Experts say that with the FIFA World Cup being held in South Africa, the Olympics is likely to follow.
Cape Town in South Africa competed for the right to host 2004 Olympic Games in 1997, together with Athens, Rome, Stockholm and Buenos Aires, but failed. Rogge has indicated on many occasions that he hoped to see the Olympic Games held in Africa. Born in the West, the Olympic Games used to be held only in European and American countries. It has since expanded to become a truly global event.
According to Colin Moynihan, Chairman of the British Olympic Association (BOA), the Olympic Games was centered in Europe in the 20th century, and in the 21st century it should be more internationalized. He stressed that the Olympic Games will come to Africa soon since the world’s top sports events should embrace every continent the five-ring logo represents.
Talent drain
A major problem for many African countries is how to keep talented athletes at home. “African athletes perform very well in the Olympic Games, but the continent faces a serious drain of athletes. The IOC should take measures to prevent the spread of this phenomenon,” said George Gomez, head of the Gambian Olympic delegation to Beijing.
In recent years, many African athletes have chosen to become naturalized as citizens of European countries. “Meanwhile, in order to occupy preferential positions in medal lists, some rich countries pay huge expenses to buy African athletes to compete for them. This will harm Africa’s efforts in training sports reserves,” stressed Gomez.
At the Commonwealth Games held in 2002 in Manchester, Britain, Gomez led 14 young Gambian track and field athletes out, and all of them later disappeared and did not return to Gambia. “This was a great loss to Gambia. Actually, such a phenomenon can be seen in almost every country in Africa.”
Several years ago, African countries suggested the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) forbid track and field athletes from African countries, who have changed their nationalities, participating in international competitions on behalf of other countries within six years of changing nationality. The IAAF only agreed that such athletes should be kept away from international competitions for three years, or one year if the athletics associations of both countries agree. “Such prescription is unfair to African countries,” said Gomez.
 

—The Daily Mail-Beijing Review Articles Exchange Item

Taking on Russian bear
William Rees-Mogg

LAST week, Russia recognised the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the two small breakaway nations from Georgia. The next day, Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, wrote an article for the Financial Times: a serious and moderate defence of his country’s action, published in a serious newspaper. That is hopeful in itself. Winston Churchill said of relations between the West and Russia: ‘Better jaw-jaw than war-war.’ An article in the pink pages of the FT certainly counts as jaw-jaw. Although this is a real crisis, it is most unlikely there will be a war over South Ossetia. Neither side is going to risk a nuclear holocaust over the issue of Ossetian independence. Apart from any other considerations, Georgia is at the far end of the Black Sea; it would be difficult to get Nato forces that far.
American forces, let alone the British, are overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ossetia is not going to be the trigger for a third world war, although small events have in the past triggered major wars. Yet the world has reason to be worried. This is a major shift in Russian policy; it asserts the willingness of Russia to intervene with force in the affairs of a neighbouring country. No one can welcome that. It is surprising to see the Russian government act on such an important strategic matter when it has so little support. So far, no other significant power seems to have recognised the claimed independence of South Ossetia or Abkhazia. Russia has failed to persuade China to recognise the two — and that really is important. Last week, there was a summit of the Shanghai Group held in Tajikistan. It was attended by the central Asian states Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, as well as by Russia and China. This summit did not join Russia in giving recognition to the independence of South Ossetia or Abkhazia. On the contrary, it expressed ‘concern’ about the latest tensions in these regions. Russia has embarrassed its allies in Asia.
All these central Asian states have their own problems with minorities, not least Russia itself. China is preoccupied with the separatist ambitions in Tibet and Xinjiang Province. At the recent meeting, President Medvedev was unable to persuade President Hu Jintao of China to give any support to the Russian position over Ossetia. That is not surprising, since the Russians themselves are not prepared to extend selfdetermination to Chechnya or the other nationalities of the Russian Caucasus. There are indeed very few major powers that can claim any historic consistency in their attitude to self-determination or to the territorial integrity of sovereign states. Russia favoured self-determination for South Ossetia, but not for Chechnya or Kosovo. America favoured self-determination for Kosovo, but not for South Ossetia. There is no logic in this, except for self interest, and scarcely even that.
There is no generally accepted doctrine of self-determination in international law. At present the United States is the world’s superpower and has the greatest influence in specific cases. The independence of Kosovo, against the wishes of Serbia, would not have been possible if the United States had been opposed to it. American President Woodrow Wilson advocated self-determination in principle in January 1918 in his Fourteen Points of a proposed settlement at the end of the First World War. Yet, historically-there has been no consistent American policy, as Kosovo and the Georgian crisis have shown. The American Declaration of Independence of 1776 is the great original statement of the principle of self-determination, yet Abraham Lincoln fought a terrible civil war to prevent the southern states exercising their hypothetical right to leave the Union.
Lincoln is usually regarded as the greatest of US presidents. Perhaps the second greatest was Franklin Roosevelt. Yet he negotiated the Yalta Agreement that handed over Eastern Europe to the Soviet Union and the brutal tyranny of Stalin. One could argue that Roosevelt had no option because the Red Army had already occupied the Eastern European countries, but at Yalta he accepted that Eastern Europe was a Soviet sphere of interest. Perhaps China has historically been the only power consistently reluctant to hand over autonomy to a minority nation or indeed to a religion. This attitude is understandable, if regrettable. The Chinese civil war of the Forties and the subsequent turmoil cost up to 40million lives. In the mid-19th Century, the Taiping rebellion, led by a school teacher who thought he was Christ’s brother, lasted 14 years and cost some 20 million lives. With this history, China will not flirt with self-determination for small Caucasian countries.
Where do Britain’s interests lie? That is a question which may not be asked often enough. Russia is a major trading partner, and one of the front-rank world powers in defence. Europe’s oil supplies depend on Russia. American superiority and defence technology mean we may have little ourselves to fear from Russian aggression. We are concerned only when others are threatened. But Britain still wants better co-operative relations with Russia and there is no overriding conflict of ideology to make that impossible. We also want Eastern European countries, including Ukraine, to have stable relations with Russia, for their sake but also for our own. We hope for a peaceful settlement of the South Ossetia question and better reassurance for Russia’s neighbours but we have no direct national interest in Ossetia as such, any more than we have in Chechnya or Kosovo.

—Khaleej Times

Palin saves candidacy, for now
Michael Tomasky

WELL, that felt like a convention. As much as I abhor almost everything these people stand for, I have to say that I found that I was walking out of the Excel Center in St. Paul on Wednesday night with some adrenaline coursing through my body. Tuesday night I felt like I was leaving a funeral home. These were two excellent convention speeches by Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin. They were well-written and very well delivered. With regard to Giuliani, that was no surprise at all to me. I’ve seen him give speeches since about 1988. I know what he’s capable of. He can parse some of the most credible and authoritative demagoguery of anyone I’ve ever seen. His mastery of it tonight only left me all the more confused as to why this talent, which has been in his bones seemingly from birth, appeared to elude him during the very months he was seeking the presidency.
It was fine stage management, too, to flow straight from Giuliani to Palin, without a pause for the talking heads to get in there and talk about the proceedings for three minutes. The design was surely to make Palin feel at ease as she took the stage before an already adoring crowd. Palin started out visibly nervous, but it didn’t take her long to warm up at all. She gave the crowd absolutely everything it wanted, and her speech was peppered with effective zingers. Her lines of praise for McCain were just right. Her testimonials about her family were tonally on. Her criticisms of Obama and Biden were tremendous crowd pleasers. Her digs at Obama’s career as a community organizer were probably the most effective: “A small town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.” Even I can’t say that wasn’t a good one.
In the short term, Palin certainly saved her candidacy. On Wednesday afternoon, news broke of the off-camera discussion between Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy, two famed GOP advisers and media savants, who were caught saying that they thought Palin was a disaster and the race was, as Noonan put it, “over.” This Irish grave dance was huge news. No Republican had really gone after Palin on the record before, and the exposure of this conversation threatened to open the floodgates. But Palin’s performance was good enough to prevent that, and to allow Murphy and Noonan to pull a volte face and get back on the team. Palin also, in the short term, got the delegates firmly and implacably on her side. Her line about the media was more deft than one had reason to expect and cleverly delivered: “I’m not going to Washington to seek their good opinion. I’m going to Washington to serve the people of this great country.” She will pay for that line, but it did her good tonight. But here’s the thing she did not accomplish, I don’t think, in the long term. This was billed in advance as a “policy” speech, and it was decidedly not that. Of the speech’s 38 minutes, she spent about nine or 10 minutes talking about energy policy, and even then in only the most platitudinous tropes.

—Arab News