Piece of paper they call MoU

Last week, I caught the ‘pool is cool’ bug, hence I was not going to waste my last Thursday morning witnessing the premiering of a latest football play at the Chiwembe Technical Centre of drama.

Instead, I spent my quality time feasting my eyes on the 2013 All Africa Pool Association (Aapa) Championship whose curtain went down yesterday at Robin’s Park, Blantyre.

For starters, at around 10am on Thursday, FAM, Sulom and its circus signed what they call a memorandum of understanding (MoU), committing themselves to ending hooliganism and violence.

I was even left in stitches when in a typical Kwathu Drama Group plot, I saw newspaper pictures of some football people, their body language devoid of conviction in whatever they were pretending to be doing, signing the piece of paper they call the MoU.

I have been to too many meetings debating on violence and the general evils affecting Malawi football to believe any MoU, audit reports, strategic plans and commissions of inquiry.

In fact, I have two booklets; manuals for curbing violence and hooliganism; hence, when FAM copied me an invitation to the MoU signing ceremony, I just laughed it off.

Every time there is violence, I scan through the 2004 and 2008 booklets which FAM, Sulom, Sports Council and the Ministry of Youth and Sports produced. The more I realise that not even half of the resolutions have been implemented, the more I appreciate the ‘acting’.

I cannot waste my time being party to witnessing mere choreography that seeks no purpose save for creating false impressions that something is being done on hooliganism.

There is more to violence and hooliganism than signing an MoU. Violence cannot end if culprits have not been convicted and if FAM and Sulom are, save for speculative theories, clueless on the psychology behind the evils.

Where people choose to ban venues instead of culprits, then you know that something is terribly wrong. Elsewhere, teams are punished by being made to play in empty venues and hooligans are banned from games, better still jailed.

And when FAM, Sulom and the police cannot even trace hooligans and think the vice will disappear at the sight of an MoU, then, maybe, our football is in wrong hands.