African governments must not repeat past mistakes – Kalusha Bwalya
The President of the Zambian Football Association Kalusha Bwalya is calling on African governments not to jeopardise the safety of their national teams in the name of cutting down cost.
Kalusha, who was reminiscing on the Zambian national team that perished in the 1993 air disaster off the coast of Gabon, alleged that officials hired the services of the Zambian Air Force plane (which unfortunately crashed) in order to cut down cost.
Speaking on E TV’s Revealed last Tuesday, the Zambian football legend decried the manner in which national teams are treated by governments on the African continent.
This follows recent revelations by the former Togolese national team goalkeeper Kodjovi Obilale on the BBC that Togo choose to travel into Angola by bus for the 2010 African Nations Cup to save money but which resulted in the fatal gun attack on the team by rebels.
“My coach, various coaches always said that in other to be champion you have to treat the people as champions” the Zambian legend said adding that “and you always expect so much from the team, you expect so much from the boys so you always have to give them the best treatment.”
“So these are mistakes that should never be made at the expense of players because we are dealing with human beings, we are dealing with emotions, we are dealing with countries.”
The 1988 African Footballer of the year recounted with horror the events leading to the 17th April 1993 Air disaster in which the entire Zambian team and management were killed when their plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off Gabon.
Kalusha recalled that the Zambian National team encountered some discomfort travelling on the Air force plane, “the Buffalo” during an earlier qualifier away at Madagascar prior to the fatal date.
“It was not a commercial flight but sometimes because of the cost and it was important to travel with a plane that will go at a particular time.
“The Football Association of Zambia will ask the government and the air force and then they will able to make available the plane because it cut cost.
“Funny because in the plane the seats were not reclined, you be sitting like this, military style.”
Eighteen years after the crash, Kalusha Bwalya who is the President of the Zambian Football Association reckons that some African Nations are beginning to show more professionalism in managing national team affairs.
“I think that is important and our teams have changed over the years. You see a lot more professionalism in the way our teams are organised,” he said.
“You can see that in the way Nigeria, Ghana, Cote D Ivoire and Egypt are handled.
“There are a lot of teams you can see from the way they present themselves and they way they are that they have had all these success because of the vision of their leaders.”
Despite Kalusha’s optimism, the Zambian government is yet to officially release the finding of its investigations into the 1993 Zambian National team disaster.
African National teams including the Black Star of Ghana continue to patronise the services of military planes on their International travels.
By Erasmus Kwaw