In his piece in the Daily Nation, Roy Gachuhi speaks of how
the failure to build strong institutions in Kenyan sport has left even the most
successful teams vulnerable to the financial shocks caused by the withdrawal of
a major sponsor. He is referencing the troubles caused by sports betting firm
SportPesa’s pulling all its sponsorship of local and national teams following
the failure of its legal challenge against the government’s move to raise taxes
on betting profits. It is a move that
may ground a large number of the country’s favorite sports brands.
“Fifty years down the line, AFC Leopards and Gor Mahia
should be evaluating the suitability of the many organizations lining up to associate
their brand with them,” Gachuhi says. He also reminds us that “Kenya’s sports
politics closely mirror our national politics”. One obvious similarity is the dependence on the
dirty money that is generated by selling false dreams to poor people.
According to Moses Kemibaro, a digital marketing
professional based in Nairobi, SportPesa, the largest of them all, rakes in over Sh300 million a month. A GeoPoll survey of youth between the ages
of 17-35 in sub-Saharan Africa found Kenya had the highest number of youth who
were frequently gambling and that they spent Sh5000 a month on the habit, the
highest on the continent. This in a country where, according to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, three-quarters of those in
formal employment earn under Sh50,000 a month.
So the sponsorships whose loss many are bemoaning are a
small fraction of the billions being taken from millions of poor people who are
fed the illusion that sports betting is, as SportPesa’s slogan goes, “Made of
Winners”. Only the betting companies make money when bets are lost, not when
they are won.
But what they make is a pittance, and the suffering they
cause is negligible, when compared to the outrageous fortunes and misery
generated by the, to borrow Hilary Clinton’s phrase, “basket of deplorables” to
whom we’ve mortgaged our national political life. They have taken to a whole new level the art
of throwing around a relatively tiny bit of cash in exchange for the chance to
make gazillions. Presidential election campaigns spend an estimated Sh5 billion which, including all the other races down the
order, could add up to Sh36 billion. This is undoubtedly a lot of money. But considering
that the country is estimated to lose Sh600 billion from corruption each year
and that a large chunk of that is pocketed by the politicians in power, you can
see how it works out to be a good deal.
Why must we feed the
baser natures within society in order to be allowed a few crumbs for its better
sides? Why is it necessary to procure resources for our sport from industries
that sacrifice millions of youthful futures? Or to offer up our sovereignty,
wealth and even lives to scoundrels in return for patronage posing as
“development”?
I think it is actually a good thing that SportPesa has
pulled the sponsorship. A deal with the Devil is not how we should seek to
support our sportspeople. And maybe once the band aid is removed, we can we
will be able to see and deal with the real, festering source of our public
woes. The money that companies like SportPesa pump into sport tends to paper
over the state’s under-investment in sport as well as its preying on athletes as
was graphically illustrated during the 2016 Olympics.
But there again, our deals with devils, this time within
government, stand in the way. Sadly, we won’t be exorcising the demons in
Parliament or in State House anytime soon. And even if we did, there are others
pretending to be angels of light waiting to take their place. Like with
SportPesa, we need to change the terms of the deal and radically raise the bar
for what is acceptable in terms of governance.
No more false promises. We must
demand tangible action, whether it is to improve the lot of the sports
fraternity of to reform the electoral system or to implement the report of the
Truth Justice and Reconciliation Report. To do this, we must be willing to risk
the political class withdrawing the few parochial benefits it offers just as
SportPesa has done. But if we are firm and refuse to succumb to the blackmail,
the rewards would be much greater than what we have become accustomed to
settling for.
Now that’s a gamble worth taking.
