Contenu du sommaire : Les terrains politiques du football

Playing by FIFA's rules : the politics and potential legacy of Port Elizabeth's hosting 2010 World Cup matches. Port Elizabeth was the first South African city to complete construction of a brand new venue to host 2010 Fifa World Cup matches. The metropolitan authority backed by the private sector hopes this spectacular event will change the city's Cinderella status and transform it into a “winning city”. However, meeting Fifa's requirements has many pitfalls. The escalating cost of the stadium has contributed to the metropole's budget shortfall thereby hindering its own service delivery obligations. Long-term developmental goals will be sacrificed for the sake of enhancing the city's image. Consequently, the legacy of the World Cup will be economically uneven and politically fractious.

Warriors and good hope : the pioneering soccer franchise of Ajax Cape Town
The soccer franchise deal between Ajax Amsterdam (AA) and Ajax Cape Town (ACT) raises important questions about labour value and extraction, youth migration, exchange and development. This paper draws on data collected during visits to the ACT Academy, analysed with respect to notions of dependency and neo-colonialism. The paper thus locates the ACT franchise within a landscape which addresses the nature of the arrangement in terms of youth soccer migration, and explores its implications for the development of soccer in Africa.

Global players, local clubs. Africa's soccer in Asia
Soccer players' movements in an international area located between Africa and Asia have been scarcely explored. Some Asian countries, poorly ranked within the Fifa (Fédération internationale de football association), have developed a policy of purchasing foreign players in order to raise their national level to be in a better position for large international events. Some African countries, as well as Brazil, are amongst the most important suppliers. Asia offers to some players an alternative to the West, often inaccessible (except for top-level players). The analysis of these new South/South routes is a way to take a critical look at the most media covered sport of our times and to move away from a perception of the North as the scale of measurement for anything global and of Africa as a perpetually enslaved continent.

Football, identity divide, and political conflict in Côte d'Ivoire
In 2009, the European Champions League semi-final created some political tensions between supporters of Didier Drogba (Chelsea) and Yaya Touré (FC Barcelone) in Abidjan. This football match reactivated the identity divide between Southerners and Northerners. Starting from this event, the article suggests that soccer has become a space of confrontation between two conceptions of nation and citizenship. It tries to demonstrate that football is also an important political tool to enforce peace and restore the country's image both at the domestic and international levels. The analysis of football politics gives thus some insights of the complex process of political reconciliation after Ouagadougou agreements.

Amateur soccer in Cameroon: between political clientelism and mutual exchanges
Amateur soccer, in Cameroon, takes the form of holiday tournaments and « two-zero » championships. Different by their location, their frequency, their rules, these practices inform on the political and social uses of this extremely popular sport. These venues are places to promote personal and partisan political leaders, as well as a way for the elites to keep control on youth. Youth are not manipulated however: it is a way for them to learn the rules of political exchange and to build their own social achievement.

The complexitites of democracy : the Ugandan Football Association as polity
Centered on a case study of the political fall of Denis Obua, a long-serving president of the Ugandan Football Association, Fufa, this article explores the complicated and murky relationship between the state, ostensibly non-political societal organizations such as Fufa, and international institutions through an examination of the microcosm of football. It argues that Fufa belongs to a larger class of liminal organizations that fit comfortably under neither of the two of the broad rubrics of contemporary political analysis — state and civil society. Employing an older term, I argue that Fufa is a polity. Neither fully of the state nor of civil society, Fufa (and other polities such as chieftaincies, kingdoms, corporations, or religious organizations) exists in a liminal position that further blurs the analytical frontier between state and civil society. Such polities may be contributing to a different sort of political pluralism in the politics of daily life.

The centralization of a peripheral cult: Islam, spirit possession and secret societies in Bèlèdugu (Mali)In Mali, during the 1980s Islamization of Bèlèdugu, the local dismantling of secret societies has been followed by an increase of possession cults (jinèton) among people afflicted by the destruction of masks and fetishes. This ethnographic case study refers to James Scott and Ioan Lewis' theories to explain this process as an attempt to centralize and politicize a cult initially peripheral and infrapolitical. This strategy was carried out by local lineages involved in the functioning of these former secret societies.

The birth of the Burkinabè national community : how the Voltaic became an “Honest Man”. This paper focuses on the emergence of the voltaic/burkinabè nation since the French conquest of Voltaic countries by France in the late 19th century to the advent of the 4th Republic in 1991. During this period, a historical process, caught between multiple contradictions and inscribed in a vast bundle of possibilities, led to the symbolic revolution which made the people of Upper Volta an incarnation of the idealized nation, namely the current “Burkinabè” or “Honest Man”. Specifically, our aim is to reflect the historical conditions under which an African national community was formed and imagined as such.

The Tragedy of King Abdoulaye ? Neo-modernism and African Renaissance in Contemporary Senegal
At the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of Senegal's independence, President Abdoulaye Wade inaugurated the Monument de la Renaissance africaine. Higher than the Statue of Liberty and hugely expensive, the Monument has been subject to various controversies. While the Monument can indeed easily be denounced as yet another white elephant, we situate it in Wade's development and pan-African policies. We also take stock of the controversies it has generated so far, focussing on the ways in which its formal attributes have become subject to a nation-wide debate on its moral (im)propriety. Short from concluding that the Monument is indeed another fetish of the state, we acknowledge that the Monument should be seen as an articulation of contested subjectivities.

« Only a turtle can bite a turtle ». Agreements between rebel groups and Arab communities in Darfur. Away from the official negociations, Darfur rebels started to engage local Arab communities, including leaders of government proxy militias, the “Janjaweed”. The four unpublished documents presented and commented here illustrate the first agreements between Arabs and rebels, signed not long after the failed negociations of Abuja, Nigeria, in May 2006. They show how the main actors of the conflict on the field reintroduce the idea of coexistence between communities, and which ambiguities and interferences weaken these local processes.