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The Documentary: Beyond the Pitch

Maouche as Young Player

07/01/2017 GMT

Beyond the Pitch

BBC World Service - The Documentary, Beyond the Pitch

Dramatic and poignant tales exploring how Africa’s football and politics are bedfellows

Farayi Mungazi hears dramatic, funny and poignant tales exploring how Africa’s football and politics are bedfellows.

Football is much loved all over the world and especially in Africa, where matches are a feast for the eyes and ears. Fans painted in national colours pound on drums and blow on trumpets and the now infamous vuvuzelas. And, wily political leaders have commandeered this passion for their own ends - sometimes for good, sometimes not.
 
As the Africa Cup of Nations celebrates 60 years in January 2017 in Gabon, BBC sport journalist Farayi Mungazi explores the close links between the 'beautiful game' of football and the 'dirty game' of politics.
 
From Angola to Gambia to Zimbabwe, the beautiful game has been kicked around by rulers. Many have taken credit for football success as though they had scored the winning goals themselves. Others have used it to build their nations or to divert people's attention from economic woes and oppression - and to score political points against rivals.
 
We hear the intriguing and dramatic story of how Algeria took its armed struggle for independence to the football pitch. We hear about how and why Uganda played its best football under the brutal dictatorship of Idi Amin – and the heart-breaking story of how one player ended up in prison because he scored the winning goal. And, in Zambia we explore how the country’s first president’s commitment to football resulted in him making his cabinet minister play football, while he refereed.

(Photo: Maouche, former footballer and member of the Algerian FLN liberation movement as a young man, courtesy of Maouche)

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