Tottenham Hotspur fans call him ‘The Beast’. In Swahili, Wanyama means animals; to the Luhya tribe to which he belongs, the appellation is more impressively specific – he is ‘the one born when an animal was slaughtered in celebration’. Spurs fans have indeed had much to be thankful for since the Kenyan midfielder’s arrival from Southampton in June 2016.
So far this season, Victor Wanyama has started all of Tottenham’s Premier League fixtures, and is arguably their most dependable asset. A silent enforcer who allows the club’s most creative players to pivot and rotate around him, Wanyama also has a dusting of the artist’s flair so beloved at White Hart Lane. His passing choices are deceptively simple and considered, and he recently demonstrated a hidden depth of slick versatility in Spurs’ January draw at the Etihad, dropping back to center-half when required against a predatory Manchester City side that were ready to profit had he been less assured in his understanding of football’s fluid geometry.
<div id="attachment_4729" style="width: 248px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-4729" class="size-medium wp-image-4729" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-655297348-238x300.jpg" alt="" width="238" height="300" />LONDON, ENGLAND &#8211; MARCH 19: Victor Wanyama of Tottenham Hotspur during the Premier League match between Tottenham Hotspur and Southampton at White Hart Lane on March 19, 2017 in London, England. (Photo by Catherine Ivill &#8211; AMA/Getty Images)</div>
Wanyama’s destiny as his country’s most valuable football export was forged in the dusty streets of Nairobi, Kenya’s electric, bustling, intoxicating capital. He attended St Peter’s Claver Primary, in the infamous Landhies Road area in the old center of the city, where matatu drivers, market traders and teeth and skin-whitening peddlers jostle for custom in a chaotic miasma of klaxons and exhaust fumes. His class teacher, Penina Ogony, remembers him as quiet and respectful.
“He didn’t have much to say,” she laughs. “But he was a good boy, and he did well in his final exams. And he was huge for his age, as big as his teacher at the time.”
A few hundred yards up the road nestles Wanyama’s old secondary school, cowering behind the ubiquitous Nairobi construction sites with their laborers’ bellows and Hadean clang of metal on hot metal. Kamukunji is a nursery for the best football talent in the city; gifted young players from the school train a few blocks away at a local estate at dawn before class, with the most promising earmarked early by local Kenyan Premier League teams and allowed by the school to link up with their clubs during class time, provided academic targets are met.
A framed photograph of Wanyama from 2015 – he is addressing beaming Kamukunji students in the school courtyard – is the proud centerpiece on a table of jostling football trophies in the office of the school’s current principal, Patrick Gakung’u.
“Wanyama was very consistent,” he says. “He was able to successfully blend football and classes. That’s difficult, and it’s something we encourage here. And these young players prefer this school because we have that element.”
It’s a delicate balance that can be hard to sustain. The thin line dividing full-blooded enthusiasm and reckless indiscipline is easily crossed, as Kamukunji discovered in 2016 when their goalkeeper’s violent overreaction to a refereeing decision resulted in a two-year ban from all secondary school competitions. Gakung’u is appealing the ban, and argues that a cadre of talented and disciplined youngsters should not have to endure an injurious collective penance. He assembles the players in the school courtyard for a team photograph; they smile shyly in the sunshine as their coach, ‘Leopard’ Ngari, reminisces about a young, unassuming, “very hardworking” Wanyama.
“Although he was talented, he was very humble; you never saw him say no to others,” he says. “When he came back to address the students, he repeated one thing: you have to be focused. We are very proud of him.”
Gakung’u gently encourages current team captain Tom Atieno and attacking midfielder Fiston Nchungu to break from the group for a moment to talk about their aspirations.
“Victor inspired me to play like him,” says Nchungu. “To be disciplined. To play in England, because there is so much competition there.”
His captain favors Arsenal; what odds on these two young men facing off in a future North London derby?
The road to professional success to date has been a narrow and precarious one for a young Kenyan player; relatively few have made it the hallowed ground of a club in a top league overseas. Only eight of the current national team squad currently play outside Africa, and the UK’s strict and unsentimental points system for evaluating a non-EU national’s eligibility for a work permit is punishing on countries with a low FIFA ranking. That climate is evolving fast, however. Kenya has climbed almost 30 places, to 87th, in two years thanks to the appointment of former Glasgow Rangers striker Bobby Williamson as manager in 2014, and the dynamic new approach of the youthful current head coach Stanley Okumbi. In late February, local betting giants SportPesa, sponsors of the Kenyan Premier League and English top-flight club Hull City, sent a squad of 18 of the best young Kenyan players in the country to the UK for a training camp and friendly match against the Premier League side. Wanyama is unlikely to remain the sole Kenyan in the Premier League for long (and many Kenyan fans argue that Liverpool striker Divock Origi, a Belgian international with a Kenyan father, is also flying their flag in the world’s toughest league).
Wanyama’s recent success is even more remarkable, given the scarcity of such opportunities in Kenya a decade ago. His break came when he was scouted by former AFC Leopards coach Edward Manoah while playing in a high school tournament for Kamukunji (Wanyama’s disciplinarian father Noah had been a successful and adored left winger at the club, and ties between the Leopards and the Wanyamas endure).
“He was a striker then, tall for his age,” says Manoah.  “He was strong in the air and could hold the ball up well. He came on in the second half on his Leopards debut – and scored the winner.”
Wanyama’s development was rapid. He earned his first cap for Kenya at 15 years old, and quickly emulated the progress of his older brother McDonald Mariga, another of the Kamukunji ‘golden boys’. Mariga’s talent had been spotted by Swedish lower division side Enköpings SK, and he took quickly to European football, moving to Helsingborgs IF before joining Serie A club Parma, and later Inter Milan, where he became the first Kenyan player to appear in the Champions League.
After short stints at Nairobi City Stars and JMJ Academy, Wanyama at last followed his brother to Helsingborgs. A robust three-year stint at Belgian side Beerschot caught the attention of Celtic, where he became the first Kenyan to score in the Champions League in an emotional win against Barcelona. Mauricio Pochettino, then manager of Southampton, brought him to St Mary’s in 2013, recognizing the qualities of diligence, athleticism and humility that are the hallmarks of the Argentine’s team ethic; the move to Pochettino’s Tottenham in 2016 seems, in retrospect, an inevitability.
It’s January 2017, and a hot, bright morning at Marist University in the leafy Nairobi suburb of Karen, about half an hour outside the city. The AFC Leopards first-team squad is playing a gritty, breathless seven-a-side game on a difficult dusty surface as new head coach Stewart Hall, a seasoned former Birmingham City academy director, observes from the touchline. On an adjacent pitch, the Leopards youth team runs through passing drills as the club’s CEO, Ronald Namai, outlines a positive but realistic future for the next would-be Kenyan superstars.
“This year we have actually promoted four of the youth team, so we are focused on bringing young players through to the senior squad,” he says. “We have constant feedback from schools; if we identify a promising player, we will pay their school fees and they will train with us over the holidays. What we insist is during school days, you must be in school. Otherwise we are not going to allow you to train. You see we have promoted 17 year-old. But when you are 28, 29, you are on your way out. So what are you going to do after that? You need an education.”
For Namai, there is still room in his grounded realism for the promise of some modest success; one of the three Leopards players in the squad traveling to Hull, he insists, will be a Premier League player by 2018.
Hall jogs over while the first team takes a break. He points out Ibrahim Mao, one of the four recent graduates from the youth team. A slender, evasive winger with an intelligent first touch, Mao jumps a tackle and hits a fierce shot hard and early while we watch.
“There’s some real talent in Kenya,” says Hall. “I’m saying to all my players, now listen, there’s a Kenyan playing in England, but also Belgium, Russia, Bulgaria, Sweden, Norway, Denmark. There’s a Kenyan in the MLS in the States. And because of this, the scouts are moving out here and taking kids from here younger and younger.”
He says that fostering the right attitude in these players, a Wanyama-like focus, is now a priority.
“Before, it’s been a case of wanting to be the best in the village, not the best in the country. That’s been a problem.”
His exhausted squad breaks for lunch. There’ll be a second session in the afternoon to hone fitness; the announcement of the league’s opening fixtures is believed to be just days away.
“I’ve said to this lot, if you don’t want to be a serious footballer, I don’t want you at the club. And I’ll chase you away,” he says. “We’ve put in a recruitment strategy that says we want to be the youngest team in the league. And now there’s a hunger here. Everybody here should want to be Wanyama.”

We’ll Follow  The Beast To Hull And Back

At least the new president Nana Akufo-Addo is optimistic. In a press statement he called for reflection on what makes Ghanaians who they are. This year’s theme, according to him, is:  “Mobilizing for Ghana’s Future.” That is, a year for Ghanaians to understand their country’s shortcomings and look at ways to improve.
Good timing, when growth is falling. According to figures from the World Bank, Ghana’s economy grew by 4.9% during the first quarter of 2016. However, overall gross domestic product (GDP) growth for the whole of 2016 could be below the 3.9% achieved in 2015, due to production problems in oil.
Inflation is at 16.7%, made worse by the country’s erratic energy supply that sees businesses put prices up when they use generators.
Victor Ohene Oppong, Founder of Invest Hub, a financial advisory firm in Accra, is, like many of his countrymen, in no mood for jubilation.
<div id="attachment_4605" style="width: 245px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-4605" class="size-medium wp-image-4605" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/GettyImages-146126958-235x300.jpg" alt="" width="235" height="300" />Dr. Kwame Nkrumah of newly independent Ghana, Ghana, mid to late 1950s. The British crown colony of the Gold Coast, became its own country of Ghana on March 6, 1957, with Dr. Nkrumah as its first President. (Photo by Underwood Archives/Getty Images)</div>
“Sixty years ago our founding father, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah famously opined, Ghana your beloved country is free forever, and we all thought managing our own resources would lead to prosperity for everyone but that has simply not been the case. We have issued our fifth Eurobond debt for $750 million and the oil crisis has led to a sharp contraction in oil exports. Businesses are fighting for survival because when there is no cash flow you die. So what is there to celebrate?” he says.
Economic hard times have hit Oppong in the pocket. Last year, he had to lay off five expatriates and close down one of his two branches because of low revenues.
“The debt to GDP ratio stands at about 70% and the last unemployment figures show at least 42% of people are still struggling to find jobs. I think the president is right when he calls this a time of reflection, we need to think very hard and carefully about the future of this country,” says Oppong.
Richmond Nartey, Managing Director of RN Shipping in Tema, agrees.
“Sixty years is a lifetime. For most people that is the age when they begin to think about retirement and enjoying life. But that is not the case for Ghana. The value of our currency is still very weak against the dollar and even though we decided to use our own local currency, many companies still charge in dollars. Foreign currency restrictions in Ghana are still a big issue for our kind of business. What happens to businesses that cannot get their hands on the much-needed dollars to be able to run their business?” says Nartey.
Following the end of decades of rule by former coup leader Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings, Ghana has done its best to clean up its democratic act. Ghana’s two-party electoral system is earning the confidence of the world for its peaceful political transitions. For this reason alone, Mary Osei, Account Manager at HFC Bank, believes there is cause to celebrate.
“This is a time to remember all the things that make this country a wonderful place to live. Yes, there are several challenges we are facing, but which economy isn’t facing challenges? We have to continue to work together to build on the achievements we have and make this nation great,” says Osei.
“If there was ever a day to be proud of your Ghanaian heritage and to be patriotic, there is no better day than March 6, so I do not agree with the naysayers and people who believe there is no need for celebrations,” she says.
Yet the debate over how to celebrate Ghana’s 60th birthday has been fierce. Akufo-Addo set up a 30-member committee to plan the celebrations with a budget of GHc20 million ($4.57 million), which has proved controversial on the streets.
“If there is anywhere that money needs to be spent, it should be in the creative industry instead of throwing it away on branding buses with faces of old presidents or parties. There are failing sectors in the economy where that money could be put to much better use,” says Adamz, a hip-hop artist in Ghana.
The influence of Ghana’s independence over Africa cannot be underestimated. It was the first black African nation to cast off colonialism and inspired many others to follow suit.
&#8220;At long last, the battle has ended!  And thus, Ghana, your beloved country is free forever!&#8221; said Ghana’s first leader Kwame Nkrumah on independence night in 1957. The new leader wore his prison cap – a symbol of his incarceration by the British during his independence struggle – with the letters PG, for prison graduate, embroidered on the front.
Martin Luther King Jr. was with half a million Ghanaians at the ceremony and saw a parallel with Ghana’s freedom and his struggle for civil rights in the United States.
“Before I knew it, I started weeping. I was crying for joy. And I knew about all of the struggles, and all of the pain, and all of the agony that these people had gone through for this moment,” recalled King in an interview years later.
Nkrumah, the father of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which evolved into the African Union, drew many admirers in his first bold steps as a pan-Africanist leader. They included a young teacher by the name of Robert Mugabe who had been seconded to Ghana, by the then Rhodesian government, to a training college.
Mugabe was very taken by the sight of confident Africans in an independent nation and returned home determined to fight for an independent Zimbabwe.
Independence turned out to be bittersweet for Ghana – it was followed by assassination attempts and coups. The idealistic Nkrumah disappointed many when he declared himself president-for-life in 1964.
At least, in the 21st century, democracy in Ghana is closer than it probably ever has been to the shining ideals of 1957.

Ghana At 60

On a snowy April day, Nelson Mandela was sipping tea in London, surrounded by his political entourage. This was minutes before he was to climb onto the stage for a concert to be broadcast to 600 million people in 67 countries: the biggest audience for a music concert. Just 54 days before, he had been a prisoner.
Mandela was still a marked man. British security forces feared a sniper would shoot him while he was on stage. Everywhere he went, police locked and unlocked behind him to make sure a gunman could not sneak a shot.
As Mandela climbed the narrow staircase to the stage, with the crowds chanting his name, alongside promoter Tony Hollingsworth, he asked to turn back to use the toilet. When Mandela and Hollingsworth had washed their hands, they found out, to their horror, that the police had, unwittingly, locked them in.
“They’ve taken all the entourage and Trevor [Huddleston] onto stage highly secured, and left me and Mandela, I thought ‘oh shit’. It’s a locked room and my bloody headset wasn’t on. So I couldn’t talk to anyone,” says Hollingsworth.
There was no time to waste. Hollingsworth went to bang on the glass.
“I could see into another room, which was where they were counting all the money. I patted in the door until somebody recognized me. They came and unlocked the door. We walked through the money room to a public area, down a public staircase in the stadium, into the backstage area, onto stage. And the security forces didn’t even know we had gone. They were all watching the audience,” he says.
Minutes later, Mandela strolled on stage as if nothing had happened.
“Thank you that you chose to care,” Mandela told the world.
“When Mandela came on stage, the audience erupted. What then ensued was this almost eight minute game, of this crowd cheering at him as he moved around waving his arms. The problem was that because he was unused to the power of the microphone. In his mind, he had to wait for people to be quiet before he spoke,” says Hollingsworth.
Mandela’s speech lasted 45 minutes, ridiculously long according to Hollingsworth. He paid an American consultant—to trail Mandela after his release—to teach him how to speak on television. The consultant didn’t get anywhere and gave up.
Hollingsworth sits across the table, in a Johannesburg hotel, lost in the memory of that day. The man sports a shock of grey hair. It was 25 years ago, to the day, that as a 30-year-old he produced the first of two concerts, both of which would go down in history.
Hollingsworth came from a musical family. He began his career building ejector-seats for jet airplanes, but quit after three months to study theories of ideology at the Open University. His cousin was the orgainzer of the world famous Glastonbury Festival and during a visit one summer Hollingsworth cut his teeth promoting a traveling Moroccan band.
He whet his appetite by staging concerts for the Greater London Council called ‘Jobs for Change’. His speciality became selling ‘issues’ on stage and when musician Jerry Dammers, the writer of the song Free Nelson Mandela, put forward the idea of an anti-apartheid concert, he was in.
Hollingsworth approached Archbishop Trevor Huddleston and Mike Terry, both anti-apartheid activists. It took some convincing.
“Fifty percent of the newspapers at that time reported Mandela as a black terrorist leader, that’s the label he had been given,” he says.
Hollingsworth went to conservative broadcasters with an idea of a concert for Mandela’s 70th birthday.
This was a time when Margaret Thatcher, prime minister of Britain, was calling the African National Congress (ANC) terrorists. The atmosphere was so charged that many of the performing artists asked for a clause in the contract to ensure that the money raised would not be used to buy guns. At that time, the ANC was embroiled in an armed struggle.
“The broadcasters asked, ‘Is it for the ANC?’ and I would say, ‘No.’ ‘The anti-apartheid movement?’ ‘No. I am doing it for Nelson Mandela’s birthday.’ Half of those people winked back. I had given them the legal solution… the other half went along in innocence.”
The media lapped it up. Especially once Dire Straits, the largest selling act in the world in 1988, signed up. In just four months the word terrorist disappeared from the news, says Hollingsworth, once broadcasters accepted that they were to air an 11-hour show about Mandela.
Then, came the crossfire.
“The ANC were furious that I was putting this event on without calling for sanctions or resistance. There was an intense, difficult time running up to it. Because they weren’t to know,” he says.
It all led up to June 1988 and a packed Wembley Stadium, where Mark Knopfler took the stage with his band Dire Straits. South Africa had banned Knopfler in 1979, after he channeled his profits from South African sales to Amnesty International.
“He was a very shy man… Mark had played a few numbers, and said to the audience, ‘Our records were banned in 1979. I am very pleased to say, this is for the man in question, this is the best birthday party we have ever been to, thanks for having us. This is the guy who launched it all for us,” says Hollingsworth.
Among the musicians on the night, was a lone, unknown, American with a guitar—Tracy Chapman.
“The song that she sang for the event, that worked completely. She sang Talkin’ Bout A Revolution. That’s what the event was like. All of the run up to it, to this trojan horse policy, to a man, that was the whisper,” says Hollingsworth.
Chapman played two sets on the night, the second by sheer luck.
The production manager ran up to Hollingsworth and shouted in his ear: “Stevie Wonder cannot go on. The equipment is gone.”
Hollingsworth didn’t even know what he was talking about. Wonder walked off the stage into the parking lot in tears because his music harddrive was lost. Hollingsworth was left with 23 minutes to fill.
“The only person who could go on stage, with no equipment was Tracy Chapman. I grabbed her manager Elliot Roberts, who discovered artists like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, and shouted in his ear, ‘Tracy must go back on.’ He was delighted.”
Roberts grabbed Chapman with one hand and her guitar in the other and walked her on stage without telling her what was going on. Chapman sold two million albums in the next two weeks.
“Tracy blew my mind. About 90% of people will remember her. When she came on and sang, it was like wow. She really captured the feeling in her songs. She was unforgettable,” recalls Nicholas Wolpe, who was 20 at the time.
Wolpe, the son of anti-apartheid activist Harold Wolpe, was given a ticket by the ANC.
Stevie Wonder did come back to play, without his harddrive, to a roaring crowd. He sang I Just Called To Say I Love You.
“I recall the people sitting next to me were not necessarily there for Nelson, but for the music. The principal was to highlight Nelson’s birthday, rather than imprisonment. But it achieved that. As more and more people came out on the stage to talk about Nelson, there was this gradual shift. I think people were swept up with the euphoria. It became an incredibly emotive day,” says Wolpe
Mandela was elected South Africa’s first black president in 1994. Hollingsworth, the man with whom he was locked in a toilet, produced more concerts around the world, including the 850th anniversary of Moscow’s Red Square, in 1997.
You can argue that these were merely two among the millions of lives changed by June 11, 1988.

Tag: Celebration

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

We’ll Follow The Beast To Hull And Back

Ghana At 60

Talkin’ Bout A Revolution… It Sounds Like A Whisper