In Sudan, women’s football is a victory despite the defeats

To the cheers of supporters at a small stadium near Khartoum, Salma al-Majidi encourages her footballers: created less than a year ago, the Sudanese women’s national team has had a string of defeats, but its very existence is a victory . Today, the players meet South Sudan without having really been able to train in a country where, every week, new demonstrators are killed in the repression of the movement which since October denounces the putsch of General Abdel Fattah al-Bourhane.

Not enough to start the determination of M^me Majidi, 30, who has already broken several taboos in this country that emerged in 2019 from a military-Islamist dictatorship prohibiting, among other things, women from playing football. To circumvent this ban, she joined the field on the bench and became the first woman to coach men in the Arab world, where football is the king sport and where women are often sidelined, in politics as well as in the field. lawn.

If Salma al-Majidi has collected victories with the men’s teams, she recognizes it, “the girls are still taking their very first steps in international tournaments”. The proof ? Facing neighbors South Sudan, its players lost 6-0. And before that, they lost against Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Lebanon. “Even if they have much less experience than the others, they are improving”she said, however, to AFP.

And above all, in one of the poorest countries in the world, its players not only have to deal with decrepit equipment, but also with the troubles that disrupt the schedule of training and even official matches. Thus, on October 26, 2021, they were to welcome the Algerians for a return match of the African Cup of Nations (CAN) and try to take their revenge after a painful 14 to 0. But the putsch, twenty-four hours earlier , forced the Fennecs team to leave Sudan in a hurry, before the crackdown began and has since caused nearly a hundred deaths and hundreds of injuries.

“People were chasing us off the land”

But no matter the cancellations and defeats, sweeps away the captain of the team, Fatma Jadal, who has long played in secret under the dictatorship. At the time, she told AFP, “we had to look for isolated places” because “people were against” the idea that women play football. And “when they saw us play, they chased us off the pitch”. The law provided for lashing in a public place for women accused of drinking alcohol or wearing a suit judged “indecent”.

Exasperated at being treated “second-class citizens”women have been at the forefront of “revolution” of 2019 which forced the army to dismiss the autocrat from its ranks, Omar al-Bashir. A few months later, as civilians took the transition into their own hands, they forced their military partners to remove several discriminatory laws against women and even created the country’s first women’s football tournament.

But now the military have disembarked government civilians and, for women, hard-won freedoms could be lost, worries Ms.^me Jadal. “A purely military power will take us back to the days of Bashir’s restrictions, so we really don’t want it”she says.

A pessimism that M does not share^me Majidi, because for her the “revolution” has already changed mentalities. “The Sudanese accept women’s football more than before”, she says. And to convince them a little more, the coach already has a new goal in mind: the Cecafa women’s championship, one of the oldest in Africa, scheduled for March. “Even without going to the final, we must at least manage to stay in the race for a few laps”she points out.