After a string of extremely violent crowd disturbances during the qualifying stages and the tragic deaths of dozens of people in dense crowds in the New Year incidents in both Ivory Coast and Angola, is the African cup of nation’s football tournament likely to pass peacefully?
Following the exclusion of Senegal from the competition, and significant fines for Togo, Malawi, Al Hilal of Sudan and Esperance of Tunisia for the behaviour of their crowds during the qualifying stages; it would appear that they are sending out a message to those planning to disrupt the event. It remains to be seen if the policing procedures put in place for the World Cup are going to be robust enough to cope, without countries like the UK helping them keep the peace in a passive manner.
A Police officer guarding belongings in the aftermath of the New Year’s incident in the Ivory Coast.During the World Cup in South Africa, competing countries provided teams of police officers to deal with their own fans in conjunction with the South African police forces. This was a tactic which proved successful with very few problems for the duration of the tournament.
The biggest stumbling block organiser’s face is the reputation that their traditional policing methods have when it comes to dealing with crowd trouble. There are countless examples of the ruthless approach many African Police forces adopt when dealing with crowd trouble up to and including live rounds being fired into the crowd. It was reported that the fatal events during the new year celebrations in the Ivory Coast were as a result of additional Police support arriving and the crowd panicking in anticipation of the tactics they were about to use. There is a definite fear amongst the African public of the Police tactics often employed, and this is unlikely to change at any time soon. It is expected that many fans will not travel due to the cost implications however there is a habit for ‘half filled’ stadiums to just open the gates and allow free entry to the stadiums, taking away any access control and subsequently raising the level of risk.
Crowd trouble during a Senegal qualifying match.
Organisers are confident that they can manage dense crowds passively and are providing training to officers in order to achieve this. It remains to be seen however, if when under pressure, these alternative options will be their instinctive response. Especially after a career long culture of reaching for their weapon as a first option and in the absence of the foreign forces who assisted during the world cup.
Here at Prime we have already delivered both public order and working in crowds courses to BBC crews and staff who are due to deploy to the tournament over the next few weeks and will of course be on standby for physical location security support and production security advice.
