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

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 demonstrations which since October denounce the putsch of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane. Not enough to undermine the determination of Salma al-Majidi, 30, who has already broken several taboos in the country, released in 2019 from a military-Islamist dictatorship prohibiting, among other things, women from playing football.

To get around this ban, she joined the field on the bench and she 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 on the lawn.

If Salma al-Majidi has collected victories with the men’s teams, she admits 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,” however, she told 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 disorders that disrupt the training schedule and even official matches. Thus, on October 26, they were to welcome the Algerians for a return match of the African Cup of Nations (CAN) ladies, and try to take their revenge after a painful 14 to 0.

But the putsch, 24 hours earlier, forced the Algerian Fennecs team to leave Sudan in a hurry, before the repression began and has since left nearly a hundred dead and hundreds injured. . But regardless of the cancellations and defeats, sweeps aside captain Fatma Jadal who has long played in secret under the dictatorship. At the time, she says, “we had to look for isolated places” because “people were against” the idea that women play football. And “when they saw us play, they kicked us out”.

At the time, the law provided for lashing in a public place for women accused of having drunk alcohol or worn an outfit deemed “indecent”. Exasperated at being treated “second-class citizens”women were at the forefront of the 2019 “revolution” which forced the army to remove 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 laws that discriminate against women. And they even created the first women’s football tournament in the country.

But now the military have disembarked government civilians and, for women, hard-won freedoms could be lost, Captain Jadal worries.

“A purely military power is going to take us back to the days of Bashir’s restrictions so we really don’t want that.”

Fatma Jadal, team captain

at AFP

A pessimism that coach Majidi does not share 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, Ms. Majidi already has a new goal in mind: the CECAFA women’s championship, one of the oldest football championships 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.