Introduction:^{Footnote 1}The Kick Felt ‘Round the Nation

It was the kick that made star striker Jules-Francois Bocandé a symbol of rebellion. But he did not kick a soccer ball; instead, he kicked the referee… in the groin. For the second year in a row, Bocandé’s team, Casa-Sports, had advanced to the final match of the Senegalese Premier League championship on 3 August 1980. Casa-Sports faced rival Jeanne d’Arc in Dakar’s Demba Diop Stadium for the twentieth edition of the Senegalese Cup. Bocandé and Casa-Sports hailed from the southern Senegalese region of the Casamance, geographically separated from the rest of Senegal by The Gambia. Jeanne d’Arc hailed from Dakar, in northern Senegal. Near the end of the game, referee Bakary Sarr – from Dakar – whistled for a foul by Casa-Sports inside the penalty box, and gave Jeanne d’Arc a penalty kick, a hardly-to-miss opportunity to score a goal. Nearly everyone else in the stadium could see that the foul occurred outside the penalty box. In any case, Baba Touré, the Jeanne d’Arc kicker, missed the penalty kick. It seemed that Casa-Sports had escaped injustice. But Sarr stopped play again, claiming that Touré had rushed the penalty shot before Sarr blew his whistle to re-start play, indicating that all the players were set. Thus, the players lined up again, and Touré received a second chance. This time, the ball sailed into the back of the net. Shortly after, time expired. Jeanne d’Arc 1, Casa-Sports 0. Before Sarr could exit the field, Bocandé kicked him in the groin. Players and coaches restrained Sarr and Bocandé, but riots erupted in other parts of the field, in the stands, and outside the stadium. Fans attacked each other with clubs, knives, and machetes. A few days later, the Senegalese Soccer Federation sanctioned Bocandé “for life.”^{Footnote 2} It ruled that Bocandé was never to play soccer on Senegalese soil again while another Casa-Sports player who struck Sarr received a five-year ban. A Federation official explained that the second player “was treated lightly because he had expressed regret.”^{Footnote 3} Apparently, Bocandé did not show the same remorse.

Separatists quickly seized the occasion to tie the fortunes of Bocandé and Casa-Sports to the entire Casamance region. Bertrand Diamacoune claimed that the FSF sanction against Bocandé constituted “a sanction against the entire Casamance.”^{Footnote 4} Twenty days after the fateful match, Bertrand’s older brother, Augustin Diamacoune Senghor, a Catholic priest who later became the Secretary-General of the Movement of Democratic Forces of the Casamance (MFDC, see Figure), gave a defiant speech at a conference honoring Aline Sitoé Diatta at the Dakar Chamber of Commerce. Diatta was a Jola priestess from Kabrousse who led a rebellion in 1942 against French military recruitment and rice requisitions.^{Footnote 5} For creating such an interruption to colonial production, French soldiers arrested Diatta, along with seventeen of her “co-conspirators” and sent them to a prison in Kayes (in present-day Mali).^{Footnote 6} After being moved to another prison in Timbuktu, Diatta died most likely of scurvy.^{Footnote 7} In any case, she was never heard from again.

Figure.

Father Augustin Diamacoune Senghor in December 1982, from ANS, Ziguinchor Conflit, 1980–1999, Le Soleil (31 December 1982), 6.

At the Chamber of Commerce on 23 August 1980, Father Diamacoune capitalized on the tension following the violence of the Senegalese Cup final to summarize the three-hundred years of “histoire Casamançaise” preceding Diatta’s disappearance, asserting Senegalese betrayal of the Casamance at every opportunity.^{Footnote 8} Diamacoune linked the fact that Diatta’s body was never returned to her family to a Senegalese and French conspiracy to deny the family closure and to ignore the heroic history of Casamançais resistance to foreign domination. Though Diamacoune stopped short of directly calling for Casamançais independence, he hinted, “I am exposing historical facts (…) it is the hour of the Casamance (…) the Casamance will always constitute, whether one likes it or not (…) ‘an exception and an anachronism.’ If these are synonyms for national independence, I am absolutely in agreement.”^{Footnote 9} Diamacoune suggested that the cultural differences manifested in Casamançais and Senegalese histories demonstrated that the Casamance had never been and could never be a part of Senegal.

The appearance of this separatist discourse twenty days after the controversy and violence of the Senegalese Cup final match was no coincidence. Rather, it emerged from a longer history, illustrating the complex nexus of sports and politics and, in this particular case, of sports and nationalism. While others have noted this nexus in the context of African soccer, I show how the soccer stadium over time became a place for “imagining” the Casamance.^{Footnote 10} As such, this article contributes to the growing literature on ways of imagining the nation other than Benedict Anderson’s “print-capitalism” – especially in areas of the formerly colonized world with low literacy rates.^{Footnote 11} These alternate means of imagining the nation suggest the engagement of non-elite social groups in corroborating, contesting, or ignoring elite construction of the ties between soccer and separatism. While demonstrating change in the soccer stadium over time through the links between Casa-Sports and the separatist movement, I also show how various Casamançais in the stadium imagined the nation in different ways at the same time. Thus, I trace the contours of “space” and “place” to argue that while the separatist movement attempted to construct a monolithic version of “The Stadium” as a place for the symbolic performance of the Casamançais nation, some Casamançais refused to follow the separatists’ lead, instead imagining the Casamance not as a separate nation but as the southern region of Senegal.^{Footnote 12}

To trace these contours, I examine the ties between the early supporters of Casa-Sports and the early supporters of separatism in the late 1970s. Early separatist meetings held on “white plastic chairs” in the middle of the soccer pitch demonstrated the connection between soccer and the performance of the nation in The Stadium by separatists themselves. This narrative demonstrates the ways that the soccer stadium became a place for imagining and performing the Casamançais nation separate from Senegal. I then shift the narrative to the games themselves, with Casa-Sports fans – separatists among them – in the stands, rooting for their team. “The Casamance” in this setting was much more diverse. As an “odd case” will show, some Casamançais refused to support Casa-Sports in every game and some Casa-Sports supporters refused to link their soccer club to separatism. In the end, I show why Bocandé’s kick at the conclusion of the 1980 Senegalese Cup reverberated beyond the stadium, beyond Casa-Sports, and beyond soccer itself to shake the Senegalese nation to its core.

The Colonial Stadium

On one hand, French colonizers brought the stadium as a built environment for the performance of social relations to the Casamance in the first half of the twentieth century, along with colonial sports like soccer. European sports often required, to some extent, not only the imperative for entertainment and the leisure time to go with it but some sort of built facility in which or on which to play. Missionaries and colonial officials viewed sports as a way of cultivating Western values and practices through physical exercise, teamwork, and discipline. This social training was to take place in space controlled by colonial elites or their surrogates – typically educated men with ties to missionary organizations or the colonial state.^{Footnote 13} Ultimately, colonial armed forces, gendarmes, or police insured the control of this social space by the force of arms.^{Footnote 14}

On the other hand, precolonial Africans had been playing and performing sports such as wrestling, martial arts, canoe-racing, and competitive dancing well before the arrival of Europeans.^{Footnote 15} These sports were valued in agricultural societies with the requirement for self-defense. In the Casamance, for example, youth wrestled – boys against boys and girls against girls – in matches often for the pride of the whole village or a collection of villages.^{Footnote 16} Precolonial sports required their own constructed spaces, but these spaces were not focused on containing and controlling a crowd as much as the stadiums constructed by Europeans. Like Europeans, Africans played sports for fitness, status, wealth, the performance of identity, and power in one form or another.^{Footnote 17} Africans often linked athletic performances to community festivals based on the agricultural calendar, with “rituals of spectatorship” facilitated by griot storytelling and other verbal performances honoring the athletes’ physical prowess.^{Footnote 18} Thus, Africans defined and performed social relations through athletics well before the arrival of Europeans. They were therefore poised to participate in colonial sports – like soccer – though Africans quickly made these sports their own.^{Footnote 19}

Shortly after demarcating the colonial borders that created the Casamance, fighting the First World War, and defeating the anti-colonial resistance that lasted longer in the Casamance than in any other part of Senegal, French colonial officials posited the building of bodies and the building of infrastructure as prime components of the “civilizing mission.”^{Footnote 20} Former colonial official J. Malbranque asserted that building a municipal stadium in Ziguinchor was “one of the most interesting and important social projects” in the Casamance “for the training of the body and for the perfecting of the morals and nature of man.”^{Footnote 21} Performing athletic exercise in stadiums would “spare the youth from laziness and life on the street.”^{Footnote 22} It would also facilitate, according to Malbranque, the improvement of “the races of color to the development of all humanity.”^{Footnote 23} By asserting the need to build urban stadiums in what was otherwise a colonial economic report, Malbranque suggested the benefit (to France) of these disciplined bodies participating in the colonial economy as producers and consumers. He thus tied the pursuit of colonial economic interests to the rhetoric of the “civilizing mission.”

Whether intentionally or not, he also implied that this “civilizing” should be carried out in enclosed spaces like stadiums, spaces easily controlled by colonial police and military forces. Colonial officials seemed to fear well-trained African bodies less than well-educated African minds.^{Footnote 24} But just in case, the police or the gendarmes were not far away. After all, as Laura Fair argues in the case of colonial Zanzibar, “the governing of sports was no game.”^{Footnote 25} In other words, colonial officials treated the administration of colonial sports clubs, leagues, and stadiums as seriously as any other part of the colony. Malbranque’s call for the construction of stadiums for the improvement of youthful vigor in the Casamance demonstrated this seriousness.^{Footnote 26} Clearly, colonial officials wanted to keep urban African youth busy, and they were willing to pay to do it. Thus, stadiums quickly became physical manifestations of the colonial presence in port cities along the West African coast.

By the late colonial period, they also became sites for the manifestation of national identity. Peter Alegi explains that “while European colonizers intended for sport to prop up their self-proclaimed ‘civilizing mission’ in Africa, they unwittingly created new opportunities for various forms of African resistance, not only against colonialism but also against social inequalities within African communities.”^{Footnote 27} While colonizers intended for sports and other cultural projects of the “civilizing mission” to build African nations that benefitted colonial interests, Africans took these cultural forms in their own directions. Hence, African soccer clubs “occasionally expressed opposition to colonial power and authority.”^{Footnote 28} As became the case with Casa-Sports, they also expressed opposition to postcolonial power and authority. By the postcolonial era, stadiums had been transformed into carefully staged spaces for performing “the nation,” but not always in ways intended by colonial and postcolonial elites.

“Grown-Ups on White Plastic Chairs:” Separatists in the Stadium

Soccer and separatism grew together with the increasing prominence of Casa-Sports in the Senegalese Premier League in the late 1970s. Many of the early separatists and early supporters of Casa-Sports were, in fact, the same people. Thus, perhaps it should come as no surprise that when the fledgling separatist movement needed a somewhat secure but public space in which to meet, a few of the separatists first thought of Néma Stadium, where Casa-Sports played its home matches in Ziguinchor, the regional capital. Created in 1969 to represent the Casamance in the Senegalese Premier League, Casa-Sports resulted from the combination of ancestors Foyer-Casamance, Galéa FC, and one other Casamançais club.^{Footnote 29} By the late 1970s, separatists began holding meetings in Néma Stadium because it was a public space large enough to hold all the participants while avoiding detection (so they thought) by Senegalese security services.^{Footnote 30}

These meetings brought politics to the stadium, in white plastic chairs. Louise Badiane grew up in Ziguinchor.^{Footnote 31} She remembers as a young girl seeing “grown-ups sitting on white plastic chairs at the stadium out by the airport, talking about something important.”^{Footnote 32} She later discovered those grown-ups at Néma Stadium were discussing separatism; they were discussing sedition. But for Badiane, that realization came later. At the time, she knew those adults were probably talking about more than soccer, even though most of them were known supporters of Casa-Sports. But at the time, she only noted “grown-ups on white plastic chairs discussing something important.” That image in a young girl’s mind speaks volumes about the MFDC’s instrumentalization of Casa-Sports and its stadium for separatist purposes. Whether the club’s players and officials agreed with it or not, it linked Casa-Sports, at the time, to politics in a way that many cheered and others ignored. It made any stadium in which Casa-Sports played during the late 1970s and early 1980s into a contested space for the imagination and performance of Casamançais and Senegalese identities.

The separatists’ “secret” stadium meetings could not continue indefinitely, of course. Since colonial and postcolonial officials had depended on the sports stadium to impart values of citizenship and sportsmanship and to impose a degree of social control, little could be performed in a stadium in secret. The stadium was designed, after all, to feature the action taking place at center pitch. Thus, once Senegalese intelligence agents began infiltrating their meetings, separatists moved their gatherings to Diabir, a village on the southern edge of Ziguinchor. After a meeting near Diabir in December 1982, the separatists began their fateful march into Ziguinchor to take down the Senegalese flags flying in front of government buildings, leading to the first mass violence of the Casamance conflict when Senegalese troops responded to this assault on Senegalese sovereignty.^{Footnote 33}

Before the violence began and before being chased out of the stadium, however, separatists and their sympathizers in the late 1970s set up white plastic chairs in a circle on the soccer pitch. They aired their grievances against the Senegalese state. Many protested the recent implementation of an imminent domain law passed in 1964.^{Footnote 34} They accused “northerners” of exploiting obscure Senegalese land tenure laws to steal land belonging for generations to Casamançais.^{Footnote 35} When northerners were not directly involved in such disputes, the separatists blamed the Senegalese government for siding with the other party.^{Footnote 36} In general, they demonized Senegal and equated Senegalese with colonizing Frenchmen – bent on exploiting Casamançais bodies, labor, and resources.^{Footnote 37}

Ansoumana Bodian, for example, a high school English teacher, represented forty-six families of the Ziguinchor neighborhood of Kadior who were “expelled” from land seized by Socitour, a French company building a resort hotel on the property. Bodian first took his complaint to Socitour officials. After receiving little response, he wrote to the Senegalese government – starting with the gendarmerie and police, and eventually addressing letters to the Minister of Education and two Senegalese presidents, Leopold Senghor and Abdou Diouf.^{Footnote 38} None of these authorities responded to Bodian’s letters, and none provided satisfaction, according to Bodian, to the forty-six Kadior families. Thus, Bodian and other separatists considered the French and the Senegalese equal colonial partners in exploiting the Casamance for its natural resources with no consideration for local ownership rights.^{Footnote 39} Whether Senegalese commercial traders were better prepared than Casamançais rice peasants for jobs in the booming tourist economy, it appeared to Bodian and a lot of other Casamançais that outsiders, “strangers to the Casamance,” were profiting from the beautiful white beaches, the lush green landscape, and the rich cultural heritage of the Casamance while ignoring or excluding its people. The stadium meetings provided Bodian and others the opportunity to air these grievances, constructing a justification for separatism.

By 1980, separatists had begun to use the stadium for potentially subversive purposes. Those attending the stadium meetings sensed that they were headed for an eventual showdown with the Senegalese state. Some encouraged the confrontation; others appealed for peace. According to one eyewitness, Father Diamacoune made an appearance at one of these meetings to appeal for peace. Abdou Elinkine Diatta was a high school student in Ziguinchor who attended one of these early stadium meetings, where he heard a speech by Father Diamacoune. He later explained:

As events unfolded, Casamançais nationalists began to fuse together the athletic and political performances in the stadium to make a broader appeal to the Casamançais masses, most of whom were more likely to listen to a Casa-Sports game on the radio than to read a separatist tract or listen to a political speech at a separatist rally. The Stadium provided a public yet somewhat secluded space for the separatists to express their frustration with the Senegalese state, define their goals, and debate proposals.

Separatists from the large Casamançais expatriate community in Dakar also used meetings of the local committee of Casa-Sports supporters to hold discussions of separatist objectives.^{Footnote 41} They met in Dakar’s Robert Delmas Stadium.^{Footnote 42} Like the meetings in Ziguinchor, some of the Casa-Sports supporters called for blood while others called for dialogue. But these supporters also had to be mindful of where they were – in the capital of “Senegal.”^{Footnote 43} Senegalese security services began targeting the meetings for intelligence on separatist plans and activities, recruiting a few Casa-Sports members to provide information for the government. Rumors began to circulate, and fear and suspicion increasingly gripped the meetings.^{Footnote 44} But these meetings did not automatically transform the stadium from a space of social training, control, and surveillance into a space of subversion. Even within Casa-Sports, there were those who preferred to keep politics out of soccer. Some Casa-Sports supporters felt uncomfortable mixing soccer and separatism, believing such a mix could become a dangerous concoction.^{Footnote 45} But they waged a losing battle to keep the two separate.

Game Time for the Nation

The growing ties between the fans of Casa-Sports and the separatist movement became clearer at Casa-Sports matches. During these matches, of course, the white plastic chairs disappeared from the field, but the conflation of soccer and separatism in the stadium remained – transferred into the stands. Casa-Sports fans began to attend soccer matches armed with clubs and machetes.^{Footnote 46} Similar to what British sports fans would see from soccer “hooligans” in the following decade, Casa-Sports soccer matches became known for action in the stands as much as action on the field. To Casa-Sports fans, the games became occasions for demonstrating more than pride in one’s soccer club; they were occasions for demonstrating pride in one’s regional identity as well as Casamançais dissatisfaction with the postcolonial dispensation.^{Footnote 47} Casamançais distinguished themselves at the games from the Muslim teetotalers of northern Senegal by dressing in palm wine tapping costumes.^{Footnote 48} They heralded Casa-Sports and its players in song, referring in Jola, for example, to “Bocandé, the Panther.”^{Footnote 49} Separatists went to the games to distribute copies of the separatist magazine, Kelumak.^{Footnote 50} The Casa-Sports section of the stadium became known as “la tribune Katanga,” in reference to the separatist region of the Congo in the 1960s.^{Footnote 51} Some of the more militant Casa-Sports fans began to refer to their club as not only their regional but as their “national” team as well.^{Footnote 52} They claimed that the tension at Casa-Sports matches demonstrated that the Casamance was not really a part of Senegal.

The tension began to peak when Casa-Sports won the Senegalese Cup for the first time in 1979. Until then, northern teams had dominated the championship. But in August of 1979, Casa-Sports fans filed to Dakar’s Demba Diop Stadium from all over “the Casamance,” from Cap Skiiring to Kolda and Kédougou to Matam.^{Footnote 53} They walked and rode buses. They took “cars rapides,” bush taxis, pirogues, and motorbikes.^{Footnote 54} Casa-Sports organized large convoys of buses transporting supporters from Ziguinchor and other Senegalese cities to Dakar. Casa-Sports’ Dakar organizing committee helped arrange transportation and lodging in Dakar.^{Footnote 55} President Senghor, the “father of the nation,” attended the match, likely expecting a fairly easy victory by the northern Senegalese club, Jaraaf.^{Footnote 56} After all, teams from Dakar or Saint Louis had won the Senegalese Cup every year since its inception in 1961. But 1979 would be different. That year, Casa-Sports beat Jaraaf by a score of 2–0. For the first time, a Casamançais club – or to many Senegalese, the Casamançais club – won the Senegalese Cup. When presenting the Trophy Cup to Demba Ramata Ndiaye, the Wolof captain of Casa-Sports, Senghor allegedly remarked: “I really like this Casa-Sports team. What I like the most about it is that there are not only Jola on the team but Wolof, Peul [Pular or Fulani], Toucouleur, and Serer. That is Senegal… long live Senegal!”^{Footnote 57} Radio and television journalist Laye Diaw explains: “That’s why the Casamance is the most Senegalese region of Senegal: it best represents Senegalese diversity. After all, the Casa-Sports player who scored the two goals against Jaraaf in 1979 was Tanor Ndiaye, a Wolof.”^{Footnote 58} Ndiaye’s contribution to the-Casamance-as-Senegalese, however, seemed all but forgotten after the Senegalese Cup final the following year. According to the MFDC, Senegalese government officials wanted to ensure that such a victory for the Casamance never occurred again.^{Footnote 59}

For many Casamançais, even if they did not consider themselves “separatists,” the 1980 Senegalese Cup constituted the “ras-le-bol” moment.^{Footnote 60} The controversial penalty against Casa-Sports late in the game represented another case of Senegal cheating the Casamance out of something good, something that belonged to the Casamance. Many did not need to be convinced by separatists that the result of the match was another case of Senegalese trickery at the expense of hard-working Casamançais. Some questioned what President Senghor meant when he allegedly stated after the game: “I prefer regionalism to tribalism.”^{Footnote 61} Many Casamançais found this reference to “tribalism” jolting.^{Footnote 62} The Jola were the majority among the separatists, but other ethnic groups – Mandinka, Manjak, Mancagne, Bainouk, for example – were involved, too. Had the President attempted to discredit separatist claims to land lost and jobs not awarded by slyly accusing the separatists of “tribalism?” Even Senghor, a “cousin” Serer, seemed to be attempting to dupe them.^{Footnote 63} To the separatists, fueled by Father Diamacoune’s separatist rhetoric after the 1980 Chamber of Commerce speech, it was time to respond to Senegalese treachery in the stadium and other Casamançais spaces.

Thus, after meeting near Diabir – just south of Ziguinchor – on Christmas Night 1982, the separatists marched into Ziguinchor the next morning, following a group of women pouring cool water on the ground, symbolizing peaceful intentions. They marched to the Governor’s Office, lowered the Senegalese flag flying in front of the building, and ran up a white flag. They repeated this act at other government buildings around town, including the gendarme headquarters. The gendarmes and police finally mustered a response, beating marchers with billy clubs and occasionally firing their weapons above the marchers’ heads. No separatists were killed that first violent day, but dozens were wounded, bruised, and bloodied. Mass arrests and torture followed.^{Footnote 64} When gendarmes in 1983 tried to break up a similar meeting in Diabir near the one-year anniversary of the separatist march, separatists attacked – killing three and wounding four of the gendarmes and then mutilating the corpses of the dead.^{Footnote 65} A “major soccer match” in Ziguinchor between Casa-Sports and another Senegalese team was cancelled as a “precautionary measure,” though Casa-Sports later played a team from the Senegalese Armed Forces in Dakar “without incident.”^{Footnote 66} Soccer could go on, but many of the separatists exited the stadium for the forest, where they took up arms and kicked off a conflict leading to more than 5,000 people dead, 60,000 displaced, 90,000 affected by land mines,^{Footnote 67} and 700,000 living in a state of insecurity.^{Footnote 68} What started several years before as only a discussion between “grown-ups on white plastic chairs” was suddenly manifest in bullets, billy clubs, and blood.

Space and Place in the Stadium

This history demonstrates that the soccer stadium was a political space. As such, spatial theory can help show how and why it became so political – even before separatists began setting up those white plastic chairs on the soccer pitch. The co-constitutive histories of Casa-Sports and Casamançais separatism seem to validate Henri Lefebvre’s observation that “there is a politics of space because space is political.”^{Footnote 69} As a space for performing social relations and imagining the nation, the Senegalese soccer stadium took on elements of space and place. I define “space” as a physical domain of three dimensions for human action. But Lefebvre warns against assigning neutrality and objectivity to space. He insists: “Space is not a scientific object removed from ideology or politics; it has always been political and strategic.”^{Footnote 70} Furthermore, it has always been “historical” because it has “already been occupied and planned, already the focus of past strategies, of which we cannot always find traces.”^{Footnote 71} Thus, Lefebvre argues, space is “a product literally populated with ideologies,” just as various Casamançais “populated” the Casa-Sports stadium with “ideologies” of their own.^{Footnote 72} These ideologies occasionally matched those of the MFDC; at other times, they did not. Hence, one might add a fourth dimension to space: that of ideology, or of the imagination, to borrow Anderson’s language.

But whenever this fourth dimension was in play, the “space” of the stadium began to look and feel more like “place.” If we define “place” as “space to which meaning has been ascribed and endowed with value,” then space and place are co-constitutive and always in tension.^{Footnote 73} Nationalists depend on this tension to construct “the nation” against some kind of “other.” The MFDC attempted to construct the Casamance in the soccer stadium against Senegal. Much to its chagrin, however, space is not always transformed into place in a linear, irreversible process over time. In fact, space and place can co-exist in different ways for different people.

Hence, I build on Doreen Massey’s conception of “envelopes of space-time” to propose diachronic space-place, acting as a dialectical, bi-directional continuum between space and place over time for the imagination and performance of the nation. I concur with Massey that space is inherently multiple – that space and “multiplicity” are “co-constitutive.” Massey asserts: “Without space, no multiplicity; without multiplicity, no space.”^{Footnote 74} Because of this relationship, Massey contends that space is “always in the process of being made. It is never finished; never closed.”^{Footnote 75} This open-endedness makes space political.^{Footnote 76} It allows for a range of connections between “the imagination of the spatial” and “the imagination of the political.”^{Footnote 77} While Lefebvre finds that space is always historical, Massey finds it is always futuristic. Clearly, it is both. But it is too easy to think of space as one thing and place as another along this continuum, especially if we focus, as historians do, on change over time.

Thus, I hyphenate “space-place” to suggest the possibility of the simultaneous operation of identity on this continuum. Negotiators in the Casamance peace process depended on this simultaneous multiplicity – whether they knew it or not – to make their case that several cultural identities could co-exist in Senegal.^{Footnote 78} While the MFDC insisted on a particular definition of certain spaces like The Stadium as “places” representative of the nation, various Casamançais imagined the nation in those spaces on their own terms. Multiple imaginings of the stadium in Senegal ensured that the MFDC never successfully reduced this space to a monolithic Casamançais place – The Stadium. What at first seemed like an “odd case” drew my attention to this diversity. But I eventually discovered that it was not so “odd” after all.

The Odd Case and the Stadium: A Space-Place of Diverse Imaginings

Because of the links between The Stadium and Casamançais nationalism, I expand Susann Baller’s window of analysis for the performance of social relations through soccer from the neighborhood to the nation. Baller argues that Senegalese neighborhood navétanes (youth soccer) teams played on soccer pitches around Dakar that became spaces for performing local identities, as urban youth felt increasingly estranged from the state.^{Footnote 79} She claims their navétanes league play constituted “performative acts” serving “the formation of and identification with the neighbourhood as a social space.”^{Footnote 80} In the Casamance, many of these youth also felt increasingly estranged from the nation, as state weaknesses became symbolic of the cracks in the cultural identity of what Senghor referred to as “Sénégalité” – a Senegalese cultural identity religiously Muslim and ethnically Wolof. Baller claims that the navétanes, in a context of “rapid urbanization” and “(often forced) removals,” granted marginalized urban youth “an opportunity to have an impact on urban space and imbue it with meaning.”^{Footnote 81} A similar process played out in a different fashion in the Casamance, where urban youth tied the activities of their soccer club to the natural surroundings in the lush, green countryside of “la verte Casamance.” While most Casamançais tied the green jerseys of Casa-Sports to the green countryside of the Casamance, a few did not. These few performed the nation in other ways, in other spaces, with other symbols – effectively contesting or ignoring MFDC nationalist discourse. An odd case drew my attention to this diversity in the stadium.

This odd case – an oral history from a man in a village near Ziguinchor – was intriguing because it was so different from the others in terms of the politics of The Stadium. During three years of work and research in Senegal, most informants told me that there had been strong links between Casa-Sports supporters and the separatists of the early 1980s. But this informant refuted this claim and denied there was any connection between soccer and politics. He was an official with Casa-Sports’ Dakar organizing committee when the controversial Senegalese Cup final was played in 1980. He was also Jola, born and raised in the Lower Casamance. Of the infamous 1980 final match, he recalled: “The foul clearly took place outside of the penalty box, but the referee is a human being, just like the rest of us. He made a mistake; that’s all. He was not trying to incite violence. I wish the match had not ended that way, but it’s just a game, and there has to be a winner and a loser.”^{Footnote 82} The informant’s assertion that there was no link between soccer and separatism seemed to falter because he also claimed that Senegalese intelligence services targeted Casa-Sports meetings in Dakar for intelligence collection. How could one say there was no link between politics and soccer if the Senegalese intelligence services were targeting Casa-Sports meetings? Does that targeting not show that one (soccer, i.e. Casa-Sports) was influenced by the other (politics, i.e. the Senegalese gendarmerie)?

Nevertheless, as I posed these questions to other informants, I began to hear similar assertions for the first time. Suddenly, the consensus I thought I saw on the links between soccer and separatism were not so clear. For one reason or another, some Casamançais were not as devoted or as interested in Casa-Sports. Or, if they were Casa-Sports fans, they had no interest in separatism; they had no interest in seeing themselves with a national identity other than Senegalese. My “odd case” showed that where some saw a connection between sports and politics, others saw only sports in the stadium and politics outside it. Another informant believed that soccer was an Anglophone sport for which Francophone Casamançais cared very little. This informant suggested that soccer’s foreign, colonial origins made it suspect; a real Casamançais, on the other hand, loved wrestling.^{Footnote 83} Indeed, numerous informants confirmed the idea that wrestling was more “Casamançais” than soccer. Others tied the entire matter of separatism to the region of Kassa, the area west of Ziguinchor centered on the town of Oussouye.^{Footnote 84} While they supported Casa-Sports because they were Casamançais, they did not feel that this support made them separatists. They claimed to have been “Senegalese from the region of the Casamance.” To them, their support for Casa-Sports said nothing about their national affiliation. As evidence, they suggested looking at their Senegalese national identification cards.^{Footnote 85} Separatists could try to essentialize The Stadium into a monolithic national icon all they wanted, but Casamançais had their own minds on the matter.

Consequently, the “odd case” on diverse national imaginations in the stadium began to appear not so “odd” after all. None less than Father Diamacoune, the Secretary-General of the MFDC for much of its existence, shared the view that supporting separatism did not equate to supporting Casa-Sports. Diamacoune’s refusal to make this link was especially noteworthy because he readily claimed difference with Senegal at every other opportunity. It also showed the simultaneous multiplicity of identities that could transform the space-place of The Stadium into a stadium like any other. Diamacoune claimed to support – ironically – Jeanne d’Arc, Casa-Sports’ opponent in the controversial 1980 Senegalese Cup. He told his biographer in 2005: “I wrestled in the village when I was younger, and I played soccer until the 1970s. (…) [M]y favorite Senegalese soccer team is not Casa-Sports of Ziguinchor, though I support them very well, but rather Jeanne d’Arc of Dakar, because they bear the name of my personal role model.”^{Footnote 86} At first glance, it may seem that Diamacoune’s identity as a priest overrode his identity as a nationalist. But the story of Joan of Arc’s resistance to the English invasion of France in the fifteenth century also served as a strong role model for MFDC resistance against Senegalese rule in the Casamance. Knowing this history, however, would likely require formal education – something the nationalist elite like Diamacoune received but many Casamançais, especially those in rural areas, did not.^{Footnote 87}

Ambiguous Hero of an Ambiguous Nation

As much as Diamacoune, Jules-François Bocandé, the “emblem of the Casamance,” exemplified the often ambiguous relationship between soccer and separatism.^{Footnote 88} This ambiguity was apparent at Bocande’s “state funeral” in 2012.^{Footnote 89} Bocandé died at the age of fifty-four on 7 May 2012, in Metz, France, from complications following surgery for a stroke. Eight days later, with Macky Sall, the President of Senegal, in attendance along with Bocandé’s family and former and current players, coaches, and fans, Laye Diaw, with his famous baritone voice, attempted to explain the various identities competing for Bocandé’s loyalty throughout his life. For years, Diaw had brought play-by-play coverage of Senegalese sports to listeners on Radio Television Senegal (RTS). He spoke from the podium in Demba Diop in a black suit, his eyes covered by dark sunglasses. He recited the chronology of Bocandé’s contributions to the Senegalese national team during the 1980s and 1990s. Diaw’s voice boomed near the end of a crescendo concluding the lineup of the Senegalese side for the 1985 Africa Cup of Nations (CAF) tournament. After listing the names of players from northern Senegal like Cheikh Seck, Pape Fall, Amadou Diop, and Cheikh Tidiane Fall, Diaw shouted: “… and at middle striker, JULES FRAN-ÇOIS BER-TRAND BO-CAN-DÉ!”^{Footnote 90} Diaw drew out the syllables of Bocandé’s name. The crowd roared. Former players and coaches – as well as politicians eager to associate themselves with the Bocandé legacy – followed Diaw onto the podium.^{Footnote 91} All hailed Bocandé as a hero of the Senegalese nation while noting his Casamançais roots.

Bocandé reflected the hybrid nature of identity formation in Senegal and particularly in the Casamance.^{Footnote 92} Bocandé’s cultural identity – and therefore the cultural legacy defined in part by his achievements – was complicated. Bocandé began his career as an icon of the Casamançais nation after kicking the referee at the end of the controversial 1980 match. He finished as an icon of the Senegalese nation, with a Senegalese flag draped over his coffin. Along the way, he scored goals – lots of them – winning games and championships not just for Casa-Sports but, after his FSF suspension, for FC Seraing (Belgium), FC Metz, Paris Saint-Germain, Nice, and Lens (all in France). After scoring twenty-five goals for Metz during the 1985–1986 season, he was named the French Premier League’s “Striker of the Year.”^{Footnote 93} The FSF rescinded the lifetime ban that year so that Bocandé could captain the Senegalese national team during its CAF appearances in the second half of the decade.

Though many pointed to the conclusion of the 1980 soccer match as the catalyst that transformed the ras-le-bol sentiment of many Casamançais into separatist violence, Bocandé spent the rest of his life trying to escape the legacy of that controversial match. Bocandé was a proud man. He was proudly Senegalese, Casamançais, and Jola – all at the same time. It is tempting to say he found a new Senegalese identity when he came back to captain the 1985 Senegalese CAF squad. But in fact, Bocandé never stopped being Senegalese. When the FSF rescinded the ban and asked Bocandé to captain the national team, Bocandé, while playing for Metz, purposely and grievously fouled an opposing player for a red card so that he would be available to his national team during the CAF tournament.^{Footnote 94} Bocandé was known for being equally comfortable sipping whiskey with rebels in the forest or marching for peace in the streets of Ziguinchor.^{Footnote 95} He was well-respected by the rebels. They considered him one of their own. But so did the Senegalese soccer community. Bocandé returned to the Senegalese national team for the 2002 World Cup, when Senegal famously beat the former colonial power and reigning World Cup champion, France. World Cup players like El-Hadj Diouf credited Bocandé with mentoring them and guiding them to Senegal’s best World Cup performance ever, advancing to the quarter finals of the knockout stage. After his state funeral in Dakar, Bocandé was fittingly laid to rest in the middle of a mixed Muslim-Christian cemetery in his hometown of Ziguinchor. The man who dug his grave, Mamadou Camara, claimed to have once played for Foyer-Casamance, an ancestor of Casa-Sports. Because vandals had stolen a golden-plated soccer cleat from the top of Bocandé’s tomb, Camara stood guard next to the tomb to secure the legacy of this “emblem of the Casamance” who was also a Senegalese soccer hero.^{Footnote 96} The Casamançais soccer rebel of 1980 ended his journey on earth as not only an “emblem of the Casamance” but as an “emblem of Senegal,” too.

Conclusion: Performing the Nation in the Soccer Stadium of the Present

This ambiguous national identity can still be seen at Senegalese international soccer matches. Senegalese spectators at home matches in Léopold Sédar Senghor National Stadium outside of Dakar wear various assortments of the national team’s colors: red, green, and yellow. But since the 1970s, there has been a large section of solid green at each game, indicating the presence of the fans of Casa-Sports.^{Footnote 97} These fans demonstrate more than allegiance to their club by wearing their green Casa-Sports jerseys to a Senegalese international soccer match; they express their allegiance to their “other” national identity: “la Verte Casamance.” Yet by their overt presence in the national stadium of Senegal, they also demonstrate their allegiance to Senegal. They participate in and perform the Senegalese nation at the same time that they proclaim their pride in their Casamançais identity, effectively contesting or ignoring MFDC assertions that Casamançais cultural identity has always been so different from Senegalese identity that the Casamance could not possibly remain politically with Senegal. Like Bocandé, Casa-Sports seems to have undergone a transformation, at least in terms of its public image, but also in terms of its image with the Senegalese government. It went from being targeted by Senegalese intelligence and security services for harboring rebel activity in the early 1980s to taking its place in the national stadium of Senegal in the present.^{Footnote 98} The simultaneous panoply of identities in the space-place of the stadium demonstrates that Casamançais have imagined the nation in their own ways, often refusing to perform the nation in the same way as the separatists.

The twin histories of soccer and separatism in the Casamance confirms Lefebvre’s claim that space and place are historically produced because the stadium was “occupied and planned, already the focus of past strategies,” whether we can find their “traces” or not.^{Footnote 99} At the same time, in spite of colonial and postcolonial intentions to control bodies and minds in The Stadium, contemporary Casamançais have refused to be shackled to a particular interpretation of the nation in the stadium. In fact, while some Casamançais corroborated separatist interpretations of this history, others contested or ignored it, leaving open the possibility of multiple imaginings in the stadium.

If the soccer stadium in the Casamance was, in fact, a space-place for multiple, simultaneous national imaginings, then that means the stadium also produced multiple trajectories of change over time because at the end of the game, people went home. They lived their lives. And regardless of what the MFDC or the Senegalese state told them to think about “the nation,” they had to figure out how to live with their neighbors and raise their families. Some found that the separatist movement helped them live together with dignity. Others found the opposite. As much as the Senegalese soccer stadium became a space of division in the past, it has shown the potential to be a place of unity in the present and in the future.