CAUTION! WE'RE CLEANING THE POND!

Jean-Claude Ganga you belong to those African VIPs who owe their fame to the world of sports. Still, as every single human being you were born somewhere, if I may parody the lyrics of an old popular song. Although you already mentioned it in your book entitled 'Fight for African Sport', could you summarise the years of your birth and childhood in Brazzaville?

Yes, indeed, I was born on the 28 February in Brazzaville, in the district of Bacongo, which became the first district of the capital. According to my mother, I was born in good health, and when I was a child, I never got really sick except for some childhood diseases which I caught along the way. So as soon as I could run and jump like a kid goat, I joined the young boys in the streets where we'd spend most of our time. Boys under six who didn't attend school yet would play there from 9 a.m. to sunset, and, sometimes, they'd even skip their lunch.

In those days the Guynemer Street, where we lived and which became the present Street of the Three Francs wasn't paved. So there were very few cars passing by. Still, whenever a car or a truck honked the horn over there from the other side of the town our mother would come up threatening us with her Chicote and make us go home in order to avoid our being run over by that dangerous machine of the white man, even though we might sometimes wait for over an hour before the so-called machine would show up. But according to our mother, we had better implement an old proverb which goes as follows: Caution is the mother of safety. So after the passage of the car, the kids would return to the street. And every Sunday afternoon when it wasn't raining, we'd go and see our elder brothers play football in the stadium.

It was great! And this was the way we spent our Sundays in the whole of Bacongo, and it was for sure the same in PotoPoto. PotoPoto was another indigenous district of Brazzaville in those days.

When you weren't playing ball in the street, what else would you do? And by the way, what were the games of the young girls of your age?

When the street didn't turn into a football field, it would become a race circuit, for baby carriages. We'd make our own baby carriages of wood and other vegetal products we'd pick up in the surrounding savanna.

Sometimes, we'd also perform in what we may call a 'puppets' theatre show'.

We'd also make our own puppets with string, reed sticks and matches. We'd dress the puppets with paper clothes. Most of the time our figures represented the white missionaries, of course, as they were the only colonisers who were close to us and who frequently visited the indigenous districts. So we knew them well enough to impersonate them. Because we had to try our best and impersonate them when they talked in public. My best impersonation, as far as I am concerned was that of Father Morvan. My friends used to tell me I was very good at it. Another pal of mine impersonated Father Bonnefont whom we nicknamed Maboni. A third one would impersonate the vicar of Saint Francis of Assisi of the Highland Mission whose name was Father Leduc and who was nicknamed Madika. It was the only chapel in the southern part of the town then. In fact, Notre Dame du Rosaire would be built up much later, round the 1950s in Bacongo, where there were various Christian schools. I never wondered why we'd impersonate the white men in our puppets' performances. Perhaps we were eager to parody their weird customs, who knows? Anyway, it was a pleasant pass-time ... What were the girls' games then, you asked? Well, they didn't play football of course. They'd play games for girls mostly. They would not play in the street either, but within their block. Otherwise, they would help their mother at home with domestic tasks.

Among various sports disciplines which the colonial regime would offer, which one was the most appealing to you? Did you practice it with keen interest when you were young?

In fact, during the colonisation football was the favourite sport. Let me just remind how crazy people were about that sport, and how the rivalry between the clubs came up in Brazzaville once they founded the Missionary Sports Association (MSA) in the Bacongo district, the [Athletic Club of Brazzaville (ACB) – the colonizers' team] and the Renaissance in PotoPoto. Nowadays, both Congolese teams have become 'The Black Devils' and 'The Star of Congo'. Many other clubs that also practised other sports joined the former throughout the country, and this is fine. But as you know, football is easy to practise. Therefore, it was my pick when I was a young boy. I also practised volley ball when I attended the Joan of Arc school which would become the Chaminade High School later on.

When you completed the Joan of Arc school you became a young teacher appointed into the bush, as we used to put it then. In the bush, practising any sport whatsoever must have been a hard task as there was no convenient sports structure in the area. Did you fill the gap with another kind of hobby then?

Answering to the first part of your question, things didn't happen that way. My elder brother who was a seminarian got sick, very seriously ill, and it affected our modest family incomes. So I had to stop my studies. I was aiming to become a teacher then, that is a primary schoolteacher. The headmaster of La Chaminade High school who had been aware of the situation through my own father found a job for me as a clerk in a real estate company in downtown Brazzaville, so I was easily appointed there. Still, I didn't keep the job for long because I found that office work boring. Another opportunity came up then: a teacher from the Catholic private sector which had just been created in Mougali (presently the fourth district of Brazzaville) needed help. The poor man was entrusted with the four grades of the primary cycle and had to cope with that alone, so he was exhausted. The headmaster of the catholic sector offered me the job until I could get through the competition exam to become an instructor-student. I appreciated the offer. Thus I entered into the teaching profession. Later on, I took the competition exam to become an instructor-student. The competition in the colonies was just like the Certificate of Primary School Level (named CEPE) in those days and started with a dictation test. The title of the so-called dictation was as follows: 'We're cleaning the pond'. This was a metaphorical title, believe you me, because with the so-called pond, the list of candidates was cleaned out. As a matter of fact, after they had corrected the dictation test, the white inspectors of the primary sector in Middle Congo who checked the running of the competition at stake came to talk to us and said, 'The candidates who will hear their first name and last name here called may walk out and go home. For this will mean, they have failed and made more than five mistakes in the dictation and therefore, they won't be allowed to proceed with the remaining tests of the competition. So they will have to walk out of this room. It means that just as for the CEPE, the dictation test was eliminatory. It was a kind of play off. Play off! These are words that I'll often hear during my involvement in sports later. In fact, there are many plays-offs in sports, aren't there? Thanks God, I passed the competition exam and didn't have to walk out because of the so-called dictation We're cleaning the pond like many unlucky candidates.

I spent most of my teaching career far from the cities and seats of administration. Although I was an urban citizen I didn't mind working in the bush, as people would call that area with contempt. I suppose you'll agree with me in admitting that we can't leave those poor kids and the inhabitants from remote villages on their own, can we? Sport can't remain the privilege of urban citizens as it used to be during the colonisation.

Regarding the practice of sport within countryside schools, you are right, we couldn't practise much because sports facilities were lacking.

Still we managed to organise football or volley ball with the teachers and the elder pupils within the schoolyard or sometimes on a wasteland nearby.

SPOKESMAN OF THE CUSTOMARY CHIEFS

Then come the years of Independence which lead us back to Brazzaville. As far as the Department of Youth and Sports is concerned, you were their pick to be entrusted with the Department of Youth. Can you tell us about it?

Wait a minute, let us not skip the steps, shall we? Before the full independence of former colonies, a sort of inner autonomy of the territories had been implemented in the former French colonies in accordance with the French State Secretary Gaston Defferre's bill. This very same law allowed each territory to elect an assembly and then to form a government the president of which would be the governor of the so-called territory (in other words, the envoy of the French capital himself) and whose vice-president would be the leader of the political party winning the elections to that territorial assembly. At home, that is, in Congo, Jacques Opangault, president of the African socialist Movement (ASM) formed the government team in 1957. Within this team was Abbot Fulbert Youlou who was then the president of Democratic Union for the Defense of African Interests which had been founded on the 27 May 1956 in Brazzaville. Thus Fulbert was assigned to the Department of Agriculture, Stock farming, Waters and Forests. At the time, I was appointed in Loukouo, a place belonging to the district of Kindamba in the present county of Pool. Once we were told that Abbot Fulbert Youlou, the newly elected mayor of Brazzaville and State Secretary of Agriculture, was about to visit us, can you figure out the emotion this caused in the villages and hamlets! Canton chiefs, customary chiefs in villages and territories felt most concerned about this important event. They had to welcome him in Youlou like a prince, but they also had to think up proper words and complaints to address him face-to-face during the welcome ceremony. Thus, all the chiefs mentioned above gathered in a meeting and thought up the Mampolo they would address to the famous guest when the time came. Those mampolo are mainly focused on worries of the peasants from the district, that is, how they could sell or get some help for the storage and delivery of their dairy products. Let me remind you that here in the Pool county and in the district of Kindamba in particular, there was a vigorous agricultural economy then. But the products of the harvest (mainly rice, to give an example) would rot in the farmers' barns because they didn't have any customers or decent means of transportation. Besides, roads and tracks were usually in poor condition. Things haven't changed much since then, in most part of the countryside, by the way. Such were the things the chiefs would tell in Youlou.

Still, they had to find someone among the learned people of Loukouo who would write and make the speech in French ...

I'm sorry to interrupt but Abbot Youlou was a native child from that country, right? So was there any need to make a speech in French to him?

It was usual, an old habit from former colonial times. No one would talk to a state man be he coloured or white, in a mother tongue, but he always had to do so in French. When no one could speak the language of Molière, we'd call a translator in. Remember that in the delegation which followed the Secretary of Agriculture not all the members understood the mother tongue of the latter, so French was the appropriate language everyone could agree on. It is still the case nowadays. Members of Parliament, Senators, and State Secretaries who could speak the local languages properly would rather speak French though. Anyway, I don't know why, but the customary chiefs picked me even though there were other schoolteachers in Loukouo. 'We've been watching you a lot, and the way you've behaved ever since you came here in Loukouo. We feel like we can trust you. We're sure you won't betray us. So please accept the task.'

This is the way one of the chiefs talked to me (in Lâri, of course) when he came to ask me this favour, so I became the spokesman of the guardians of the kongo-lâri oral tradition. I did my best to translate their thoughts and read them publicly to the Secretary of Agriculture and the crowd who had gathered to welcome him. They warmly applauded me, and Abbot Youlou seemed very impressed for he sent a member of the delegation to talk to me. As for the customary chiefs and the leaders of the peasants' movement, they all declared they were quite satisfied. A few days after their state secretary's visit, they came to congratulate me. The elder told me, in his mother tongue, which I'll try to translate as correctly as possible. I'll just skip the final greetings which are hard to make understandable:

Ta Ganga, owing to the excellent speech you wrote and read to Youlou and to the huge crowd, some retailers have begun to buy our products as soon as the road to Brazzaville was repaired and returned to traffic. 'Matôndo ma sakila. Ba MâMbuwûlabakusakumuna.'

And thus concluded the chiefs when they thanked me in the traditional way. I can translate it this way: 'Thank you so much. May our Ancestors bless you'.

I replied myself that I thanked them for having trusted me and having chosen me as their spokesman because I had the opportunity to be noticed by the authorities. I told them I'd never forget their generosity and thus concluded in lâri and with a catch in the voice: 'Bênompe, Ta Mpungukalufukalukaya.' That is 'May the Almighty God bless you all.'

With this task of spokesman in Loukouo a nice surprise came up: when school resumed the following year, I was exempted from teaching. I was assigned to Brazzaville at the State Department of Education where I became the director for Youth, whereas my colleague Boniface Massengo, the famous football striker of the Black Devils in the sixties, became the head of the sports department.

Later you were selected to go on a training as a youth instructor in Israel ...

Not only in Israel, in France as well. My training in Israel was 'a fantastic epic based on youth and work', so I said in an interview I gave to the weekly l'homme nouveau (The new man) and which used to be published in Brazzaville in the 1960s. But as I just told you my training wasn't just in Israel. I also completed it in France, namely in Vincennes where I took part in training for the highly qualified staff for the Youth and Sports Department. As for the practical part of the training, it took place in Lyon. When I came back to Congo, I was the first highly qualified inspector for Youth and Sports in Congo, so I became the very first director of that administration. I set up the whole system which has been the pattern implemented ever since in the Department of Youth and Sports. Afterwards, the government sent other people on training to France and Israel. When those were back, they became public officers of the Department of Youth and Sports.

But let's try, parenthetically, to explain how I became one of the first community workers for associations dealing with youngsters in Brazzaville and particularly in the Bacongo district. The husband of one of my elder sisters, Alexis Missambou, was the chief of the cubs and scouts in Bacongo. As I was known for my dynamism, he enlisted me into his movement. Besides, let me recall that my uncle on my father's side who later became archbishop of Brazzaville had stemmed from another scout movement called 'brave hearts'. We must emphasise that during the colonial regime, many religious associations and schools looked after the Congolese youngsters in a very satisfactory way. It was the case, for instance, of the secular school which had its own scouts, of the catholic school which had its cubs, named 'brave hearts and courageous souls', the Protestant Church which had its unionist scouts, and so on ... In Bacongo, the head of those movements strove to be the most zealous and showed the greatest motivation in this field. Some of them even had an intuitive knack for tracking and recruiting new adepts. Such was the case of my brother-in-law Alexis Missambou and of Dominique Nzalakanda the man who was sent to talk to me in Loukouo. That teacher from the public secular sector and who would become an important state secretary in the government of the president – Abbot was an expert in recruiting good fellows, just like me as he let me know during my enlisting interview to become a member. This is probably the reason why Fulbert Youlou made him both his Home Secretary and Attorney General. Well, Dominique Nzalakanda when he was a

schoolteacher and the great entertainer of the Cultural Circle in Bacongo lived in Joly Street, a street which was parallel to Guynemer Street, a five-minute walk from my family's home. They knew each other very well as a matter of fact. Anyway, Dominique Nzalakanda was so skilled in youth matters and at tracking youngsters for recruitment that he was unrivalled in the field. Shall I recall that some musicians like Franklin Boudaka, Riky, Max Massengo and Ntouta Mamadou, just to mention the most famous, were launched by him on the Congolese stage. In a way, the fact that Fulbert Youlou sent him to me in Loukouo was good for me. In fact, as I already mentioned, I was appointed in Brazzaville when school resumed and there, the Department of Youth and Sports hired me. From then on things will move on very quickly: I was first appointed as a director, then I became a member of the state secretary office and was entrusted with youth matters as I already mentioned. And eventually, I was as a member of the Congolese delegation to attend the Games of Friendship which was organised by France in Abidjan – Ivory Coast – in December 1961. It was after those very same games that our country, Congo-Brazzaville would apply to organise the forthcoming Games of Brazzaville. The Brazzaville games will neither be named Games of the Community nor Games of Friendship of Dakar, which were due to take place in April 1963, but the First African Games. We'll talk much about this when comes the time if you don't mind.