The Country that Cried Wolf

If you’ve been following this year’s Africa Cup of Nations, you’ll know that Tuesday wasn’t a great day here. All of Zambia let out a collective groan that night as we watched qualification to the quarterfinals slip through the fingers of the national team. Unable to score against Burkina Faso, the defending champions made an early exit from the tournament; an underwhelming performance in the face of overblown expectations.

After the euphoria of last year, the disappointment was deflating. Fans took it on the chin though; there was little blaming or finger pointing and praise could still be heard for the players and team. Still, the day had a noticeably subdued air. Until about 4:30, which is when the city went mad.

I was riding the bus into town, waiting in a queue to turn into the station, when another bus went speeding past on our left, the driver laying on the horn. It might not have caught my attention, but there was an unusual amount of noise coming from the station as well; something was amiss. More cars now laying on more horns, and the lowing of vuvuzelas could be heard over top. I wracked my brain, unable to remember if there was a match today that could cause such excitement. I hopped out of the bus and questioned the first jubilant person I saw. To my disbelief, he told me Zambia had just qualified for the quarterfinals. Wondering if he had missed the game the previous night, I asked him how this was possible. He told me Burkina Faso had used a player with a red card in the match, a breach of rules that would strip them of their points and award them to Zambia, putting us through to the next round. Immediately catching his enthusiasm, I started high fiving everyone around me.

The whole station was going crazy; people were running around waving their scarves and flags, buses sat empty as drivers and passengers alike milled about, discussing the good fortune. I still couldn’t quite believe it, but when we boarded the bus, over the rising din outside, I could hear them discussing this turn of events on the radio. Well that did it for me, I was sold. Could this many people be wrong? It’s even on the radio! I texted friends and joined into excited conversations. As we rolled through standstill traffic we waved at pedestrians and motorists; our smiling faces reflected back at us, flags waving everywhere. What luck! What unbelievable luck, I thought to myself in amusement, glowing in the knowledge that it wasn’t going to end so quietly.

Well it certainly was unbelievable. As we progressed out of the downtown madness, the warmth of belief ceded more and more to a cold, gnawing doubt. How could no one have noticed that player already had a red card? Out of the coaching staff, the ref, or all the fans watching, it just didn’t make sense. Desperate for some confirmation, I opened up my laptop on the bus and, heart sinking, found no trace of the story in the news. On comes the radio announcer, pleading for everyone to calm down, to stop flooding the station with calls, that no one could say for sure yet whether this was true. That’s when I knew, and judging by the quiet on the bus, everyone else was coming to the same realization: we were all participants in a massive and incredibly pervasive rumor machine.

In the end Zambia stayed eliminated, but even with this second round of disappointment it was still a glorious half hour. For a brief moment, we got to believe in luck and the unexpected. What was most telling about all of this was how we ate it up. It could’ve been a case study for mob mentality, or how easily people will believe what they want to. Pushing any critical thinking to the side, we lost ourselves in the belief that second chances do exist, and buoyed each other in this blissful conviction. It was pretty shocking, the sheer number of people who participated in this delusion and the speed at which it spread. But this was no fair weather turnaround. There was no about-face of loyalties, no case of criticism magically turning to celebration. This country loves its team, in success or failure. No one had to quickly put their jerseys back on or their flags back up; they were already on, they’d never come down.