Snubbing us, Burundi only spites itself

Burundi’s vendetta against Rwanda has boomeranged to hurt its own people, said Shyaka Kanuma. Dynamo BBC, a promising basketball team from Bujumbura, Burundi, was recently booted from the Basketball African League tournament for taping over a logo on their jerseys that said “Visit Rwanda.” The “vandalism” wasn’t the players’ choice. Burundi’s rulers, who are feuding with Rwanda, “browbeat them into not displaying” the logo of the Rwandan tourism board, a sponsor of the games. That violated the league’s uniform policy, and when Dynamo refused to remove the tape, it was kicked out of the tournament, all its players’ hard work and dreams going “down the drain.” Rwandans have come to expect “petty, negative” politics from Burundi, which closed our mutual border in January after accusing our government of backing a violent rebel group. But this sports tantrum shows “staggering shortsightedness.” The BAL championship is like Africa’s NBA playoffs, and Dynamo was the first Burundian team to qualify. Given that Rwandan tourism has sponsored the league since its creation five years ago, the uniform logo should have come as no surprise. Sabotaging your own team because you “hate Rwanda” is simply “madness.”