Africa’s sports bars, TV shacks step up security for World Cup

KAMPALA/ABUJA –– Guards search customers and peer into bags at Kampala’s Kyadondo bar, almost exactly four years after militants set off explosives in a sports ground outside, killing dozens of fans watching the last World Cup final on a giant screen.

The crowd is small and mood subdued — but Edmond Twebembere does not want to let security fears spoil his night out. “I love the place, maybe too much... So, as scary as the history is, I decided I will come,” said the 32-year-old. “I could still die somewhere else.”

It is an attitude that has helped Kyadondo bounce back from the assault. But a spate of more recent attacks has highlighted the vulnerability of thousands of much less substantial venues were African crowds will gather to cheer on this year’s contest.

Makeshift structures with televisions set up in back allies, public squares and open-sided shacks, the viewing centres scattered across towns and villages would stretch even the best-equipped security force trying to protect them.

“Attacks targeting screening venues have already started ahead of the World Cup ... and are likely to continue even after the final on 13 July,” IHS Country Risk analyst Robert Besseling wrote in a report issued on Monday.

In East Africa, the main threat is Al Shabaab, an Al Qaeda-linked group that is killing civilians to punish their governments for sending troops to confront its fighters in Somalia. Across the other side of the continent, in Nigeria, another threat comes from Islamist movement Boko Haram.

Memories of the Ugandan blasts echoed across the continent last week when suspected Islamist militants set off a car bomb that killed 18 people watching a game on television at a centre in Nigeria’s northeastern Adamawa state.

A week before, a suicide bomber set out to strike an open-air screening of a match in Nigeria’s central city of Jos. His car blew up on the way, killing three people.

A blast wounded 15 people watching an English Premiership football match at a pub in the Tanzanian city of Arusha in April.

Nigeria’s army has issued a nationwide warning to tighten security at the centres. Uganda’s police said there were new “strict regulations” on venues screening live matches.

Kenya — which is still reeling from the deadly September raid on its capital’s Westgate shopping mall and a string of grenade and bomb attacks — stepped up police patrols around venues and told managers to “register and screen” fans.