The Khobragade incident has brought to the fore once again the larger issue of diplomatic immunity. The India-U.S. spat arose essentially out of differing interpretations of ‘diplomatic immunity’. The concept of diplomatic immunity is enshrined in the Vienna Conventions on Diplomatic Immunity of 1961 and on Consular Relations of 1963 though it has a history going far beyond the 20^th century. It is now considered part of customary law. The concept is essentially meant to enable diplomats to do their jobs, protect their rights and defend themselves from hostile actions or pressure from the host country. In addition to the conventions, diplomatic immunity and privileges today are based on the principle of reciprocity. For instance, Russia and the U.S. have given blanket diplomatic immunity for all their diplomatic and consular staff. Some countries have bilateral arrangements with other countries according to which their diplomats enjoy visa-free travel in each other’s countries.

However, countries and diplomats have often misused diplomatic and consular immunity to escape local laws. For instance, the U.S. attempted to invoke diplomatic immunity for Raymond Davis after he killed two Pakistani men, even though he was only a contractor for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Similarly, countries often do not respect diplomatic immunity. A recent example is that of India, which refused to let the Italian Ambassador leave the country until the two Italian marines accused of killing Indian fishermen returned to India to face trial. The U.S. has therefore been found to have misused the diplomatic immunity clause on a number of occasions. There is a feeling in many countries that while the U.S. refuses to honour diplomatic immunity for foreign government officials when they allegedly breach local laws, it expects other countries to give its diplomats (as well as non-diplomats) diplomatic immunity when they are caught in a similar situation in other countries.

The latest is the Devyani Khobragade incident, where the manner in which the U.S. treated the Indian official was clearly in breach of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (VCCR) of 1963. Article 41 of the Convention says, “Consular officers shall not be liable to arrest or detention pending trial, except in the case of a grave crime and pursuant to a decision by the competent judicial authority.” However, it adds that if at all “criminal proceedings are instituted against a consular officer…the proceedings shall be conducted with the respect due to him by reason of his official position”.  The U.S. position has been that as a Consular staff, Khobragade enjoyed immunity from prosecution for acts performed in the exercise of consular functions but did not have full diplomatic immunity. This was challenged by India, which claimed that she had full diplomatic immunity. The issue was finally resolved with India transferring the official to its UN mission and claiming full diplomatic immunity, to which the U.S. agreed after a few days.

In the meantime, India had revoked several unilateral privileges to American diplomats and consular staff. For instance, it has issued new identity card to U.S. consular staff which does not accord them protection against prosecution for serious crimes. It revoked several unilateral diplomatic immunities granted to U.S. diplomats and consular staff, removed security barriers around the U.S. Embassy and brought in new restrictions for the functioning of the American Center, among other things. All of these actions still fall within the ambit of reciprocity since the U.S. does not grant these privileges to the Indian Embassy or consulates in the U.S.

Having resolved the diplomatic spat, India and the U.S. are currently negotiating the issue of diplomatic immunity. But it is unlikely that India will reinstate the privileges that it has taken away from the American diplomats unless the same privileges are provided to the Indian diplomats and consular staff in the U.S. So, the state of diplomatic immunity between the two countries is likely to remain the same. However, this might be a good time for revisiting the Vienna Convention of 1963 and giving the same immunity and privileges to consular staff as diplomats. This is necessary because the nature and scope of consular functions has significantly changed and widened over the last couple of decades; in fact, these days consular staff often perform the duties of diplomatic staff. The Consul General today acts as a mini-ambassador in the area under his/her consular jurisdiction. He/she is in constant touch with political leaders like governors, congressmen, etc in his/her jurisdiction and has to play a huge role in attracting investments and promoting trade with his/her country. This is a far cry from earlier times, when consular duties only involved issuing passports, visas and looking after their citizens in their juridical territory.

At the same time, diplomats and consular staff must also follow local laws and not flout them just because they have immunity. After all, for the representative of his/her country, following the host country’s laws is the first step towards gaining respect for one’s own country in the host country. In the unlikely event (after all most diplomatic and consular staff are law abiding) of a diplomat or consular official flouting local laws, they must be accorded diplomatic and consular immunity. Their own country can take action against them, but not the host country. At the most, if it is a serious enough crime, the host country can ask for the offending diplomat to be withdrawn.

The whole unseemly incident is a case of mismanagement by both the U.S. (which acted in unseemly haste) and India (which acted slowly, not realising the power of the humanitarian lobbies in the U.S.). On a more optimistic note, the episode should prompt the U.S. to treat India as an equal partner. One must keep in mind that, while the diplomatic row between the U.S. and India was occurring, much of the international community was quietly cheering on India for standing up for a principle over which the U.S. has ridden roughshod many times in many countries. The issue is also reflective of the fact that while the India-U.S. relationship has been pushed forward by the Indian and American political leaders, the bureaucracies on both sides are yet to fully shake off their Cold War era misgivings about each other despite the 30 plus annual dialogues that the two sides engage in. And that is an unfortunate fact about a relationship that will be crucial in shaping the Asian, and also the global order, in the years to come.

Mozambique’s new national stadium, Estádio Nacional do Zimpeto, is on the outskirts of Maputo, not far from the Chinese-built international airport. The Chinese have also overseen the construction of the new parliament building and a new “Palace of Justice” in the last few years. The main institutions through which a sense of Mozambican national life is constructed—the laws of the nation, international departures and arrivals, and its most spectacular public moments of heroism—now take place in Chinese-built structures.

If you want to see the heart of China’s soft-power push into Africa, you’ll find it in the continent’s new soccer stadia.

China completed its first stadium construction project in Africa in 1970 with the opening of the 15,000-seater Amaan stadium in Zanzibar, Tanzania. That modest structure marked the start of four decades of so-called “stadium diplomacy” by China across Africa, the Caribbean, Asia and the South Pacific. Today there are few countries in Africa that don’t have stadiums built by the Chinese government as gifts or with concessionary loans. There was a noticeable acceleration in construction in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as Senegal, Mauritania, Mauritius, Kenya, Rwanda, Niger, Djibouti and the Democratic Republic of Congo (then Zaire) all got shiny new stadiums. But the real boom has come in the last ten years. Three recent host nations of the African Cup of Nations—Angola, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea—have had all their tournament stadiums built for the purpose by China. All three happen to be nations with significant off-shore oil reserves ruled by autocrats and small elites structured around a ruling family. But countries with more modest natural resources and more democratic structures of government—Ghana, Tanzania, Zambia and Malawi for example—have also found room for new Chinese-built stadia within the last decade, as part of China’s much-documented program of economic expansion.

In return for stadia, China gains an entrée into the highest circles of government.

The impact of this most concrete form of soft diplomacy is difficult to assess in terms of hard cash. But there’s little doubt about how it’s supposed to work. For relatively small outlays—usually well short of $100 million—China constructs a sterile national arena that can be opened with long speeches and presidents in tailored suits kicking balls for the cameras, in return for sweetened access to natural resources, votes at the United Nations and the marginalization of Taiwan. Domestic politicians point to highly visible new infrastructure as evidence of their success as managers of the national development agenda; China and Chinese businesses gain, at the very least, an entrée into the highest circles of government.

All of this is officially carried out in the name of friendship, of course—there’s one Stade de l’Amitié, in Libreville, Gabon, and another Stade de l’Amitié in Cotonou, Benin. Fortunately, the pious fraternal rhetoric attached to the openings of these stadiums has on occasion been punctured by moments of mutual cultural befuddlement. In 2007, for example, it was gleefully reported that at the opening of the new cricket ground in Grenada in the Caribbean, the Chinese ambassador Qian Hongshan and assorted dignitaries displayed visible discomfort as they sat through the Royal Grenada Police Band’s stately rendition of the national anthem of the Republic of China—a country more commonly known as Taiwan. The bandmaster took the rap. “This unfortunate error breaks my heart,” said the Grenadian Prime Minister.

Stade de l’Amitié Sino-Gabonaise, in Libreville, Gabon

By 2010, over 50 stadia had been built with Chinese government support across the continent, and despite the always-repeated insistence that another new stadium is “needed” we are now approaching stadium saturation point. If there was a Millennium Development Goal for stadia per capita, Jeffrey Sachs would probably turn up one morning at one of his Millennium Villages and find that the Shanghai Construction Group had knocked up a 55,000-seater next to one of his newly dug wells, christened it Le Stade de la Fraternité, and carted off all the hardwood trees from the forest.

If the “agenda” of stadium diplomacy has been concealed, it hasn’t really been hidden very far from view. Yet all the focus has been on the not-especially-mysterious question of what it is that China expects in exchange for all these stadia, rather than on what this addition to virtually every African capital city means culturally and historically, let alone whether or not they’re actually enjoyable places to watch a soccer match.

On the plaque: “The friendship between China and Mozambique will last forever like the heavens and the earth.”

It took three separate minibus rides from downtown Maputo to reach Zimpeto. I had arrived from Scotland the previous day and was finding Mozambican Portuguese tough going, but this was match-day, with Mozambique hosting neighbors Tanzania, and it was easy enough to find my way by following the crowds of people in bright red shirts and scarves wrapped around their heads, and the constant parping of vuvuzelas. Inside a vast paved complex ringed with a chain-link fence, a huge grey concrete bowl rose up. When I first saw the new home of Os Mambas, I thought those aliens from District 9 must have finally got their spaceship working and parked it in Maputo. Inside stood a suitably intergalactic prophecy, in Mandarin and Portuguese, written in red letters: “Amizade entre a China e Mozambique irá prevalecer como o céu e a terra.” Translation: the friendship between China and Mozambique will last forever like the heavens and the earth.

With five minutes to go until kick-off, there was virtually nobody inside the stadium complex. Outside the perimeter fence, the crowd thronged through bars and shebeens, in and out of minibuses, picking up cold beers from sellers carrying coolers along the roadside and others in leather jackets flogging knock-off Mambas merchandise. From the street, Zimpeto and its arid concrete approach had the feel of a mausoleum.

The atmosphere in Zimpeto was so subdued, drowned by the vastness of the place

Once inside, the Mambas fans sat stiffly together high up in one huge uncovered stand of plastic seating. It was a significant match, with Mozambique’s hopes of making it to the 2013 African Nations Cup resting on the result, but the stands at either end of the pitch were completely empty. In the town center, I’d seen motorists screaming their devotion to their team out of car windows, pounding their horns at one another and piling fellow supporters into their backseats. The atmosphere in Zimpeto was so subdued, drowned by the vastness of the place, that I could hear the players calling out at each other down on the field. A huge athletics track circled the pitch, and far off in the distance, in the covered stand for VIPs and the away supporters, we could see a small cluster of Tanzanian fans clad in blue whose cheers reached our ears once or twice, muffled by the great gulf of empty space between us. The Mambas drew 1-1, but eventually won the tie after a very tense penalty shoot-out. The celebrations in the stadium were noisy but brief, as jubilant fans dashed back out into the street where the real party had already started.

A couple of weeks after the game I met up with Tico-Tico, Mozambique’s record goalscorer, recently retired. He told me that while he hoped the team would win the next round and make it to the African Nations Cup to be held in neighboring South Africa, he feared such success might give the false impression that the game in Mozambique was being well-run at the national level. Likewise, the new stadium gave a misleading picture of an ambitious and competent national association, when in fact the Mozambican governing body was in need of radical restructuring and reform if the country was to make the most of its footballing talent. A couple of months later, Mozambique traveled to Marrakech and were soundly beaten 4-0 by Morocco.

Eusébio da Silva Ferreira, Mozambican soccer legend who died this month, played at many of the great pre-Chinese stadia of Africa. Photo by Alface.

By and large, the venues that were replaced as national stadiums during the great wave of stadium diplomacy were those that had been built or repurposed after decolonization in the 1960s. Many of these had hosted national independence celebrations. And there was legendary soccer that took place in them. The original Estádio Salazar (renamed Estádio da Machava after independence from Portugal in 1975) had been inaugurated in 1968 with a friendly match between Portugal and Brazil. Portugal was captained by a black player from Maputo—Mario Coluna. The Brazilian side included Carlos Alberto and Tostão. The great generation of Mozambican footballers of which Coluna was a leading light—Eusébio, Matateu, Vicente Lucas, Hilário da Conceição and Alberto da Costa Pereira were others—never played for the Mozambican national team (it couldn’t exist under colonialism and so instead they forged Portugal’s greatest ever team) but at least some of them played right in front of their countrymen at Machava that day in 1968.

Sad that I had come to Maputo too late to see the Mambas play at Machava, I wrote a friend shortly after the Tanzania match who had been to a World Cup qualifier there some years previously. I’d heard a rumor, incorrect as it turned out, that the old stadium was to be demolished. “I’m not sure that Machava can actually be ‘torn down’,” wrote my friend, “since it was just a hole in the ground to begin with. Perhaps it can be filled in.”

The replacement of venues whose crumbling terraces are layered thick with national history by soulless flat-pack “friendship” stadiums is not unique to Mozambique. In the 1960s, Lusaka got Independence Stadium. Nowadays, Zambia’s Chipolopolo (copper bullets) play their games at the new Levy Mwanawasa Stadium, which looks an awful lot like Zimpeto and happens to have been built in Ndola, an industrial town close to many of the country’s most important mines.

From this year, Malawi’s national team, the Flames, will play home matches in Lilongwe, a gridded city of embassies and fenced-off NGO headquarters, rather than the commercial capital Blantyre, where the national team has always played since Malawi’s independence.

Nowadays, nobody would design a sports venue that looked remotely like Kamuzu stadium.

Lilongwe’s Kamuzu Stadium was named after Kamuzu Banda, the eccentric Chicago-educated family doctor who ruled Malawi as a one party state for thirty years. The Rangeley Stadium constructed in the 1950’s took its name from a British colonial administrator. For a few brief years following independence in 1964 it was known as the National Stadium, before Banda purged all political opposition and set about transforming the country into his personal fiefdom: major highways, hospitals, schools and of course the national stadium were all named after him. After Kamuzu was voted out and multiparty democracy installed in 1994, the new president Bakili Muluzi renamed everything that had borne Kamuzu’s name as a way of exorcizing the decades-long cult of personality that had set in. But Muluzi himself liked having institutions named after him, and soon the re-christened Chichiri Stadium was the home ground of the Bakili Bullets. When Muluzi was replaced by Bingu wa Mutharika, who liked to style himself as a kind of second Kamuzu, the venue was renamed Kamuzu Stadium after the self-professed “lion of the nation” and the Bakili Bullets became the Big Bullets.

The old stadium is formed by a low grandstand and six gently sloping massive concrete slabs with large steps cut into them, and it holds anything from 50,000 to 100,000 people, despite having one end where there is no kind of structure at all, just a large rusty billboard and a few trees. There are no seats, except in a small VIP section stacked with pricey-looking chairs and sofas that index the relative potency of the backsides sitting on them by the quality of their upholstery. Nowadays, nobody would design a sports venue that looked remotely like Kamuzu stadium.