The Machine that watches: Why TZ fell in love with FVS before it even learned its full name

DAR ES SALAAM: FOR three weeks now, I have watched grown men (coaches, mind you, men who once shouted at referees with the fury of a jilted lover discovering WhatsApp blue ticks) calmly reach into their breast pockets, pull out a small card and hand it to the fourth official with the solemn dignity of someone paying a parking fine.

And I have asked myself: Who did this to us?

Who convinced Tanzania, a nation that has spent decades perfecting the art of disputing a throw-in until the sun starts setting, to suddenly trust a system with an acronym so bland it sounds like a government procurement form?

FVS: Football Video Support. Not VAR. Video Assisted Referee.

Never VAR.

Let us be honest with ourselves: We are not emotionally ready for VAR.

But we are ready for its younger, cheaper cousin who still lives with the parents but has a good heart.

Let me explain what has happened here.

The TFF, in a moment of either genius or desperation (history will decide, as it always does, usually after everyone involved has retired), has made Tanzania the first country in Africa to roll out FIFA’s coach-challenge review system in a top-flight league.

No video room full of serious-looking men in headsets. No twenty-eight cameras hanging off the stadium roof like Msimbazi owls.

Just four or five broadcast cameras we already had, a small tent by the touchline and a 12-inch television set that instantly became the most feared appliance in Tanzanian football.

Plus two review cards per team, guarded by coaches more jealously than the actual match ball, the team bus keys and sometimes the assistant coach’s lunch allowance.

This is, essentially, VAR on a budget plan.

And Tanzanians, bless our collectively suspicious hearts, have decided, for now, to get along with it.

I say “for now” with the full weight of a people who know themselves.

We are not fools, you know…

We have watched full VAR systems in Europe take four minutes to decide a handball was not a handball, only for pundits to argue about it for four more days.

So when FVS made its Tanzanian debut in the Azam FC and Simba SC fixtures, and began overturning calls in the opening round, the nation did not erupt in joyous ululation.

No.

We did something far more Tanzanian: We folded our arms, tilted our heads sideways, narrowed our eyes and said, “Mmh. Haya, ngoja tuone.” Let’s wait and see.

That is not an endorsement. That is a probation period.

FVS is currently on a trial contract with the Tanzanian public, and the terms are unwritten but universally understood: Behave yourself, and we will let you stay.

The suspicion, of course, runs deeper than mere football politics.

There is a quiet, delicious irony sitting at the heart of this whole affair, which is that the very device brought in to settle disputes about referee honesty is itself now under suspicion of dishonesty.

I overheard a man in Kinondoni argue, with the seriousness of a man defending a doctoral thesis, that the camera at the 16-metre box was deliberately positioned to favour certain teams.

Sir. It is a camera.

Take, for instance, the matter of the poor Dodoma Jiji midfielder, Mwana Kibuta, who was booked in the opening fixture for demanding a review, a crime that, until three weeks ago, did not exist in the known universe of football offences.

And the new rule says it is only the head coach who may summon the machine, like some ancient ritual where only the village elder is permitted to speak to the ancestors.

Or, in this case, to a 12-inch television set under a tent.

And can we talk, just for a moment, about the referees themselves? Because here is where the comedy reaches its peak.

Several match officials, apparently overcome by years of watching English Premier League football, have started making the TV-screen rectangle gesture with their fingers (you know the one) even though there is no VAR booth, no headset and nobody on the other end of that gesture.

Fans in the stands have started shouting “Sio VAR hiyo, nyie!” whenever a referee does it, which has become, unintentionally, the most useful chant of the new season.

There are growing calls, reasonable ones, frankly, for referees to invent a new, honest signal for FVS decisions instead of borrowing VAR’s body language like a younger sibling wearing an older brother’s blazer to a wedding.

So, the arrival of FVS has not brought silence; it has simply upgraded the argument from “the referee did not see” to “the referee saw, watched again, and still chose violence against our peace.”

That, in football terms, is technological progress with local seasoning.

Then came Simba.

First, David Kameta “Duchu” was sent off after a review of his high boot on Kagera Sugar’s David Luhende at Kaitaba.

Then Ibrahim Jabaar saw red after another FVS review against Pamba Jiji at CCM Kirumba Stadium in Mwanza.

Two red cards, two reviews, one club, and suddenly the machine began to look less like neutral technology and more like a cousin from the rival side who has somehow been given a government job.

Of course, two incidents do not prove bias. They may only prove that the FVS is doing exactly what it was hired to do.

But try telling that to supporters whose blood pressure rises whenever a referee walks toward a monitor.

One red card is football.

Two red cards are suspicious.

Why Simba?

That is the question now circling above Msimbazi like a drone: Why Simba?

Why does the screen seem to wake up whenever Simba are involved?

Why has Yanga, at least for now, avoided the same public summons?

So the questions now gathering around Msimbazi are simple, pointed and impossible to ignore.

Yaani, is this evidence, coincidence, discipline, bad luck, or merely the opening chapter of a future documentary titled “The FVS Files: Case Number Msimbazi?”

For now, the table offers Simba some comfort. Two matches, six points, and a perfect start have kept the club exactly where it wants to be.

Yet the same two fixtures have also handed Simba a less flattering distinction: Becoming the technology’s first repeat “victim.”

That awkward combination of success and suspicion has not gone unnoticed.

And SSC Board Chair Crescentius Magori is reportedly unhappy with the pattern and is preparing to write officially to TFF about the matter. So where does this leave us, three weeks into this grand cost-effective experiment?

Somewhere between cautious optimism and folded-arm scepticism, maybe.

That, if we are honest, is simply Tanzania’s factorysetting for all new things, from technology to wedding committees.

We will use it. We will benefit from it. We will pretend to understand all its rules after hearing them once.

We will complain about it eventually, loudly, probably around week six, once the novelty wears off and someone’s beloved team loses a match to a marginal offside call reviewed on a camera angle clearly filmed by someone’s cousin from the VIP stairs.

Until then, dear kocha, guard those two cards like they are your children’s birth certificates, your NIDA number and the only charger in the house.

Refa, please, please keep your hands to yourself.

And the rest of us?

We will be right here, watching the watchers, suspicious, entertained and fully prepared to accuse a camera lens of having an agenda.