Last week on Saturday, I attended a thrilling football match between Rwanda’s national team, Amavubi Stars, and the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Leopards.

It was one of the quarterfinal matches of the ongoing Africa Nations Championship (CHAN). Rwanda and the DRC have had a rather complicated relationship since the late Mobutu Sese Seko sent some of his best troops to try to help his friend, the late Juvenal Habyarimana, fight off the insurgent Rwanda Patriotic Army. The rescue attempt ended in failure. What happened thereafter is complicated and underlies the now troubled, now calm, relationship. That, however, is not for today.

Once it became clear that the two sides would clash in the first of the knockout matches, temperatures rose quickly. Long before it took place at Kigali’s Amahoro Stadium, the highly billed encounter generated a huge amount of traffic on social media, as fans on both sides tried to out-do each other in promising “fireworks” and predicting the outcome.

So symbolic was the match that the governor of the DRC’s North Kivu Province, Julien Paluku, went as far as declaring it to be of immense diplomatic import. And so it was, although perhaps not in the same terms as the rather theatrical Mr Paluku would have had in mind.

There are many ways in which it was important beyond an ordinary soccer match. For Rwanda as a country, the thousands of Congolese it brought to Kigali, many for the first time, would have returned home with a different perspective on the small neighbour they have long regarded with a mix of dread, admiration, and loathing.

The dread and admiration stem from the “who dares wins” attitude of the Rwandans, while the loathing has to do with the belief many Congolese have long entertained, that at the heart of many of their problems since the Mobutu years, lies their tiny neighbour to the east.

Arriving in Kigali after travelling for several hours inside Rwanda by road was an important eye opener. It wasn’t only the striking tranquillity and orderliness. There was also the “live and let live” conduct of Rwandan soccer fans. After the Amavubi Stars lost the hard-fought match, they left the stadium quietly. Some even cheered the Leopards squad as they drove past them on the way back to their hotel.

Moved by the contrast between his experience in Rwanda and of soccer matches in the DRC the Leopards’ coach, Florent Ibenge felt compelled to comment: “We defeated the Rwandans but they left the stadium without insulting anyone. As we went past them, they cheered us. It is a good lesson. It would be good if we also behaved similarly. Football as a sport is about fair play. When you lose, there is no need for the violence we see back home.”

The Rwandans, it seems, had hit a bull’s eye. And this followed the Confederation of African Football showering the government with praise for what one official called “top notch” organisation that, he said, proved its capacity for hosting bigger soccer competitions.

But beyond showing Rwanda in a good light, the match also had wider ramifications. It is a while now since the DRC has been shutting its border posts at 6pm and stopping the flow of human and motor vehicle traffic in and out.

East Africans who are used to 24-hour operations across their own borders are usually taken aback by a practice that, back home, they have come to believe is anachronistic. When they visit, say the eastern DRC town of Goma for the day and want to spend the night in Rwanda, they must rush out before 6pm, regardless of whatever they may be doing.

For Rwandan and Congolese traders and businesspersons transacting business across the two countries’ borders, this is the subject of much grumbling and unhappiness, and a serious impediment to commercial exchange. There are stories of people who have nowhere to stay the night in either country being caught up in the no-man’s land zone and sleeping out in the open or even being rained on.

Funnily enough, there are stories about border posts staying open way beyond 6pm if local immigration officials or politicians so wish. One that made the rounds sometime last year in one border town concerned a social event in Rwanda, in which one Congolese “big family” and their friends participated. Apparently that evening the border remained open late into the night.

And to prove that, as the Rwandans say, “byose birashoboka” (all is possible), whenever the Leopards have played late evening CHAN matches, borders have remained open way past 6pm, allowing fans to return home afterwards. That, apparently, was also the case with this quarterfinal clash, further proof of its diplomatic import.

Which takes me to the key issue: Now that we know that these border posts can remain open late into the night because of football and big people’s social business, they can do so also for business travellers, tourists, market women and pleasure seekers. Someone should mention it to Congo’s politicians.

Frederick Golooba-Mutebi is a Kampala- and Kigali-based researcher and writer on politics and public affairs. E-mail: [email protected]