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WHEN SWALLOWS CRY!

07/03/2017 04:32:00 By Lwazi's Pandora's Box

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My dearest readers ... “When Swallows cry,” is the title of not just today’s Pandora’s Box sports column, the state-of-the-nation-sports-address (SONSA), but it is playwright Mike van Graan’s new play which was premiered at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg two months ago.

Van Graan’s latest work delves into the uncomfortable but topical issue of ‘foreigners’ and the global migration crisis. According to a review in South Africa’s newspaper, The Sunday Times, the work is a trilogy of plays that explore the inequities and layered complexities of contemporary global mobility, particularly from African perspectives. How ironic that two months after the play was premiered in South Africa, on local football fields, in the magical SwaziBank Cup, Swallows cried – literally.

Yesterday, we published pictures of a Swallows lady fan, looking resplendent in her SwaziBank Cup final 2013 replica, weeping uncontrollably like an abandoned baby. If a picture is worth a thousand words then nothing could have nicely encapsulated how the rest of the boisterous Swallows family felt on Sunday evening. They probably cried with her. Modest National First Division League side, Matsapha United, formed barely nine months ago, had re-written history books in emphatic fashion by not only ending the ‘Van Damme’ (I give myself a pat on the back for coming up with the name which has since gone viral) of local football Mbabane Swallows’ 28-game unbeaten run – 2 520 minutes of football – in all competitions but booting the multiple-award winning red and white side out of the SwaziBank Cup.

It set off the kind of unbridled joy and unmistakable celebrations that reverberated around the country like a tornado and went on to touch even the hearts of people who have never set foot in any of the country’s stadia. People who wouldn’t be bothered about local football joined in the chorus of celebrations, applauding the modest Matsapha-based outfit for doing the most supported game a huge favour in stopping Swallows’ complete dominance.

The dominance of Swallows, naturally, has made them the club many love to hate. This is not surprising and it comes naturally like night following day. The country’s most successful side Mbabane Highlanders – with 12 league titles under their belt – were the most hated side when they dominated local football in the 1980s and 1990s such that local fans would root for a foreign team when the ‘Black Bull’ played in the CAF Champions League. Mhlambanyatsi Rovers, Eleven Men In Flight, lately Royal Leopard are all teams who became persona non-grata in the local football scene because of their dominance no matter how short-lived. Who can forget the calls for ‘Ingwe Mabalabala’ and the armed forces sides to be ousted out of the game because of their ‘unfair’ advantage?

There is absolutely nothing surprising with the unity that has manifested itself behind the unadulterated hatred of Mbabane Swallows, in particular its owner, Victor ‘Maradona’ Gamedze, who is also Chairman of the Premier League of Swaziland (PLS). Sometimes the hatred for the PLS chairman is downright ridiculous and borders on insanity. Once again it is not surprising.