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MR SWALLOWS!

07/05/2017 01:46:00 BY LWAZI DLAMINI

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Sports Editor

Yesterday is gone. Today is a gift and tomorrow is a mystery. Where do you even begin writing an obituary describing a friend, a football administrator par excellence, a jovial person with disarming diplomacy like Sibusiso Manana, the dearly departed Mbabane Swallows acting Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Mbabane Swallows?

With tears running down my cheeks as I peck this laptop keyboard I must admit I am finding it extremely difficult to address Sibusiso Manana in the past tense – a man I have known for the past 20 years and a friend I spent copious amounts of time with in our rendezvous weekends when I was still imbibing the umber coloured waters of immortality. He even found it laughable that I don’t drink anything between water and paraffin anymore.
Always jocular, Manana even joked when we boarded a flight to Congo at OR Tambo International Airport last month for Swallows’ CAF Confederation Cup clash against AC Leopards that I should drink the wine served by the cabin crew as even the Bible approves drinking wine after a meal.

The three days we spent in that poverty-stricken country were filled with laughter as we recalled the unforgettable jokes by another dearly departed son of the soil, Joseph ‘Jazzman’ Shongwe in those halcyon days.
Down-to-earth – you could not pick Manana from a meeting of beggars even with a magnifying glass – cool-as-cucumber, the soft-spoken yet cheeky Swallows administrator could talk the sun to sleep, in particular, when he spoke about his beloved Mbabane Swallows Football Club exploits on the field and chequered history.

Manana was the DNA, the mirror of the swanky Mbabane side formed in 1948 and cut his teeth managing the junior side called ‘Arsenal’ before graduating to the senior team and flourished when the current boss, Victor ‘Maradona’ Gamedze took over from the late Bheki Simelane.

Manana represented everything about Swallows – articulate, jolly, down-to-earth, unique and outstanding in his portfolio. He has won many numerous Best Public Relations Officer (PRO) awards, one has lost count and he was the glue that kept the team together when the team was going through internal squabbles in the past because every Swallows person could relate with him. Even opposition team fans liked him because he lived, dreamt, ate, drank football and was respectful of other teams with a sense of humour that seemed to be in-born. He had this disarming diplomacy, he could tell anyone to go to hell in such a way that one looked forward to the trip.

As recent as the last SBIS Radio Sports Show on the Friday ahead of the Ingwenyama Cup final on February 5, his war of words with Young Buffaloes PRO, Sandile Gwebu left me giggling like school girls having found the head teacher in an uncompromising position with one of their own. Gwebu had boastfully said they had not conceded a goal the whole tournament and all the games, they only kicked off play once.

“Ngelisontfo Mthetho ngingasho ngiliphindze kutsi i-Young Buffaloes itayisusa ibhola hhayi kanye kodvwa kanengi kanengi. If bangakakwenti loko batabe sebaphula umtsetfo webaka-FIFA!” He crowed.
Describing his team’s enterprising attacking flair, Manana often told national radio listeners that, “Tsine siyi-Mbabane Swallows Football Club sifike ekhaya lemuntfu sinconcotse ngesihle. Bangasivuleli. Bese sisebentisa i-minimum force. Nasolo ungavuli bese singena nalesivalo!”

Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha ...
Brilliant!
How he coined these phrases is beside me. Manana liked laughing. He was like a room full of people. The time on Friday was 11:10pm when my friend and Swallows boss, Victor ‘Maradona’ Gamedze called to discuss a serious pertinent issue I cannot divulge here at this point. We spoke for a good 30 minutes before he dropped the call and vowed to call again shortly.
The phone rang again 10 minutes later while I was preparing to go to slumber-land and the conversation lasted barely two seconds. “Eish mkhulu, soshonile Sibusiso!” said the street-wise businessman whom many love to hate out of sheer jealousy and envy. It felt like a stab in my heart. Tears just rolled down my cheeks. I couldn’t sleep until 3am. The woman who wakes up next to me each morning tried her damndest to offer emotional support but I was just inconsolable. I was drained, devastated and I still am.
In a country, where we continuously build a thousand artistic gods with feet of clay; where we are in such a terrible supply of heroes and heroines such that we tend to elevate mediocrity to lofty heights, I say it without fear of contradiction that Manana, for all his numerous faults, is the last bastion of a proper football administrator this country will ever produce.
I might be lacking in intellectual humility, but, for the life of me, I am not the one to heap praises on rouble rousers, attention-seekers and blabber-mouths seeking cheap football mileage. Manana, nicknamed ‘Mr Swallows’ by a former colleague, Dumisani Ntiwane, was a close friend to me, a friend who became family and a brother from another mother. No doubt, he was a football person through and through.
He had undying love for the country’s most supported sport and most importantly, the red and white of Mbabane Swallows, the ‘Kabo yellow’ of Mamelodi Sundowns and the ‘Reds of Anfield’ in English giants Liverpool. But it was Swallows, more than any other thing in his life that he lived for and a team whose badge was tattooed to his heart.
At this point, the never-to-be-forgotten words uttered by the late South Africa’s First Democratic President, Nelson Mandela at the unveiling of the tombstone of his comrade, Walter Sisulu comes a little close to how drained, how heart-broken, how devastated I am about the dearly departed Manana.
“In a sense I feel cheated. If there be another life beyond this physical world, I would have loved to be there first so that I could welcome him. Life has determined otherwise.”
Rest in eternal peace ‘Mabura’ ...