CHUDZE MANIKINIKI!

My dearest readers ... “In time, we shall be in a position to bestow on South Africa the greatest possible gift – a more human face.”

That is one of the never-to-be-forgotten words of South Africa’s Black Consciousness leader, the late Bantu Stephen Biko who was stripped naked, his hands and feet shackled, killed in a police cell by bloodthirsty, murderous apartheid police.

They then placed his body, still naked and manacled, in the back of a van and drove more than 1 000 kilometres from Port Elizabeth to Pretoria.
His words, on the 40th anniversary today of his painful death, ring truer for this grandson of Mlonyeni, in a smallernyana way, of the opportunity to put a human face on the number one sport in this country – football.

Biko had an idea, which called on blacks to be proud. That’s why inside the Pandora’s Box when we answer to a greeting, we emphasise on being ‘Black and Proud’ because that’s the only way to be.

In the bigger scheme of things, after this weekend’s impressive start to the 2017/18 MTN Premier League season, our football needs a human face to be able to reach its full potential which is latent in its womb.  For far too long, in a nation of slightly over 1 million people, we have had such a dearth of talent and achievement that our pool of genius and progress is so shallow that we tend to bestow the honour of celebrity on twits who are as interesting or intelligent as my home neighbour’s dog, which barks at trees when they shiver in the morning breeze.

I know there are people of substance out there who should be an inspiration to our children but our society is suddenly so perverse that it does not celebrate these people of honour and great intellect. It tends to elevate gangsters and foul-mouthed plastic celebrities as people who should be adored and emulated. 

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