HONESTY STILL NOT THE BEST POLICY IN SWAZI FOOTBALL

My dearest readers ... If all those who claim to love Swazi football more than anybody else were to go through a lie detector, I am certain the poor machine would break its needles from overwork!

If such an instrument was to be purchased for the Premier League of Swaziland (PLS) Board of Governors and FA Executive Committee, I would not be surprised by a sudden motion calling for a complete ban on all technological imports!

In this country of ours, people condone dishonesty. The Tinkhundla system itself honours those who peddle falsehood, especially when the status quo stands to benefit from it.
This State-of-the-Nation-Sports-Address (SONSA), which seeks to liberate local sports one Tuesday at a time, once said in the vanguard of Swazi football, when you want the powers-that-be to give you bread, ask for a stone. If you want to go east, suggests west.
 Frankly, honesty is still not the best policy in our Swazi football.

The reaction from all around – even from pseudo experts on social media – after Mbabane Swallows Chairman Victor ‘Maradona’ Gamedze, who also doubles up as Premier League of Swaziland (PLS) head honcho, tell-it-all interview aired by pay-per-view channel, SuperSport, on its Soccer Africa show last Thursday, bordered on insanity.
Gamedze’s comments not only got tongues wagging but he literally let loose a fat cat among the pigeons.

“Gamedze has just insulted the very same league he is leading by saying he is tired of Swazi football,” is a WhatsApp message I received from an unknown number. It was quickly followed by the clip of his interview when the humble PLS chairman, whose business success story and his team’s dominance has won him many enemies than friends, and was clearly walking on shaky grammatical grounds.
“Gamedze should resign after this comment. He has undermined the league by saying he is tired about Swazi football,” wrote a friend of mine who sits in the FA Executive Committee. There were more jarring criticisms of the Swallows most successful chairman with 19 trophies under his belt in a 20-year reign of the 69-year-old club.

Others saw things differently. “Gamedze is an astute businessman. He has seen an opportunity in aspiring to buy a South African PSL club status. The next dimension belongs to those who are tired of their stagnation,” read an SMS philosophically written to me by a former sports journalist-turned-pastor who resides at South Africa’s playground, Durban now, preaching the word of God. Bless his soul.

Nothing can be further from the truth. I may not agree with Gamedze’s idea of buying a status of a team in South Africa and have the team base in Swaziland because, if truth be told, it is impractical. I told him as much in the press briefing on Friday afternoon at his offices. Buying a status of a team in South Africa, to me, would make business sense in the bigger scheme of things because it would help channel local players to the money-spinning SA league and in many ways would develop local football. Many of our talented players have failed to make it to the SA league not because of lack of talent but failure to have business managers or football agents who can present that opportunity. We have as many as five local players who can walk into any of the South African teams any day but we all know you need ‘connections’, grease a few hands, before you can sign on the dotted line of a life-changing contract.

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