CHICKENS HAVE COME HOME TO ROOST

My dearest readers... Today’s State-of-the-Nation-Sports-Address (SONSA) will, in honour, open with an unforgettable quote from slain rapper, Tupac Shakur, who would have celebrated 49 years today. 2Pac’s legacy lives on long after his shocking death on the fateful night of September 13, 1996.

I remember I was so pained by his death I woke up the following morning at the glorified bunk beads storage called dormitories at Uniswa, Kwaluseni with a dry cough.
I think I finished a course of antibiotics potent enough to clear an African elephant’s syphilis. Enough about me, say your say, legendary Tupac Amaru Shakur.

Spark

“I’m not saying I’m gonna change the world, but I guarantee that I will spark the brain that will change the world,” said the most loved rap artist, who was clearly ahead of his time and would never be forgotten.
In true 2Pac’s style, I am hoping to spark the brain that could change our world of football from the somnambulistic state of hopelessness, poor decisions, lack of direction, dithering, battle for positions and the general under-achievement which has come to define it for so many years.

Precious

Thanks to this precious space in the country’s most read newspaper, by a long mile, I stand in the Pandora’s Box to try and liberate our football from the bondage of the poverty of ideas, and autocratic tendencies one Tuesday at a time.

As the interesting week in which the dirty football politics were laid bare with the drama-in-real life currently taking place at the Premier League of Eswatini (PLE) corridors of power, I was certainly not surprised that the vocal Charles Matsebula would be hauled over the coals by the Eswatini Football Association (EFA).

Matsebula, a football version of EFF’s commander-in-chief Julius Malema, like that Buccaneer-for-life, now faces suspension from those who control the football state organs.
In typical African National Congress fashion, Matsebula, like Juju, is likely to be suspended for not less than two years, which will be enough to put him in the dustbin of football history. We have seen this movie before!

Reaction

Ask Mashumi Shongwe. Matsebula would have been imprudent not to have expected such a reaction from the powers-that-be in our football.
It takes more than guts to try and change the status quo. I am certain Matsebula understands that Malcolm X was not smoking his socks when he said: “If you are not ready to die for it, put the word ‘freedom’ out of your vocabulary.”
I hope he is not surprised either that his own club, Black Swallows, has moved quickly to disassociate itself from his comments or the drive to seek justice in an unjust environment.

It’s football politics at play right now. But he should take comfort in the words of the world’s statesman, Nelson Mandela, that indeed there is no easy walk to freedom anywhere “and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountain tops of our desires.”

This is a test of leadership and resilience on his part. The thing about Eswatini football is that, we have created such cliques where people would want to stay in power.
This is the sort of obsequiousness with our football when football officials are prepared to sell their souls to create a personality cult around certain individuals that they would fear to even tell them when they are wrong.

There is no iota of doubt our football, especially at the PLE level, has not grown an inch since that bumbling fool, with no regard for life, shot dead in cold blood chairman Victor ‘Maradona’ Gamedze on that fateful Sunday evening of January 14, 2018, at exactly 6:53pm.

Sledge-hammer

Gamedze had his own way of doing things. No one can replicate what he did. When others are calling for a change in leadership and administering of the game, the sledge-hammer is waiting to chop them to pieces. Why?
Is our football not democratic enough for anyone to express his/her own opinion on how things should be done? Are all these traces of the autocratic Tinkhundla system of governance also manifesting itself even on our social lives?

Whatever the case might be, one thing is certain, the chickens have come home to roost. We are watching this one with keen interest.
Let me end this piece with another quotable quote from the birthday boy, my man, Pac, “Never surrender, it’s all about the faith you got; don’t ever stop, just push it till you hit the top and if you drop, at least you know you gave your all to be true to you. That way you can never fail,”
Seriously, we can’t breathe anymore….

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