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CRY THE BELOVED ‘BIRDS’!

02/07/2019 02:16:00 BY Lwazi's Pandora's Boxs

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My dearest readers ...

Quickly now, it’s good to be back in the Pandora’s Box after three weeks as an Honourable Judge running my rule over the nauseating security forces long-standing saga.

Believe me you, this issue, as fiery scribe Bheki Makhubu would write, is as dirty as a coal miner’s underwear in January!
Talking of dirty brings me today to the ramifications of the turmoil at Mbabane Swallows which have seen the country’s bastion of excellence dominate newspaper pages for all the wrong reasons in the past three weeks. It has been emotional, disheartening and thoroughly entertaining in equal measure for the neutrals. For the bonafide Swallows people, they have watched in awe and shock as small monkeys keep swinging on big door hinges and dragging the legacy of the late club chairman Victor ‘Maradona’ Gamedze through the mud, without a care in the world. Let me write today and be killed tomorrow.

As I write, I would be damned and if I don’t, I will be damned too. In any case, as the passionate DA’s Phumzile van Damme put it in an interview with the Sunday Times over the past weekend, if I wanted everyone to like me, I’d sell ice cream. As the late slain rap artist, Tupac Shakur once sang, I don’t expect everybody to like me, I am not money and not everybody will hate me because I am not death. You see, Mbabane Swallows Football Club, founded in 1948, no doubt the oldest team in the current Premier League, is a unique club on many fronts. Not just because it is the only club that had the unfortunate scenario of having two Mbabane Swallows teams turning up for a game on one fateful day at Somhlolo National Stadium in 1983, but its rich and proud history as a team of first.

successive

First club to have a website; first club to reach the group stages of both CAF Confederation Cup and Champions League in two successive years; first club to be ranked in the top 50 clubs in CAF club rankings; winners of the centenary Mbabane Mayor’s Cup; winners of the first King’s Cup; winners of the inaugural Ingwenyama Cup and the first team to beat a Zambian opposition team at their own backyard. The list of the team’s achievements is as long as Psalms.
But events of the past few weeks have been a horror show that makes Friday the 13th look like the Big Bang Theory.

The situation at Swallows right now is akin to watching a drunk trying to circumcise himself – the more it goes on, the messier it gets.
Long-serving club official, Robert Magongo, in an interview with Yours Truly last Friday, was scathing in his assessment of the situation that rival, Highlanders people have captured the club, but nothing could be further from the truth.

You see, we have seen this horror movie before. When the late Chairman, Victor ‘Maradona’ Gamedze, took over the chairmanship, he faced off a lot of challenges from what he later called ‘Born Swallows’ people who questioned his loyalty, branded him a ‘Mbabane Dribbling Wizard’ person or even a Highlanders person. I remember I was one of the few sports journalists at the time who stood by him as he stuck to his guns. He once abandoned the club but even then rubble-rousers like ‘DJ Nice’ Dlamini could only ‘run’ the club for three days.

The Swallows elders had to go cap-in-hand, to beg Gamedze to stay and continue running the club. I still remember like it happened yesterday how his appointment of dearly departed Mbabane socialite Joseph ‘Jazzman’ Shongwe as General Manager caused such an uproar he lasted briefer than a G-string. It is now written in the country’s Football Hall of Fame how Gamedze turned the club into a semi-professional entity and a bastion of excellence that reaped 20 trophies in his 19-year reign. Until that bumbling fool, with no regard for life, pulled the trigger that ended his charmed life on the fateful evening of January 14, 2018 at exactly 6:53pm, Gamedze had no equals in football administration and excellence.
issues
Now, we are back to square one. The manner the issues surrounding the former Management Committee headed by legend Lloyd ‘Magic Feet’ Maziya leaves quite a lot to be desired.

It was un-Swallows like; it was self-serving and laced with ulterior motives by those who don’t really have the love of the club at heart. God knows this issue could have been handled differently and within the confines of the Swallows family. While the stance of the current Chairperson Princess Lungile on the payment of service providers is well-documented, but reality in local football says these service providers are the life-blood of the game. Their involvement is as old as the game itself, especially on the African continent.

A team, for all I care and know, cannot play on PRAYER alone. That is the honest and brutal truth. Even those who are busy peddling falsehoods know this only too well and one of them is even cited in the report by the former MC to the chairperson of having been in the forefront in soliciting the services of these two service providers who were being paid handsomely over the years of Swallows immeasurable success.

Be that as it might be, Swallows should consider themselves lucky to have a person like Princess Lungile at this point. If she is willing to pay the players’ salaries, feed and accommodate them, she is Heaven-sent. What has seen both Mbabane Highlanders and Manzini Wanderers celestial decline over the years – leading to over eight years without a trophy – is the failure to take care of the welfare of players. Reports of unpaid salaries, lack of accommodation breeds an unhealthy environment not conducive for good results. It is no child’s play running a Premier League team, let alone one as big as Swallows, Wanderers and Highlanders.

It is very important then for the real Swallows people to come out and support the chairperson. She can take care of the welfare of the players and they can deal with the service providers, if you know what I mean. Of course, the appointment of the MC is another issue altogether. They are people who suddenly find their way back yet they were fired by the late Chairman Gamedze because of shocking acts of indiscipline. What has changed now? What new are they going to bring to the club now?

appointments

Some of the appointments are laughable to say the least. What’s happening at Swallows is a front-row seat to a live cartoon episode. Dearly departed officials, Victor Gamedze himself and Sibusiso Manana, must be turning and tossing in their graves at the latest MC composition.

To the real Swallows people, who ought to stand up and be counted, I have for them this quotable quote by Edmund Burke, the Irish philosopher and politician, who penned these words: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Burke’s statement was made in the 18th century, but it still holds true today.
Cry the beloved Swallows ...