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VG: PLEASE GIVE US A SIGNAL

05/10/2020 23:41:00 BY Lwazi's Pandora's Boxs

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Conversation with

VG PART 1 ...

On Sunday night as I retreated to slumberland after watching my beloved Manchester United, 6-1 capitulation to a ruthless Tottenham Hotspurs or gleefully Aston Villa tearing Liverpool apart in a mind-numbing 7-2 crunching defeat, I had a dream.

I was slouched insolently at a chair while having a meeting with the dearly departed Mbabane Swallows and Premier League of Eswatini (PLE) chairman, Victor ‘Maradona’ Gamedze. He looked forlorn, holding a cup of tea while I had my poison of choice – the amber-coloured finest Scottish waters in one of the lounges of a top Ezulwini hotel. The mood was tranquil. He was shaking his head repeatedly, speaking softly almost to the point of being inaudible. “Mkhulu, akuhambi kahle. Two years after ngihambile is this what our football has become? Is this what the PLS has become? Kwentekani mkhulu?”

He quipped. I bowed down. My mind racing back to the heart-drenching picture of him lying on the floor at the Galp Filling Station in Ezulwini after the bumbling fool - with no regard for life - had shot him in cold-blood on the fateful evening of January 14, 2018 at exactly 6:53pm. His touching words cut through my heart like a sharp knife slicing a tuna steak. As Vusi Mavimbela, the SA Ambassador to Egypt wrote in the Sunday Times over the past weekend, I also don’t believe dreams are divine revelations on the road to a Damascene emancipation, but rather most dreams are latent thoughts buried in one’s subconscious. They come in handy when one, who is fast asleep needs to be alerted to empty their urinary tract.

My conversation dream with the dearly departed PLE chairman lasted barely 10 minutes, but he certainly raised pertinent issues and registered his aghast that the PLE he built from almost-nothing, had turned into a piggy-bank for some people; posted a surplus of a lousy E77 250 – way below the Eswatini National Tennis Association (ENTA) which recorded a surplus of E157 188.

He was hopping mad that while he forked money from his own pocket to occasionally give members of the PLE Executive Committee a ‘token of appreciation’ especially, whenever the national team or any of the country’s CAF Inter-Club competitions played away games, or even gave them ‘Christmas bonuses’ for their sacrifices to football, some now had the gumption to demand 10 per cent commission in a sport which ordinarily had to be about rendering service. He even asked: ‘Ye-Mkhulu which executive committee member ever negotiated a new sponsorship in the current crop or those I worked with? Lokutsi nje umuntfu afake libhantji angiphekeletele ka-MTN nase SPTC seku-negotiator loko. Asenime, please!”

frozen

I had no answer. I was speechless. I was like a frozen Ligusha. “All these sponsors come as a result of a tripartite agreement between the PLE, Football Association so you cannot as an individual then claim to be liable to any commission. Apart from the Ingwenyama Cup sponsorship, all these sponsors are not new,”

He retorted: “I wasn’t interested in football’s money, but I was interested in building a brand, not to enrich myself. My biggest wish was to see Eswatini host CAF Champions League final, host the AFCON tournament and qualify for the World Cup. That was my wish. All these people who now want to enrich themselves through football have no such ambitions. They have narrow personal interests. Why didn’t they ask for the commission while I was still alive? Why now.”

I nodded my gizzard-like head, which must have inspired the invention of bicycle chairs, in agreement. I was still gulping down the remnants of the finest from the Scottish distillers, when Gamedze said he was utterly shocked that he had not even spent five days in the reception area of heaven when he received numerous in-contact messages of the flurry of withdrawals from the ‘special account’ he had created.

“You see, these guys mkhulu have no shame. Le-PLS itobuyela iyocela ema-overdraft lebhange if such tendencies are allowed to continue. Tell me mkhulu, i-PLE seyehlulwa yi-Tennis Association ngetimali? No, mkhulu, no mkhulu, it can’t be. What kind of organisation kantsi lena mkhulu? You see sekusefontonje lapha, you see,” he crowed.

Gamedze’s approach to life was anchored in a can-do attitude, fuelled by a fire of passion. He was daring. It is precisely that fire that saw him smelt many deadbeat organisations into well organised, well-oiled machinery they became. Everything he touched turned to gold. Many of his projects, have sadly, snowballed from gold to gold-dust in just two years.

“Nganitjela mkhulu kutsi niyongikhumbula sengifile!” he bellowed. I then woke up. I was dripping in sweat, only to realise this was a dream that was reminding me that my kettle was full and it needed to be emptied.

Let’s continue with this conversation with VG next week. Amen.