A few years ago a group of Zimbabwean nationals descended on Botswana Football Association head offices and convinced football administrators to turn their backs against their erstwhile sponsors as more money would be coming in truck loads from Zimbabwe and their middle ÔÇôeast partners. After a few days of so called negotiations, the Zimbabweans made an announcement that left all discerning observers dumbfounded and indeed shocked.
They would henceforth be financing Botswana football to the tune of millions. It was a hint of what was still to come. But more crucially, it was a most glaring examplar of the jokes that make up our football managers. The fast pace with which it all happened made some of us suspect that the entire country was being hoodwinked into a ponzi-like honeytrap. And so it turned out to be. Without doing any background checks, football managers agreed and started parading the haggard faced new partners to the media, to the country and to the world.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the exuberance and in some instances outright unrefined haughtiness of the new sponsors made football outsiders even more suspicious. Some started warning that Botswana football was possibly being taken over by illegal immigrants. But there was no stopping the tide.
Botswana teams were immediately told that they were not getting their value’s worth from such reputable sponsors like Mascom and others. The new sponsor who we later learnt ran a fictitious television company called Munamutapa ÔÇô or something like that promised billions. For all of us, except those gullible souls that manage our football, the entire deal was all too good to be true.
Any attempts by the media to ask just who really these clowns were met with scowls and growls of “unpatriotism.” With absolutely nothing to show for it the guys from Munamutapa were sold to the nation as dollar super wealthy individuals who were sponsoring BFA out of their love for football.
Money was on its way, we were told. The media, in turn was portrayed as the usual spoilers whose inquisitive questions could only scare aware foreign investors. Perhaps not surprisingly, even a few of our so called successful businessmen were drafted into the board of directors of the non-existent Munamutapa. But in the end no money arrived and instead the Munamutapa lot disappeared into thin air just as more questions were beginning to come to the fore questioning their credibility. Our hope was that our football managers had learnt something from that embarrassing saga. As it happened they had not.
Fast forward a decade or so ahead, and something similar happens at at the much estimable Notswane Football Club. Only this time those involved can easily be charged with fraud. Without receiving anything from a so called businessman, Notswane delivers itself to a so called South Africa based tycoon. What Notwane decides not to do is to check what businesses the new benefactor runs. Team officials do not even get suspicious when it emerges that all that the new benefactor has ever done in his life is to run a car washing business in South Africa.
It does not even ring a bell to team management that something could be wrong when the benefactor disappears for weeks with no trace, leaving them in the lurch as players go for weeks on end without wages. By the time they discover that they have bought a toy phone it is too late for them to do anything. We highlight these two anecdotes as a way of advising the football community in this country to start taking themselves seriously. Everywhere in the world, football is a serious undertaking, not just because of the money it potentially spins about, but most importantly because of the emotions that people invest in support of their teams. It would seem like Botswana football has been left to people who are not imaginative in raising funds to run it.
Hence the desperation! These are the people who buy into the trash by every Tom and Harry coming their way that they have money to give them. We call on Botswana football to put in place systems that would help them do background checks and due diligence checks on people offering them any kind of help. No person or company would sponsor a football team unless they get something in return. That is the starting point that should be internalized by all our football administrators.
