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I had to be very careful when crafting this column.
The reason? The last time I tried to fit into the exclusive club of the “clever blacks” and borrowed words from German-born theoretical physicist Albert Einstein, there were serious ramifications.
In fact, the matter was concluded some 4 658km away from Johannesburg.
I had dared to quote from Einstein’s description of insanity, which he described as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.
This peeved the SA Football Association’s leaders – who insisted I had called them fools – to no end.
And I was just minding my own business at a plush hotel in Accra during the Africa Cup of Nations finals when the then Safa president summoned me.
The scholarly gentleman gave me such a dressing down that I felt like a naughty schoolboy in the principal’s office, even though we were sitting in cushy sofas in the hotel lobby.
These thoughts are brought back by developments some 7 115km away from Johannesburg, in the exotic Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro.
The two soccer teams representing South Africa, the SA Under-23 – whom I’ve started calling AmaGents – and Banyana Banyana, the women’s national team, have done the expected.
Both bombed out of their respective 2016 Rio Olympic Games soccer tournaments in the first round.
You, my dear reader, are allowed to ask: what’s new? And that’s exactly my spot of bother.
South African national football teams seem to have made it fashionable to qualify for global events only to be kicked out in the first round.
They have become perennial bridesmaids, what my Zulu folks would call izimpelesi or abakhaphi.
From the Under-17, Under-20, AmaGents right up to Bafana Bafana, it has become the same story.
The senior men’s national team – Bafana Bafana – suffered the same fate at their last Afcon outing and things have got even worse as they will be missing in the next version in Gabon early next year.
This after failing to emerge from a group containing Cameroon, Gambia and Mauritania.
Every time our teams fail to progress to the next round of their respective tournaments, there are ready-made excuses at hand, such as the lack of domestic competition, the absence of proper development and a potpourri of other reasons.
And this is where Safa comes in.
As the football governing body in the country, it needs to come up with solutions to this conundrum.
It is its duty to lead and show the way. We cannot be stuck in one place and keep sounding like a stuck record ... Oops! Sorry, make that CD.
So to avoid the misunderstanding and disagreement of the past with Safa’s leadership – led by that scholarly president – I know those suits occupying the top positions are no imbeciles, cretins or dunces.
They are capable of coming up with a lasting solution to this problem.
As a concerned law-abiding, tax-paying South African citizen of good standing – need I add football mad and living? – I call on the leadership to get us out of this quagmire.
It also doesn’t help when coaches come up with statements saying they are proud of the teams’ performances and use clichés like South Africa is still on a learning curve.
A good performance with no positive results is useless.
Just this week, Banyana Banyana skipper Janine van Wyk, on arrival home from Brazil, made a misleading statement when she declared: “We have grown as footballers.”
No, Ms van Wyk, you haven’t. You are still where you were four years ago.
If you think I am wrong, just look back to the 2012 London Olympic Games.
You will discover that Banyana Banyana’s results are similar to what happened in Rio – they were knocked out in the first round.
If you call that growth, maybe we both need our heads examined.
Please, Safa, do something to help our football. Otherwise, all South African football lovers will be an eternally miserable lot.
Follow me on Twitter @Sbu_Mseleku
