All things to all people

CECIL Lolo, the Ajax Cape Town defender who was killed two weeks ago and was laid to rest at the weekend, deserved a peaceful burial. Regrettably he did not get one.

A row erupted and a slanging match has ensued with tit-for-tat accusations flying between the Eastern Cape MEC for Sport, Pemmy Majodina, and the club’s management.

Speaking at the funeral Majodina fumed that the club was not represented until two-and-a-half hours into the service when coach Roger de Sa and chairman Ari Efstathiou arrived. No players attended.

“[Ajax] have made money out of this young man’s talent but find it too expensive to spend to attend his funeral. Had the organisation of the people [ANC] been in government there where Lolo played his football, they would have followed Lolo to his final resting place, but the government of the day there is nowhere to be seen today,” she said.

De Sa has hit back, citing logistical challenges.

It is unfortunate that after this it is not the exploits of Lolo on the field of play that will linger on in people’s minds, but the controversy around his funeral.

Lolo was a top class defender for the Cape Town-based Premier Soccer League outfit. There was little doubt among those who follow local football that he was a future South African international player.

With the national soccer team struggling to find a perfect fit for the left back position, his future looked very bright until his life was cut short two weeks ago.

Born of Eastern Cape parents, Lolo was brought up in Khayelitsha on the Cape Flats. He started his football there, playing until his promising career came to an end in a tragic accident on the N2 on October 24.

But up until that point very few people knew of Lolo’s Eastern Cape roots, including within Eastern Cape government circles.

For Majodina to out of the blue attempt to make political capital out of the family’s personal tragedy is, by anyone’s standards, very low tactics. And that she has persisted with her attacks on the Ajax management simply appears opportunistic.

Make no mistake, her initial concerns were valid. Players who had spent years playing with Lolo should have been at his funeral.

It is an unspoken code for sportsmen to carry a fallen teammate’s coffin to the grave. That this did not happen for Lolo and that Ajax Cape Town did not bring its players to Chebe village, Butterworth, to pay their last respects was both insensitive and ill-advised.

But Majodina was wrong to use this platform to try to score cheap political points.

Further, she missed an opportunity to pay tribute to Lolo as a sportsman who put his home province on the map. Unless, of course, she knew little of him as a footballer – and that would not be a surprise. EFFORTS to develop clear thinking on post-apartheid foreign policy was subjected