Clear case for cleaning up the Bafana image

Afriend has suggested that we need to do a cleansing ceremony for Bafana. He says the team has bad luck and something must be done about it, and soon.

“We need everyone to partake in this. Every religion, cultural and traditional group or cult should come together and help Safa,” he told me as we drowned the week’s sorrows.

After having a little laugh at how some pastors would jump at the opportunity to do the cleansing, and spray the team with pesticide and make them eat grass or rats and snakes.

His suggestion came after we had discussed the news that the World Cup 2018 qualifier in which Bafana beat Senegal 2-1 might be replayed because Ghanaian referee Joseph Lamptey has been found to have made gross errors.

Lamptey has since been banned for life by Fifa. The win – a which is now infamous not only for what then Bafana coach, Shakes Mashaba did afterwards leading to his dismissal, but also for the dubious refereeing – catapulted our boys to the top of Group D.

That win was very narrow and we endured some tense moments towards the end as the Lions of Teranga threw everyone up front looking for an equaliser. Had it not been for Khune’s brilliance, we would not have survived.

I shudder to think what will happen if a rematch were to be sanctioned. It would give Senegal extra motivation … but let me @SbongsKaDonga rather not ruin your weekend with my negative imagination.

The second matter which makes this friend of mine think Bafana are cursed is that it has become, as he put it, unukani, which loosely translated means something ugly and smelly. He says when the coaching job became vacant, CVs poured in but now Safa are rumoured to be struggling to find a candidate.

“You mean to tell me that of the 75 coaches who reportedly applied for the job are suddenly unavailable?” Of course I didn’t have an answer and I wouldn’t bother calling Safa’s communications manager Dominic Chimhavi because he would probably give me the same answer he has been giving us the past two months.

He would say they are tying up a few loose ends and the coach would be announced next week. We laughed at how Safa have been reported to have gone cap-in-hand to Stuart Baxter, asking that he take the job, and when they failed to convince the Englishman, they went Dutch to Ruud Krol.

We imagined a situation where your employer has to beg to employ you. That would be very nice, but that is a topic for another day.

Then there is the Kamohelo Mokotjo matter. The 24-year-old understandably quit international football after Shakes snubbed him a couple of times. He then acquired Dutch nationality which required him to give up his South African citizenship. That makes him ineligible to play for Bafana.

I will not bother over how he came to be called up without first checking his eligibility because … you guessed right: Safa. If you also take into consideration Bafana’s long history of disappointments over the years, it is easy to see my friend’s point. Maybe he is right.

But maybe he is wrong. If Bafana were such an unwanted and unattractive team, then Shakes would not be fighting to get his job back.