SA doesn’t appreciate heroes until it’s too late:
Former president Thabo Mbeki once said, “The days pass, each year giving birth to its successor. What has passed becomes the past as time erodes the memory of what was living experience.”
The passage of time that coincides with an eroding memory is the biggest nightmare to legends like the late Phil Masinga, whose heroic feats tend to be trapped in the ever-ticking arm of time until the next generation of children hears about them again in their obituaries.
Once their caskets hit the ground the memory wanes and the embarrassingly enthusiastic riches of gratitude prey on another star who gets plucked out of history books the moment his body gets wrapped in ice in mortuaries.
The very same coldness these stars felt when they could no longer hear the roars of 80,000 spectators they were once accustomed to at the peak of their careers.
The very same chills they were entangled with when their assets were repossessed because they could no longer generate the same income as when their legs could still lighten the mood of the whole country with a single motion.
The year that Masinga scored that historic goal that took SA to the World Cup in France is the very same year I was born and he went on to play his last game in 2001, when I was only four.
The historian in me had a particular interest in tracking the lives of the 1996 African Cup of Nations-winning team in comparison to the 1995 Rugby World Cup team.
That is where I first came across the life of Masinga and what he had done for the SA football fraternity and, in particular, of how he enabled Lucas Radebe to be signed by Leeds United, being the first black SA expatriates to grace the hallowed fields of Elland Road at the dawn of our democratic dispensation in 1994.
This invoked hope in a large number of SA footballers who were still plying their trade on our shores in a league that was relatively semi-professional at the time.
Among the biographical tributes that will fill up the media space that resemble a quick Wikipedia article, a reflection should be made on the lives of black sportspeople (especially footballers) and the reasons why our stars that lifted the aspirations of the whole country quickly wane and languish in obscurity in comparison with their white counterparts who ply their trade in rugby and cricket.
Common sense that hinges on centuries of colonial stereotyping would most likely inform you that these footballers blew their money on fast cars and nightclubs, as Johann Rupert would say.
Contrary to that, I believe it is more structural, the same way we look down on these stars in time of need and retrieve their memory again after their last palpations is the very same way we do not support our locally produced products, much to the dismay of Brand South Africa.
The last days of the great Masinga must have been filled with hallucinations of moments that long passed, in tandem with the battle between the present and the future.
This was a future that might have restored the glory days that could no longer be seen with the naked eye on the horizon while the memory of the present could at least still recapture the roars that echoed after he sent us to the Fifa World Cup for the first time in our history.
While he may have had that personal battle with time, the true legacy of any man can only be measured by the impact that he has on the coming generations.
As a man who is not his contemporary, to be able to be moved by the life he lived, it can be declared that he has not died but he has multiplied.
There is a isiXhosa idiom that says emva kwengcwaba imali nemfundo ayingeni ndawo, meaning that we all lay bare in front of the inevitability of death.
It is through the much contested war of memory that we can honour him best by ensuring that his great work is never forgotten until the end of time.
It would have been best if the tributes about the man had poured in while he could still read them and be enchanted by the beautiful words that are coming from all corners of the world.
Rest in peace, Philemon “Chippa” Masinga.
You will always be carved in our memories.
● Asemahle Gwala is Sasco Claude Qavane deputy chairperson and a Nelson Mandela University political science student.