It was a modest welcome with some empty seats dotted across the Lekidi Football Centre auditorium.
Just after the clock struck 11am, Senzo Mbatha found himself huddled on a couch placed just outside the entrance of the Lekidi Centre auditorium, where a press conference to unveil the new man was already underway. The top table appeared starved of guests with only the Botswana Football Association chief executive, Mfolo Mfolo and the Botswana Football League chairperson, Nicholas Zakhem the occupants.
It was nothing lavish; a lonely backdrop banner of the BFL behind the top table and two television sets on either side with the words, ‘Welcome to the home of the Botswana Premier League.’
This was the inside of the auditorium. On the outside, Mbatha was still waiting for his turn to walk down the ‘aisle’. As he begins his tour of duty, Mbatha finds himself hundreds of kilometers away from the usual hustle and bustle of Johannesburg, a city famously known as the City of Gold due to the abundance of the glittering resource. Here he is, in a modest environment, ready to begin a journey to reconstruct the path of Botswana’s football league.
Just before the bottom of the hour, Zakhem confirms to the journalists inside the auditorium that Mbatha indeed is the new managing consultant, another way of saying chief executive officer at the BFL.
Mbatha descends the steps as he makes his way towards the top table. There is not much to pick from his facial expression as he nestles between Zakhem and Mfolo.
In a few minutes he is making his first address as he lays bare his blue print to turn around the fortunes of the local league.
The key take away is that he wants to ‘professionalise and commercialise’ the game.
Mbatha is concerned with the poor attendance at matches. He wants it see fans flock back to the stadiums to enjoy the game.
The issue of attracting and retaining sponsors is another that Mbatha wants taken care of, but he believes they will not come overnight if football does not prove its worth.
Essentially, Mbatha revealed all the good plans expected of a man carrying a big reputation having worked with top clubs in South Africa and Tanzania. He is a considered shrewd administrator who carries the right gravitas.
Moments before Mbatha’s address, Zakhem warned of a highly political environment ahead. As the press conference winds, the director of ceremonies, Prince Tshoswane a former scribe and now BFL communications manager, requests Zakhem to hand a football to Mbatha in a symbolic gesture.
In between, there is talk of ‘don’t drop the ball’. It is metaphorical but it could have a far richer meaning. Mbatha receives the ball and holds it firmly, as if not to betray the trust of his new paymasters. He wants to try by all means not to drop the ball. It is in his hands for now; the ball in his court. But there is ever-present danger lurking within and without the walls of Lekidi Centre. Mbatha admits he is aware of, just like in Michael Jackson’s Thriller, something evil lurking in the dark. As the midnight hour approaches, it could be a long thriller night for Mbatha with creatures creeping up from behind.
Mbatha is probably armed with only his impressive credentials, which could be insufficient to wade off the potential advance of horror moments ahead. His survival firmly lies in his ability to deal with the political toxicity that has, like the couch at the entrance of the Lekidi Centre auditorium, become a permanent feature of Botswana’s football. He has been forewarned, but is he forearmed?
“I am very privileged to have worked in different environments. You know different environments bring different politics. In South Africa, when you work in Johannesburg it is not the same as working in the Eastern Cape, where there are Xhosa speaking people and you are a Zulu boy coming there to take their jobs and to tell them what to do,” Mbatha says.
“But you adapt and know what a political environment is and stick to what you came to do. With time, people will start buying into your plans and what you are trying to achieve. Stay the course and do what you are supposed to do and try and uplift the nation,” he adds.
