It has almost become tradition to see retail workers donning the Springbok jersey whenever the national rugby team is in action, no matter how insignificant the match is.
Today Bafana Bafana are playing a do-or-die match that will determine whether or not South Africa will be represented in the FIFA World Cup next year.
However, this scribe has not seen any retail workers wearing a Bafana Bafana replica jersey.
Some might wonder how this has anything to do with owners of these stores where these workers are employed.
The obvious answer is the workers do not elect voluntarily to wear the Springbok jersey; it’s usually an instruction from the top—most of whom happen to be white owners or managers.
The problem, though, runs much deeper and is economic, social, and political in nature. White corporate SA has long taken a decision to only concern itself with associating with rugby and cricket despite football being by far the most popular sport in the country.
Entry point at school level
At the school level, white companies sponsor rugby and cricket school sports, which automatically catapult these two sporting codes above others at so-called former model C schools.
This is also not coincidental; these sporting codes are those in which participation is mostly from the minority racial groups, at least at private schools where most of the native people of the land cannot afford to take their children.
From the blocks as low as basic education, football is disadvantaged and will later be worsened by the incompetent and allegedly corrupt fat cats at SAFA House.
This, of course, would be another excuse why white corporate SA shies away from football, citing administrative shortcomings at SAFA.
But unfortunately, this excuse does not fly for any organisation—including SAFA, which can be put straight if the likes of its president, Danny Jordaan, who is the face of everything that is wrong there, are removed.
White corporate SA has proven effective in plotting and sponsoring the removal of incompetent people in state assets.
But seemingly, they are only willing to do this when they have a direct interest in the matter or public organisation in question.
They did it with funding the #ZumaMustFall political campaign aimed at removing ex-head of state Jacob Zuma from the Union Buildings.
So shameless was white corporate on this one, they were willing to give their employees paid leave to attend #ZumaMustFall marches.
Leave politics out of it; even in sport, whenever there are administrative or governance questions at SA Rugby or Cricket SA, white corporate SA wastes no time in sponsoring narratives for the removal of rotten potatoes—rightly so to protect their investments.
Hashtag ‘Danny must go’
How about funding #JordaanMustFall campaign until sanity is restored at Safa House and there is no excuse not to pump in the resources into football like in rugby and cricket?
Of course we know Jordaan is the least of concerns for white corporate SA because they lock their sponsorship budgets when it even comes to clubs in the professional football league in the country.
Some school rugby teams have better corporate sponsorship than clubs in the PSL, with Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates the only exceptions.
The deliberate attempt to starve football is strategic to perpetuate the narrative that whatever is run by Black people, things fall apart.
Any sport where there is no monetary investment is bound to be mediocre and fall short of competing at the same level as countries where things are done properly.
As for the refusal to enforce the same standards as those of rugby among the employees in retail, this is to seal the cultural conscientisation that white (rugby and cricket) is excellence and Black (football) is mediocre.
The results on the field of play further reinforce this: the highly sponsored Springboks excel and are thus multiple Webb Ellis Cup champions, whereas Bafana struggle, with their last Afcon glory in 1996 during the “Rainbow Nation” euphoria when even white corporate SA was pretending.
Some of us will thus not be shocked nor surprised if and when Bafana Bafana fails to qualify for the FIFA World Cup; that is how the system is built.
If they do qualify today, which is in the event of Benin losing, they would have overachieved given the sabotage by white corporate SA that has been going on for years unabated.
This is one of the reasons that the call for radical economic transformation is more urgent and serious than its bastardisation by self-serving politicians and those hogging the commanding heights of this country’s economy.
