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THE last time the Warriors were home on Nations Cup duty, they were given a raw deal by the Public Address announcer who somehow didn’t trigger a massive National Sports Stadium outdoor party by broadcasting the news that we had finally ended our 10-year wait to qualify for the 2017 AFCON finals.

That was exactly a year ago, June 5 to be precise, when the Warriors — after a 3-0 demolition of Malawi — were left to wonder if their victory had secured them a ticket to Gabon given they also needed Guinea to fail to beat Swaziland in Mbabane that day.

It sounds a bit crazy, in these days when news travels very fast around the world, but just five years after those haunting images have now been frozen in time, of Bafana Bafana going on an extended party of shame at the Mbombela Stadium after mistakenly believing they had qualified for the 2012 AFCON finals, caution was clearly better than humiliation.

And, in these days when fake news also flies faster than real news, the Warriors’ decision to resist the temptation of being lured into impromptu celebrations, even as some of the journalists repeatedly told them on the field about what had happened in Swaziland was probably understandable.

Of course, the reality was that the Warriors had qualified because Sihlangu had beaten Guinea 1-0, but without official confirmation, especially from the man who was in charge of the PA system, the boys and their coaches just froze on that field as if they were in a daze, pondering what fate had delivered for them.

And, as it turned out, those heroic Warriors could not party with their long-suffering fans to thank them for a loyalty to their cause, which is the stuff that is the ultimate definition of exceptional patriotism, to thank them for sticking with them through the storms that had seen this team qualify for only two Nations Cup finals in 36 years.

For the fans, themselves, to thank this generation of Warriors for refusing to be sucked into the kind of mediocrity that had come to define some of those who had worn this golden shirt in the past, including a recent past in which a decade had elapsed since this team had last booked its date for a dinner with the continent’s football aristocracy.

For their unassuming coach Callisto Pasuwa to finally show some emotions — at the end of a strenuous journey that had started with that two-in-one-blanket photograph that will remain the enduring image of a campaign blighted by strife — and soak in the adulation from his fans now that success had been achieved.

We never got the chance to party, as if we qualify for every Nations Cup finals, as if it was something we do with regularity it has become part of the DNA of our Warriors, as if we hadn’t waited for 10 years to get there.

As if this wasn’t only the THIRD time in THIRTY SIX years this had happened to us, which gives you an average of once every DOZEN years, as if this wasn’t the only time we had done it with a game to spare — as if nothing had happened when in reality, something very, very big had actually happened.

As if we were not the only Southern African nation standing tall in that wreckage of shattered dreams across a region whose representatives, including former winners Bafana Bafana and Chipolopolo, had fallen by the wayside in their quest to be in Gabon.

A tournament where not even the Super Eagles of Nigeria, remember them, of course my Game Plan colleague Charles “CNN” Mabika does after their magician Jay Jay Okocha, so good they had to name him twice, came here and mesmerised him so much that his lyrical portrayal of the great man came with a cost, had failed to secure a ticket to.

WE NEED TO STOP HATING OURSELVES FOR US TO FIND THE JOY THAT COMES WITH LOVING WHO WE ARE
Maybe, for goodness sake, let’s forgive that PA announcer who couldn’t spark an outdoor party that June afternoon.

After all, wasn’t that typical of what we have become, a football community used to a lot of negativity, blinded by years of failure, intoxicated by years of under-achievement appear allergic to the occasional success story.

It appears we have even developed a hostility towards the occasional rainbow that breaks the dark storm clouds that keep engulfing our game and when our stars shine — like on that June day last year — the light they cast on the darkness hardly appeals to us.

I have always argued that we tend to hate ourselves so much as a people and you see all that toxic hatred on social media groups that have become our fashionable sanctuary where, hiding under fake characters and pseudonyms on Facebook and Twitter we find the freedom to really pour out venom, mocking our very identity as a people, yearning for a paradise that probably never exists.

When some questionable website makes a mockery of itself by ranking our country as the poorest in Africa — an insult to many who know better — we seemingly go into a frenzy to ensure that we distribute such material to as many people as possible rather than challenge its authenticity.

And when Spanish international football star Nolito, who joined Manchester City last July on a £13.5 million move and has been getting £100 000 a week, says he wants to return home because living in Manchester has been such a nightmare his daughter Lola has been drained of all colour due to lack of sunlight, we are very quick to dismiss him as a joke.

“My daughter’s face has changed colour — it looks like she’s been living in a cave,’’ the footballer told the Spanish media this week. “I am under contract, so the club will decide, but I want to leave.”

I have no doubt, right now, there are a lot of people just waiting for something to possibly go wrong tomorrow, including some who even wish the Warriors lose their match against Liberia, for them to find justification to spread their toxic messages including, but not limited to:

l That Chiyangwa is just a joke who should not be trusted with the responsibility of leading any nation’s football community and only a sick fraternity, like ours, can allow that to happen.

l Of course, they will conveniently not talk about those football leaders in the region who saw a value in this guy to vote him as the COSAFA president and those around the continent who listened when he said it was time to bring down Hayatou.

lThat we must be a bunch of crazy zombies to even expect the Warriors will succeed in an environment where our economy is having some significant challenges, including severe cash shortages.

l Of course, they will conveniently not tell you about the Venezuela Under-20 team, who come from a country in severe turmoil reeling from worse economic challenges than ours, will tomorrow take on England in the final of the FIFA Under-20 World Cup in South Korea after, along the way, eliminating the world’s biggest economic power, United States.

l That we must be a bunch of alien creatures, like those characters of the fictional Star Wars movie franchise which has grossed more than $7.5 billion in box office receipts, to have believed the Warriors would succeed while having held their camp at a complex owned by a prophet they dismiss as not genuine.

l Of course, they will conveniently not tell you about how the same prophet played a significant role in the success of the last AFCON campaign, including personally footing the team’s trip to Malawi where victory gave the team a firm foundation to build their successful campaign, or the Mighty Warriors’ Olympic miracle.

l That there was nothing impressive about our last AFCON qualifying success story because, in their gospel, we had the luck of playing against teams they consider hopeless lightweights like Malawi and Swaziland and a Guinea side that played one of its home qualifiers on neutral soil because of the Ebola virus.

l Of course, what they will conveniently not tell you the same Guinea team, during the 2015 AFCON qualifiers, won two and drew one of the three matches they played on neutral soil in Morocco and — at the finals in Equatorial Guinea — they were just one of three teams to avoid defeat (the others being Mali and Ghana) against eventual champions Cote d’Ivoire.

l That even Khama and Costa’s injuries, which have ruled them out of tomorrow’s game, is a curse from football gods unhappy with the way their colleagues Mushekwi, Malajila, Rusike and Katsande were overlooked for the match against Liberia.

l Of course, what they will conveniently not tell you is that the same Warriors’ side that finally ended our decade-long wait for an AFCON qualifier struggled to play without Khama and fired blanks in the first half of that home qualifier against Swaziland with Billiat on the bench, only to score four after he had come on in the second half, and they lost to Guinea when he was rested.

It’s all part of this deep hatred that some of us have for our identity, this allergy we have to any feel-good story coming from this country we call home, this fierce resentment we have for any success stories to come out of it, be it football or any other sport, and the comfort and excitement they derive from any negativity that emerges.

That is why, when the Warriors went into that first game against Algeria in Gabon, all that this lot picked on was their kit, simply because it was unbranded, and that shaped the narrative of their analysis while the rest of the world concentrated on the brilliance of their performance that was pregnant with style.

And that is why they told us all the Warriors — Musona and others — would boycott the match against Liberia in protest and when these guys showed up for national duty, they decided to shift their crusade to those, in England, who had been targeted for this mission by even daring to tell them that there isn’t a hotel fit for them to stay in this country.

The good thing, though, is that the world isn’t falling for their trap of deception and it’s seeing some positives from the game in this country and the person who did the comprehensive preview for the 2019 AFCON matches this weekend on SuperSport’s weekly magazine programme, Soccer Africa, two days ago described the Warriors as a “team which has been one of the most exciting on the continent of late.’’

AT LONG LAST, WE CAN HAVE

A DELAYED OUTDOOR PARTY FOR MARVELOUS, AND AT THE SAME

TIME, LET’S SPARE A THOUGHT

FOR HIS PEOPLE

Marvelous Nakamba represents both the present and the future for the Warriors — he was the youngest player to turn out for the team in Gabon just days after turning 23 — and his phenomenal development, since then, has seen him play a very influential role in helping his club Vitesse Arnhem win the Dutch Cup, their first major trophy in their 125-year history, and qualification for next season’s Europa Cup.

He was also voted the second best performing player at the Dutch club and now English side Everton and Turkish giants Galatasaray are tracking the services of the Zimbabwean midfielder.

Musona, too, has come home after helping his Belgian side KV Oostende qualify for the Europa Cup next season and, after handling himself with distinction in the week he was named the team captain, there is even an extra reason for us to celebrate his European achievements tomorrow.

For me, tomorrow, too should be one for us to spare a thought for Nakamba’s hometown, Hwange, given that this was the week we marked the 45th anniversary of that disaster at the Colliery when underground explosions on June 6, 1972, killed 427 miners in that horror accident which is one of the worst 10 recorded mining accidents in the past 117 years.

Norman Mapeza, the man who will be guiding the Warriors tomorrow, was just a mere two-month old toddler when the Kandamana disaster struck with fire and poison gases consuming the lives of 427 people on a single day.

When you talk about Hwange, there are three things you can’t ignore — the coalfields, the abundant wildlife and, of course, football, a game that was introduced to the local community, ironically in the same Kandamana area where the accident occurred, way back in 1896 by a certain Albert Geese during the laying of the railway line between Bulawayo and Victoria Falls.

‘‘There were three loud blasts from Number Two Colliery Shaft which sent shock waves across the entire Colliery community and suddenly there was a thick and dark smoke coming from the direction of the blast,’’ one of the community’s football stars of that era, Twyman “Ghost of Chibuku’’ Chibuku, who was a teenager back then, painfully recalled four years ago.

‘’Residents were terrified as they battled to come to terms with what actually could have happened that day. I knew it was disaster as people rushed towards Number Two Colliery.’’

And football would provide the stage for the stricken community to gather, for a memorial service for the victims held just days after the disaster, with 5 000 people gathering in the stadium at the Colliery that Chipangano call their home.

“Among those who died in the disaster was one Masauso Zulu, a brilliant footballer who had played with the likes of Daniel Rendo, Michael Lungu, Daniel Tembo, John ‘‘Seven Days’’ Banda, Cyprian Ngoma, Jerry Mzondwa and Mwape Sakala in a star-studded Hwange Football Club team which was on top of its game,’’ said Ncube.

“Another brilliant player whose career was on the rise — Obert Agayi’s father — also perished in the disaster. Agayi had to go back to Zambia with his mother and siblings and he was never heard of again.

“I remember one Masauso Zulu who was a soccer legend in the Colliery community. He was a very brilliant player who could do anything with the ball. Death robbed us of a footballer par-excellence who had a bright future ahead of him.

‘‘Death is inevitable, but the way it visited us that day on 6 June left emotional scars which are still with us today.’’

Football, somehow, would also provide some consolation for this tormented community, a year after that disaster, when they beat Dynamos 7-6 on penalties in a replayed 1973 Castle Cup final after the match had ended 3-3 with Ncube scoring a double for the coalminers and also converting the first penalty in the shootout for the miners.

But what really makes us such a special people is the way we somehow always defiantly find a way to refuse to be buried by tragedy and, from that stricken community which on Tuesday marked the 45th anniversary of the day when fate dealt them such a brutal blow, a Warrior who will fly his country’s flag tomorrow, was born.

It’s that spirit of defiance that should always provide the strength for us to defy the odds, a people who simply refuse to fall, and if the Ghost of Chibuku and his teammates could rise from their tragedy to win the Castle Cup the following year, surely, no assignment can be deemed too tough for these Warriors.

TO GOD BE THE GLORY!

Come on Warriors!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Khamaldinhoooooooooooooooooo!

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