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Sharuko on Saturday

‘‘IT’S the article we thought we would never read again — not on this page, never in this age, not in this golden decade, when the World Cup turns 100, and mighty Bosso celebrate a century of life and memories.

‘‘Twenty all out, 50 not out, the show was all over. But, reality is something else, eventually everything comes to an end, every sweet shop wants to have the best candy, every path has a dead end, every musician needs a good backing band.

‘‘Okay, talking about musicians, let me try to imitate the Notorious B.I.G and sing a rap song for him.

“In the beginning it was just a dream, he used to read Parade magazine, Joel Shambo and George Shaya sitting in the limousine, hanging their pictures on his bedroom wall.

‘‘That was way back, when he used to wear his red-and-black Man Utd shirt, with a hat to match, especially on Sundays, when he would visit the local shopping mall.

‘‘He loved radio, ‘ndini wenyu Jarzin Man, Admire Taderera, ndichiti yasvika nguva iye yemurume wemadhora, muguta reHarare, tichikurukura nevatengi,’ was his favourite programme.

“Back then, he never thought football writing would take him this far, but now he is in the limelight because he writes so tight, born a sinner, because they said a miner’s son couldn’t be a winner, simply because he used to only have beans for dinner.

‘‘He spread love to all his old pals, the Gepa Chief, the Big Fish and all the Chakariboys still in the struggle, saying he was blowing up like the Chakari gold trade and this was goodbye, if we needed him, we would have to call Chakari, same number, same neighbourhood, and it would still be good.

‘‘Back home, where birthdays used to be the worst days, but now they will sip champagne when they are thirsty.”

This is how I think, with a little bit of help from the Notorious B.I.G’s lyrics, the greatest football poet, Peter Drury, would have announced how it all ended last week.

And, somehow, it all came back to life again, this week.

The life and times of this blog.

The one which I called time on last Saturday, bringing down its curtains to mark the end of the show, after 20 years of a very public performance — some good and others just ordinary.

It was never meant to return this week, buried in the archives forever, far away from geography it now belonged in history, just like the Summer of ‘69, it had appeared to last forever, those were the best days of our lives.

But, return it has done, the relentless pressure from those who own it, the readers, proving too much to resist for the writer, and pressure from those who are his leaders in this value chain.

“If they ask you to take them for a mile, take them for two miles instead,” tweeted Qinisela Mpunzi, as regular a reader of this blog as they come.

“One more mile, please, @Chakariboy.”

And, crucially, in this age dominated by the relentless Liverpool machine, Mpunzi wasn’t walking alone.

“At High School, I wasn’t good enough to play for the A soccer team but I wanted to be on the school bus for every match,” tweeted Forward Nyanyiwa, now a specialist health journalist of note.

“I used my English language and soccer articles by @Chakariboy as my visa. You inspired me dude, I did copy and paste, I became a darling of many, don’t quit #century.”

How could the show end, just days before that massive blow by the Confederation of African Football to ban all our stadiums from hosting international matches, a lady asked me as we queued in the bank on Thursday?

Of all days, she said, in such times of strife, when our national game badly needed serious conversations, when we all had to look ourselves in the mirror, when we all needed leaders and we all had to ask each other some tough questions?

And, it dawned on me, this blog had also first emerged in the shadow of a similar national crisis, similar national debate, back in the year 2000, the more things change, the more they appear to remain the same.

IT’S A SHAME, NOTHING MORE, NOTHING LESS

In 2000, the AFCON finals bandwagon was supposed to roll into town, after we won the rights to host the showcase to become only the second Southern African country to stage the tournament.

But those rights were taken away from us when CAF officials claimed our preparations were behind schedule and the country didn’t have enough stadiums to stage the tournament.

The cruel irony of all this was that Burkina Faso had mainly used just two stadiums, none as good as the three in Harare and Bulawayo back in 2000, for the same tourney two years earlier.

I have been virtually to every African country, covering football, in the past 25 years or so, and I can say, without fear or favour, that it’s unfair to say the National Sports Stadium and Barbourfields, even in their current pathetic state, are not good enough to host international matches.

Maybe, not good enough to host tournaments like the AFCON finals, yes, but not international matches like the qualifiers or Champions League games.

It’s an insult to reality by the CAF leaders, an exaggeration of fantasy, a pilgrimage into madness, a flirtation with craziness, an elaborate attempt to justify absurdity.

A wild imagination of those CAF inspectors, another example, if any was needed, that they probably live in football’s version of Mars where derangement, lunacy, irrationality, delusion and hallucination are part of normalcy and can give you a blood pressure reading of 120 over 80.

Admittedly, our stadiums are in very bad shape, and there is no reason to defend our wayward officials, who have been snoring on duty and behaving as if the world belongs to them.

There’s absolutely no reason to believe these specialists, in both deception and dereliction of duty, a people who are just as bad as those CAF inspectors embarrassing us today.

The very people who, somehow, chose to look elsewhere, while our facilities were depreciating in both value and appearance.

As a nation, we deserve better, far, far better than what we have been getting from those tasked with simply maintaining these national assets, which — like Gwanzura and Barbourfields — were passed onto us from a generation that really cared for the value of such facilities.

Back in the good, old days when national hero, Eric Gwanzura, could even consider, and then go on, to build an entire stadium for his community, when pride in one’s country which, by extension, means pride in its infrastructure, was something that ran deep.

Long before these shameless merchants of doom, who have been dragging us into this abyss where we find ourselves at the mercy of those CAF fellows, took over and decided not to respect the responsibility that comes with simply doing their simple jobs.

We can’t hide behind the tough economic environment, that’s a flimsy excuse, because the dedicated groundsmen at Harare Sports Club, who have spent their life taking care of our main cricket ground, live in our neighbourhoods, are affected by the same challenges that we face every day.

But, unlike those who work at the National Sports Stadium, and those who pretend to work at Rufaro, in a similar role, the groundsmen at Harare Sports Club have a dedication to their job, they derive a lot of pride in seeing the stadium looking in top-notch condition and they do it from the heart.

There was a time when we used to have such groundsmen at Rufaro and Gwanzura, men who dedicated their lives to ensuring the stadiums would be in fine condition, they did it with pride and dedication.

But it’s all gone now, and it’s not just about the groundsmen, but their supervisors, those who sit in offices and pretend they are doing something when, in reality, they have been doing nothing for years.

A people seemingly plucked from hell who have absolutely no sense of ownership, and pride, in their facilities.

Surely, if they can’t fix a dressing room, if they can’t fix a media tribune, if they can’t provide internet connectivity at the stadiums, in this day and era, if they can’t fix toilets, these people simply don’t deserve their jobs.

Of course, I can tell you that if the same hardline stance being used by CAF to judge us was applied universally across all Africa, without compromise, only just a handful of nations would host AFCON qualifiers in their backyards.

But, we shouldn’t find comfort in mediocrity, that because Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Congo-Brazzaville, Mauritania, have poor stadiums and, somehow, get the benefit of doubt from these CAF devils, then we also should get such a reprieve.

For goodness, we are Zimbabwe, we should actually be happy that people out there expect to see better stadiums, better facilities, better infrastructure in this country, than other countries, and that they judge us at a higher level should inspire us to always try and be the very best.

HOMELESS WARRIORS, FOR GOODNESS SAKE, THIS ISN’T A HOMELESS WORLD CUP

You have probably heard about the Homeless World Cup, an annual unique football tournament which has been organised since 2003 by the Homeless World Cup Foundation, a social organisation which uses football to fight against homelessness throughout the globe.

Past winners have included Australia, Italy, Russia, Scotland, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Brazil, Scotland, Chile and Mexico while Zambia are the only African side to have won the women’s edition of the tournament which was introduced in 2008.

Players need to have been homeless, at some point after the previous year’s tournament in accordance with the national definition of homelessness, make their living mainly from vending and be in drug or alcohol rehabilitation, having been homeless in the past two years, for them to qualify.

They can also qualify if they are asylum seekers, without positive asylum status, or who were previously asylum seekers but obtained residency status a year, before the World Cup.

A maximum of four players, per team, are allowed on the field — three outfield players and a goalkeeper — and a side can field four substitutes.

Games are 14 minutes long, in two seven-minute halves, and the fields measure 22m long x 16m wide.

Zimbabwe, Zambia and South Africa have been regular participants in the Homeless World Cup and, in the previous tournament in Wales last year, the match between the Zimbabweans and the hosts was hailed as the standout game of the tourney.

‘‘Wales versus Zimbabwe was not only a brilliant football match, it was the perfect example of why the tournament is so special,’’ Liam Geraghty wrote in The Big Issue on July 30, 2019.

‘‘The tournament forms part of each player’s personal journey of recovery and redemption, but for Zimbabwe number four Kuda Mapira, there are even loftier goals than ones scored on a football pitch.

‘‘Kuda played at the tournament despite not having a left foot, pushing aside discrimination against his disability in his home country to play in Cardiff. Now he wants to be an ambassador and an inspiration for people with disabilities the world over.’’

If someone like Kuda, a homeless and physically-challenged boy, can sacrifice so much just to wear our colours, and play at the Homeless World Cup, why can’t we express such undiluted love for our country?

Why should we spare those who have been sleeping on duty, who have let our facilities depreciate under our watch, those who become specialists of all-talk-and-no-action, those Harare City Councilors who turned down investors into Rufaro, simply because they didn’t get something in return, those who didn’t believe the National Sports Stadium deserved maintenance?

So many questions, very few answers, and — just like that — Khama Billiat, Knowledge Musona, Marvelous Nakamba and company will now look like players featuring at the Homeless World Cup.

The very generation we let down, when Cuthbert Dube and company failed to pay Valinhos leading to our expulsion from the 2018 World Cup qualifiers, is the same generation we are letting down again.

The boys ended our decade-long wait for an appearance at the AFCON finals, the boys who have made it two Nations Cup finals appearances on the bounce, are the Warriors we are letting down.

Surely, this blog should not have disappeared under such grim circumstances, that would be some sort of surrender.

To God Be The Glory!

Peace to the GEPA Chief, the Big Fish, George Norton and all the Chakariboys in the struggle.

Come on United!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ole, Ole, Ole, Ole, Ole, Ole, Ole Ole!

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You can also interact with me on Twit¬ter — @Chakariboy, Facebook, Instagram — sharukor and every Wednesday night, at 9.45pm, when I join the legendary Charles “CNN’’ Mabika and producer Craig “Master Craig’’ Katsande on the ZBC television mag¬azine programme, “Game Plan”