THE last time when someone called me a “dimwit” and accused me of “smoking pot” on the feedback column of an international media website was six years ago when an anonymous Kaizer Chiefs’ fan hammered me with a volley of insults for daring to criticise Bobby Motaung.

The Kick-Off website had reproduced an article I penned in April 2010, under the screaming headline “BOBBY MOTAUNG CAN GO TO HELL,” after the Chiefs’ boss lashed out at the CAPS United leadership, describing them as a bunch of shameless cheats, for selling their players to Mamelodi Sundowns despite having discussed a possible deal with the Amakhosi.

Most of the 67 comments provoked by that article were merciless, in their savage criticism of me, a fierce backlash I should probably have expected given the huge fan base that Chiefs command in South Africa and, in matters like these, raging emotion — and partisanship — usually cloud sober judgment.

“This dimwit Rob Sharuko must be smoking pot, if the way he spews forth empty rhetoric in his column is anything to go by,” that person thundered. “No amount of blowing his stinking hot air, until he runs out (I so wish), will change the fact that it’s utterly immoral for other teams to poach players from another team’s camp.

“Only oxygen-thieving morons like him will justify, if not condone, what Sundowns did to Chiefs without a twinge of conscience. Who cares what he thinks anyway? I just hate arrogant gasbags who bite the hand that feeds them, NXA!!!”

To them, Bobby Motaung represented royalty, was beyond criticism, it was something they didn’t see often in their media, and for a Zimbabwean journalist — whom they held in low esteem, because of his nationality, in a country pregnant with morons who think we are inferior human beings — to tell him to go to hell, was taboo.

And they exploded in rage as they hauled all sorts of insults towards me.

But, as my journalism lecturer told me back in the day of my college days, there are no permanent friends, or permanent enemies, in this job.

And, half-a-dozen years down the line, I find myself fighting in Bobby Motaung’s corner after the Chiefs’ boss this week lashed out at domestic rivals who went into overdrive, in the last couple of days, mocking the Amakhosi for allegedly buying cheap players from Zimbabwe to the extent that when they pay for one, they are given another one for free.

This followed Chiefs’ acquisition of Edmore Chirambadare and Mitchell Katsvairo from Chicken Inn as the Amakhosi try to find a way out of the darkness which enveloped their camp last season as they misfired horribly on all fronts and turned into something that was an insult to the legacy of success that this club has built at home.

Although Chirambadare and Katsvairo were part of eight players unveiled by Chiefs last week, including an unheralded Zambian striker who has been playing in the backwaters of Mozambican football where Evans Gwekwerere, who has been rejected by Dynamos after just a few months of a reunion made in hell, was a star, it was the two Zimbabweans who were singled out by these critics with their move to the Amakhosi turned into a subject of intense ridicule.

Chirambadare and Katsvairo ended up paying a price, and becoming a subject of sickening jokes before they have even kicked a ball, simply because of their nationality, hounded by morons who believe we are inferior human beings whose footballers are very cheap to the extent that when you buy one, you get an extra one for free.

But Bobby Motaung, to his eternal credit, hit back at these people with a spirited public defence of his Zimbabwean acquisitions that was passionate, exploding with frankness, educative and a no-holds-barred criticism of those whose blinkers prevent them from seeing anything good that comes from this country.

And, for that, I take my hat off to Bobby.

YES, BOBBY, WE AREN’T AN INFERIOR LOT THIS SIDE OF THE LIMPOPO

“If I go to Zim there is nothing for mahala and the good thing about Zim is that since we have gone there, give me any flop that we have signed from Zim and that has been a flop, flop, flop,” Bobby Motaung thundered this week.

“Obviously, some players don’t make it because of challenges. But every team in Zimbabwe now has offices and we spend millions in Zimbabwe for your own information. In Zimbabwe they now use US Dollars. You can imagine the Dollar to a Rand now.

“Sometimes we don’t disclose figures because both clubs will have agreed for certain reasons not to disclose the price, but we buy. We spend millions, there is nothing for mahala . . . the only player that we sold in South Africa or in Africa of late was Musona.

“When I brought him here they said ‘buy one, get two free’, yet when we sold him to Germany people were angry. LOOK AT THE NATIONAL TEAM OF ZIMBABWE, THEY ARE THE ONLY ONES THAT HAVE QUALIFIED FOR THE AFCON (2017) IN THIS REGION, ALL OF US ARE OUT.”

And prominent Kaizer Chiefs supporter Saddam Maake, who has supported the club for about half a century now, defended his boss.

“I’ve been a Chiefs supporter for 46 years now, I know everything that is happening there. People said the same things about the likes of Musona when we signed them, hey they are not quality, they are not stars, they are from Zimbabwe blah, blah,” he told KickOff.com

“Even our current PSL Footballer of the Season (Khama Billiat), where does he come from? Even him, he was an unknown and not a star when he arrived here.

“We don’t need stars or big-name players, we need players that have hunger to succeed, committed players who will respect the jersey. Others say we don’t sign quality, forgetting that we don’t have quality in South Africa.

“That’s why our national team don’t qualify for anything, because we just don’t have quality strikers here at home.”

 

SOMEHOW, THEY PRETEND TO FORGET IT’S OUR BOYS ILLUMINATING SUPER DISKI

If our players are that poor that when you buy one, you get an extra one for free, why is it that they are the ones who are illuminating Super Diski?

The best player in the South African Premiership today, by a country mile, is a Zimbabwean forward, Khama Billiat, and he scooped all the big awards, including the KickOff Footballer of the Season voted for by readers of the magazine who might be supporters of Mamelodi Sundowns’ rivals.

They might not have liked the way he destroyed their defences last season, as he became the first player in the history of the South African Premiership to provide 20 assists in one season, but his sheer brilliance dissolved whatever misgivings they had that he didn’t play for their teams and was the destroyer-in-chief.

Willard Katsande, the Warriors’ skipper, scooped the Kaizer Chiefs’ Player of the Season, Players’ Player of the Season, Fans’ Player of the Season, Online Player of the Season, to add to the four times that he won the Player of the Month awards last season.

He scored more goals, as a defensive midfielder, than Togolese striker Camaldine Abraw, who only managed six goals all season, but even though Abraw failed you don’t see them mocking him or any player from his country, and he doesn’t get the kind of abuse and rejection that Kingstone Nkhatha suffered during his time at the Amakhosi where he was doing far better than Abraw.

Katsande’s success wasn’t a fluke because, two years ago, he also scooped all the major awards at Chiefs.

Evans Rusike, playing his first season in Super Diski, was voted the Player of the Season at Maritzburg United where he also won the Golden Boot as his goals, including a double in a winner-take-all eliminator against Jomo Cosmos, saved his team from relegation.

Goal.com have just released their five nominees for the South African Player of the Season and we are the only foreign country with two players on that list, Katsande and Billiat, in another massive vote of confidence in the quality of our footballers.

Our boys have already picked more than 10 awards, including the coveted Footballer of the Season, and pocketed more than a million rand, and more awards are on the way, and some moron still believes they are of an inferior quality that when you buy one you get an extra one for free.

Don’t be bullied Bobby, after all, they said the same when you bought Knowledge Musona before his sheer brilliance made them eat humble pie.

PETER DRURY MAKES YOU FALL IN LOVE WITH FOOTBALL COMMENTARY

As Iceland’s giant-killers added the under-achieving England to their growing list of victims in a UEFA Euro 2016 match now dubbed the greatest shock result in the history of the tournament, the powerful voice of commentator Peter Drury — who in my little book is arguably the finest football commentator in the world — provided a fitting sound to the slaughter of the Three Lions.

I have repeatedly used this space to tell readers how I miss the days when the likes of the late Choga Tichatonga Gavhure, “zvinhu zvaita manyama amire nerongo, mirai tione kuti zvinofamba wani wani, bhora richitorwa na Joel Shambo, The Headmaster, Jubilee, Mwalimu, mazita kuita kupfekerana, richipihwa Shackman Tauro, vamwe vanomuti Bere, vamwe vachiti Chinyaride vechirungu vachiti Mr Goals, vakomana vemaKepekepe vapinda mu danger zone,” made football commentary on radio very enjoyable.

Or Jonathan Mutsinze thundering on the radio, “kunonoka Moooooses, vamwe vanga vatopinda nechekare,” those days when fans would carry their little transmitter radios into Rufaro or Gwanzura and listen to the commentary of a game they were watching.

Listening to Peter Drury, as Iceland blasted England out of the Euros and brought a fitting end to the doomed stewardship of the hopeless Roy Hodgson, was a journey into that past when the likes of Tommy Ballantyne, on television, and Charles Mabika and Evans Mambara on radio, used to make our days through their commentary.

Drury told television viewers the match between England and Iceland was a collision of “national delight and national demand, dominance and expectation, England have the heritage, the glittering Premier League, Iceland have the ambition, this is England’s heaven-sent chance and iceland’s moment in paradise.”

And, when it was all over, after Iceland had won, he told us, “Iceland will dance all the way to Paris for a quarter-final that laughs in the face of logic, a fairy-tale too ludicrous to write, the ultimate underdogs have made a magical mess of the ultimate tournament under-achievers, the best league in the world cannot produce the best national side in the world, a nation struggling with its politics (Brexit) now has a sporting headache.”

Simply brilliant!

TO GOD BE THE GLORY!

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

Khamaldinhooooooooooooooooo!

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