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Robson Sharuko Senior Sports Editor
I HAVE a good number of childhood friends who tell me their romance with Arsenal was inspired by the club’s investment in many black players during Arsene Wenger’s glory days.

We are the generation that grew up in Chakari back in the days when the suburbs — where the white mine workers lived — were separated from our homes in the compounds, by a security fence.

To demarcate the haves-and-the-have-nots, where the light colour of your skin was a diplomatic passport to endless opportunities, the password to prosperity, the pin code to a good life, the pathway to fine jobs and the gateway to excellent wines.

As if by design, the toxic smoke from the refinery always blew westwards, where our compounds were built, as if someone had studied the wind patterns before deciding where the poor masses would be grouped for residency.

Where the majority had to use giant public toilets, in the heart of the compounds, where boys of our age had to first call, checking whether the elders were using them, before venturing in to also make use of them.

Because, out of respect for the elders — something we were taught at a very early age — it was taboo for us to take a bath with them and even listen to the sounds they made, as they relieved themselves on the other side of these giant toilet complexes.

Chakari Country Club, nestled in the heart of the leafy suburbs, was where the white mine workers and farmers, from the surrounding areas, enjoyed their drinks.

Of course, we occasionally visited Chakari Country Club, when there was a golf day at the beautiful nine-hole course, to provide caddy duties for the white golfers.

That was during the late Seventies and early ‘80s, when racial divisions were part of the huge challenges confronting our country, and many of my childhood friends carried their emotional pain into adulthood.

And, when a swashbuckling football team dominated by black players — the Arsenal of Thierry Henry, Patrick Vieira, Nicolas Anelka — emerged in the world and started challenging the establishment, my colleagues found their love.

A club, in their words, that represented them, which showed black players could be assembled into this efficient and entertaining football team, win the English Premiership title and come within 90 minutes of being crowned champions of Europe.

That I am a Manchester United fan doesn’t sit well with many of them because, they argue, the Red Devils — the statues of Dennis Law, George Best, Bobby Charlton outside Old Trafford — and the Sir Alex Ferguson Stand inside, represent the bastion of white dominance.

RACISM STINKS BUT IT’S GETTING FASHIONABLE IN WORLD FOOTBALL

Given where we came from, what we went through growing up, my childhood friends say they don’t only find it surprising I’m so emotionally attached to Manchester United, some of them even feel it’s a betrayal of our past.

I understand their disappointment because it’s hard these days to ignore the black-and-white divide in football, a game whose soul is being devoured on a daily basis by some racist lunatics.

A world where black players at Manchester United have to think twice about taking penalties because if they miss, as Paul Pogba and Marcus Rashford have seen in recent weeks, they suffer racial abuse online.

Where Kurt Zouma is racially abused at Chelsea and where the whole world can hear the unrepentant Cagliari fans making disturbing monkey chants as Romelo Lukaku lines up to take a penalty for Inter Milan.

Today, the world’s most beautiful game finds itself, as it has never before in its history, at the front-line of battles that are more than sport.

Here in Zimbabwe, in the past few days, the game has become a symbol of our society’s cruelty against women after the Mighty Warriors Olympic qualifier debacle.

When I raised the points that domestic football has a serious problem against women, in the wake of the random classification of those who went to support the Warriors as girlfriends and prostitutes, the message didn’t hit home as much as it should have.

Because, in our fascination with negativity, we chose to go with the tide and label those who were on that chartered flight girlfriends and prostitutes rather than just seeing them for what they were — devoted female Warriors’ fans.

We chose to feed off conspiracy theorists that a mere innocent young female sports journalist had caused friction within the Warriors camp, and led to an altercation between two players, without any evidence to back our ridiculous claims.

The two players who fought in camp, of course for a training ground mishap in which one of them was not happy with the tough tackle, were never faulted for their faulty behaviour in our flawed analysis.

Even if they had fought over a girlfriend, as was falsely reported and happily consumed, no one criticised them for such outrageous behaviour and, instead, all the focus and blame was shifted to an innocent female sports journalist.

Now, that negative attitude towards women, especially in our sport, is what has now culminated in our shocking treatment of the Mighty Warriors, because we believe it is right, and led to the chaos on Sunday.

We are not alone in this — South Africa is also battling these demons and football has taken a leading role to cast a light on its society’s negative attitude towards women.

More than half a million South Africans have signed a petition, calling for an end to the abuse of women, after a female boxing champion, Leighandre “Baby Lee’’ Jegels was shot and killed by her estranged boyfriend.

Baby Lee, who was only 25, had won nine out of nine fights, including seven knock-outs, and was on her way to a boxing gym when she was shot dead.

But, it’s not just about how we look down on women, which is a problem which football now has to confront, but also growing racism, which is blighting the game.

And, in the wake of another explosion of xenophobia in South Africa in recent days, I also took the chance to ask some of those guys I grew up with, who have issues with me supporting Manchester United rather than Arsenal, how they expect us to defeat the very cancer of racism when we inflict so much damage on our fellow black colleagues?

How we can point a finger at those white racists, when we have very little respect for ourselves, when some of us, as is the case in South Africa today, believe that to be a black foreigner is an identity of evil?

How we can expect those fools who bombarded Lukaku with racist chants, on Sunday, to respect us when, among ourselves — as blacks — we attack each other on the basis of nationality, on the basis of colour, as is the case across the Limpopo today?

Itself an irony, given the way the black people of South Africa suffered under a cruel apartheid system which classified their darkness, as secondary, while the whites were considered the primary citizens.

Twenty one years ago, I covered my first AFCON finals in Burkina Faso and, with the Warriors yet to make their bow in the tournament, adopted Bafana Bafana as my team, both as a reporter and a fan, and followed their journey to the final of the tournament.

That was the Benni McCarthy breakthrough tournament, where he won the Golden Boot with seven goals and the Golden Ball, at the age of 20, and felt so proud of him simply because he was the boy next door. But, after the explosion of yet another round of xenophobic attacks, where my fellow Zimbabweans are being attacked simply because they are black and are foreigners, I have to say I have been asking myself some tough questions in recent days.

Including, but not limited to, whether l was naïve to generate so much pleasure in seeing our neighbours doing so well in Burkina Faso.

Whether I was naive to all along believe the 2010 World Cup, which I was proud to cover, came to Africa when, as things appear to suggest, some of those who hosted it don’t want to be associated, in any way, with Africans.

What even makes me sad is that I went to journalism school in Harare with about 25 South African refugees in my class, back in the days when the front-line Southern African states were helping them try and win Independence, at a huge cost to these countries, including being bombed by the apartheid regime.

Those South African nationals were guests of this country, their education wholly paid by this country, their stay wholly footed by this country, as we helped them prepare for life after apartheid, and — crucially — never did we ever treat them any different from anyone else.

And, no one even complained, for once, they had taken places that should have gone to Zimbabweans, let alone attack them for that.

FOOTBALL IS TAKING A STANCE BUT THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE DOESN’T HELP THE SITUATION

At least, football is taking a stance and the decision by the Football Association of Zambia to call off the friendly international against Bafana Bafana was the right, and massive call, to make amidst all this madness.

That it should be made by Zambia, where the ANC headquarters used to be housed, is symbolic and important in terms of message delivery. The global isolation of apartheid South Africa from world sport helped bring down the madness of that racist system, which treated blacks as second class citizens in their own country, and it’s refreshing football is taking the lead against xenophobia.

But, amid all this, it’s important for us to interrogate why the world seemingly appears a place that was created to be hostile to the black man and black woman?

Why Caster Semenya has to move mountains to just be the athlete that she wants, why there has never been a black substantive FIFA president, why it needed a white American, Clint Eastwood, to tell us about Nelson Mandela’s romance with the Springboks, ahead of the ‘95 Rugby World Cup, in the blockbuster movie “Invictus?’

But, when we look closely, we will find there is also a big problem with the way we communicate and English, as a language, creates that foundation for these racists to continue with their madness.

And, to some extent, for some guys across the Limpopo to see anyone darker than them as a foreigner who should be attacked and lynched.

Why, if I may ask, does the word BLACK in the English language represent something bad and the word WHITE represent something good?

Why, if you are a rogue dealer, you operate in the black market, if you have been banned, you have been blacklisted, if power goes out, it’s a blackout, if you want to corner someone through devious means, you have blackmailed him?

Why, where accidents regularly occur is termed a black spot, the rebel in a group is called a black sheep, the voodoo merchants are said to practice black magic, if our national teams lose we call it a black day, and when our teams thrash our opponents, we call it a whitewash? Why, the Devil is portrayed as black and the angels are portrayed as white, the black flag is hoisted outside a prison to announce the execution of a prisoner and the white flag is unveiled to announce peace, when the opposing army surrenders?

Why, the Black Maria is a vehicle that transports prisoners and a black cat is considered a signal for bad luck?

Why a white collar job is representative of those working in offices, a white knight is expected to bring success to a team, white hope is someone expected to bring success to a team, or organisation, and white has to be worn at weddings while black is worn at funerals? Maybe, my childhood colleagues have an explanation to all this?