Opinion / Columnist
Critics will always be there Sir Wicknell
06 Apr 2016 at 01:30hrs | Views
Dear Sir
Firstly, hearty greetings from the village autochthons in the land of milk, honey and dust or Guruve.
Secondly, the entire ancestral lineage is extremely happy with the work you have done as a benefactor of Zimbabwe's football. No one, and virtually no one, has done what you have done in such a short space of time. Three moons! To your ancestors be the glory.
With lightning speed, you settled longstanding bills, you bought top-of-the-range cars for the coaches and you even sponsored team camping. Your pocket must indeed be a deep one, a real abyss or chasm. You are like our small stream here that never runs dry.
I am a villager and extremely poor, that I cannot imagine even sponsoring a bull fight, so it helps you understand how important you have been to the development of football in Zimbabwe.
Now, that you have done all this extremely well, you must also understand that, that does not make you a semi-deity.
It does not make you immune to criticism and questioning. It does not license you to gage journalists. It does not make you God. It is never a licence to foul-mouth others for pointing out reality. Back in the village, elders with cotton tuft hair, would have told you that a log thrown into the river does not become a crocodile.
You are still human, not God. Sir, even God the Almighty is criticised every day and every moment. What about you?
It is a fact that there was football before you were born. People always supported and sponsored football but what might differ is the degree of sponsorship and hullabaloo. If your idea of sponsoring football was to make you a god of some sort, you lied to yourself. Journalists will always be journalists.
They will not shut up. Never!
Take criticism, for, while your pocket is a deep chasm, this villager thinks you are still a small fly, in terms of absorbing criticism.
Maybe, when you grow grey hair, you will develop the shock absorbers of a grader. Critical!
It is folly, unthinkable and bizarre that at this stage of democratic societies, you still imagine yourself being immune to criticism and you even go on to say, when criticised, you stop sponsorship.
Karitundundu, the ageless village autochthon will content that the stream might have started silting or worse still, drying up that all you needed was a scapegoat.
I don't see, from my small village eyes, how a newspaper story of the non-payment of the national coach, Callisto Pasuwa- which apparently is true- can make you drop the entire sponsorship deal?
In my village, I have no car. I drive ox and donkey-drawn carts, while you drive posh expensive cars and can even afford buying those who chase after the cattle skin (football) but you see, the point is that football is bigger than you.
If you had died last week, the Warriors would still be there.
Most of the graves you see in Zimbabwe today are off a buffet of the gallant players, the rich and the poor supporters and sponsors who might have liked football and attended all important matches but left mother earth and yet football is still there.
They could be turning and twisting in their graves with anger and disgust that you behave this way, after they passed on the button of life to you.
I listened from my shrieking small radio while herding cattle a few days ago, as you talked on Star FM Radio with Pathisani (Mashuga) Sibanda and Kudzai Violet Gwara (KVG) and indeed you bragged about your bursting wealth and also made sense about your dumping your cash-strapped kith and kin all for the Warriors.
Perfect, perfect, perfect, Sir, but you went on to proclaim that you will continue sponsoring ZIFA only for as long as Philip Chiyangwa is ZIFA president.
That, to me, the son of a peasant, is problematic in that you want Zimbabwe's football to be mortgaged to you and Mr Chiyangwa as if it started with you and will end with you.
I have no problem with brother Philip, neither do I have a problem with you, but with the ideology.
We need ideological clarity that football shall forever exist when you and me, are eventually called by our maker.
On that bombshell, Sir Wicknell, take it easy. Absorb criticism. Listen to what others say. I know your ears are not trophy, they are not decoration.
Yours sincerely,
The Villager
Isdore Guvamombe
Firstly, hearty greetings from the village autochthons in the land of milk, honey and dust or Guruve.
Secondly, the entire ancestral lineage is extremely happy with the work you have done as a benefactor of Zimbabwe's football. No one, and virtually no one, has done what you have done in such a short space of time. Three moons! To your ancestors be the glory.
With lightning speed, you settled longstanding bills, you bought top-of-the-range cars for the coaches and you even sponsored team camping. Your pocket must indeed be a deep one, a real abyss or chasm. You are like our small stream here that never runs dry.
I am a villager and extremely poor, that I cannot imagine even sponsoring a bull fight, so it helps you understand how important you have been to the development of football in Zimbabwe.
Now, that you have done all this extremely well, you must also understand that, that does not make you a semi-deity.
It does not make you immune to criticism and questioning. It does not license you to gage journalists. It does not make you God. It is never a licence to foul-mouth others for pointing out reality. Back in the village, elders with cotton tuft hair, would have told you that a log thrown into the river does not become a crocodile.
You are still human, not God. Sir, even God the Almighty is criticised every day and every moment. What about you?
It is a fact that there was football before you were born. People always supported and sponsored football but what might differ is the degree of sponsorship and hullabaloo. If your idea of sponsoring football was to make you a god of some sort, you lied to yourself. Journalists will always be journalists.
They will not shut up. Never!
Take criticism, for, while your pocket is a deep chasm, this villager thinks you are still a small fly, in terms of absorbing criticism.
Maybe, when you grow grey hair, you will develop the shock absorbers of a grader. Critical!
It is folly, unthinkable and bizarre that at this stage of democratic societies, you still imagine yourself being immune to criticism and you even go on to say, when criticised, you stop sponsorship.
Karitundundu, the ageless village autochthon will content that the stream might have started silting or worse still, drying up that all you needed was a scapegoat.
I don't see, from my small village eyes, how a newspaper story of the non-payment of the national coach, Callisto Pasuwa- which apparently is true- can make you drop the entire sponsorship deal?
In my village, I have no car. I drive ox and donkey-drawn carts, while you drive posh expensive cars and can even afford buying those who chase after the cattle skin (football) but you see, the point is that football is bigger than you.
If you had died last week, the Warriors would still be there.
Most of the graves you see in Zimbabwe today are off a buffet of the gallant players, the rich and the poor supporters and sponsors who might have liked football and attended all important matches but left mother earth and yet football is still there.
They could be turning and twisting in their graves with anger and disgust that you behave this way, after they passed on the button of life to you.
I listened from my shrieking small radio while herding cattle a few days ago, as you talked on Star FM Radio with Pathisani (Mashuga) Sibanda and Kudzai Violet Gwara (KVG) and indeed you bragged about your bursting wealth and also made sense about your dumping your cash-strapped kith and kin all for the Warriors.
Perfect, perfect, perfect, Sir, but you went on to proclaim that you will continue sponsoring ZIFA only for as long as Philip Chiyangwa is ZIFA president.
That, to me, the son of a peasant, is problematic in that you want Zimbabwe's football to be mortgaged to you and Mr Chiyangwa as if it started with you and will end with you.
I have no problem with brother Philip, neither do I have a problem with you, but with the ideology.
We need ideological clarity that football shall forever exist when you and me, are eventually called by our maker.
On that bombshell, Sir Wicknell, take it easy. Absorb criticism. Listen to what others say. I know your ears are not trophy, they are not decoration.
Yours sincerely,
The Villager
Isdore Guvamombe
Source - the herald
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