Greetings,
It has been a long time. I hope the cashgate-laden Malawi life is treating you right. If not, take crumbs of comfort that many of us are in the same dangerously sailing economic boat.
Sorry, if this letter gets you posthumously —your legacies survive beyond the enduring shadows of death.
Mighty Wanderers and Big Bullets, the Blantyre football prides you founded or helped found between 1950 and 1967 are still alive. Bare survival, I should hasten.
Times have changed and so have the teams’ names. It is such a pity that the current crop of football administrators hardly recognise you.
You were men of integrity. When you spoke, Malawi football listened, fans had tails between their legs and players submitted to your authority. You did not need to dish out money or speak their language of violence for them to listen. You did not need the backing of thugs to enable you govern.
You treated players like your sons; opening your homes for them to have lunch and dress up for games. You even sent some of the players to high school. You did not use players and dump them like toilet paper. You had your own sources of income and established careers. You did not need football to raise your profiles in society.
No one is perfect. The only perceptible weakness of your football administration was that you failed to read the economic trends and move your clubs from communal to legal ownership.
This is what is brewing trouble in the teams now. Anyone can take up positions. It does not matter that they have never managed a kindergarten social team.
The circus continues during these elections time. In the wise words of one of them, every Jim and Jack—as long as they loudly proclaim to be fans—can aspire for executive committee positions. Yes, the strategic leadership positions of such big teams.
I know in those days for one to be an administrator, they had to start from somewhere—not just straight from the streets.
You see, being young is no crime, but having no sense of history is.
Current administrators are committing both atrocities. I did not mean to waste your time. It just hurts.
Yours faithfully.
