It was just after 12.30pm on Tuesday when my phone pinged to announce the arrival of those three words in my WhatsApp inbox.
I knew exactly what the sender was referring to. For at that time, my eyes were focused on the television screen – my ears wide open too – as I took in the words from South Africa’s football el supremo Irvin Khoza.
And it was madness alright!
The death of yet another SA club, thanks to the sale of its PSL status.
And PSL chairman Khoza try as hard as he did, couldn’t hide his conflicted – and to some extent hurt – state.
As he spoke of the demise of yet another “institution” of the SA game, the “Iron Duke” displayed a vulnerability to him that many would not have thought he had. Khoza was at pains to explain the rationale behind him and his executive committee agreeing to the sale of Bloemfontein Celtic to Durban businesswoman and socialite Shauwn Mkhize.
ALSO READ: PSL finally offer an explanation for club sales in an attempt to save face
It wouldn’t have been so bad were MaMkhize doing a take-over akin to that done by Patrice Motsepe when he bought Mamelodi Sundowns. But this was not merely the case of a club with a rich history being given a massive shot in the arm by a soccer-loving tycoon with lots of money to spare.
No, this sale marked the end of an era. Khoza was literally presiding over the last rites of a 50+ year old institution of the SA game. And so much as it made business sense, not only for the Premiership and their responsibility to their financial backers but for the employees of Celtic too, Khoza was pained by having to let go of a club he knows only too well how painstakingly it was built by a man he respected – the late Ntate Petros Molemela.
So much so that he lauded those men – the Prezas as they are called in township parlance – in the amateur levels who spent their hard-earned money to run clubs at the expense of their families. And Molemela was among those, old Whitehead having financed Celtic into being the trophy-winning and passionately supported outfit they had grown to be from his own pocket.
ALSO READ: Irvin Khoza shoots down calls for VAR, costs too prohibitive
Khoza shared his disappointment at the fact that this was a third club with a rich history that the league was losing in such fashion, referring to Highlands Park and Wits who were sold the previous season – the latter ceasing to exist just short of their centennial year. He then expressed delight at the fact that other historical clubs such as Swallows, for example, are back in the top flight and Pretoria Callies is being resurrected and campaigning in the GladAfrica Championship. My phone goes ping again. “I understand the Max (Tshabalala) guy selling because he is struggling financially, but what of all the other sales? People just buy clubs willy-nilly without having to work hard for any of this, money talks.”
I understood my friend’s anger. After all, wasn’t Wits sold to a guy who couldn’t keep the club afloat for even a season and had to sell it on? Incredibly, the same man – Masala Mulaudzi – of
Tshakhuma Tsha Madzivhandila fame has been allowed to buy the status of Royal AM.
Granted, such is the volatile nature of the business, and football is big business, that the buying and selling of clubs is bound to continue unabated – whether we like it or not.
Given that reality, it is thus incumbent on those who run the SA game to ensure that the sale does not equate to the demise of a club as is currently the case.
The PSL has gone to great lengths to model itself on the English Premier League and they would thus do well to also copy them when it comes to club sales.
Chelsea, Manchester City, Leicester City and Manchester United, for example, have all fallen into new ownership. But these clubs did not change their names. And neither did they move from their original base.
Surely, the PSL can find a way to make sure that when a new owner takes over they are bound to retain the club’s name and location. It is a sure-fire way to ascertain that the legacies of clubs remain and we don’t lose institutions that men such as the Molemela worked so-so hard to build.
I found myself imagining Molemela, resplendent in his sombrero and the green robe he loved to wear, turning in his grave at the death of his club.
And few in the SA game would know just how much the old man loved Celtic than Khoza. As it is, he knows better than anyone just how much SA club owners put in to keep their clubs afloat.
Chairman, we’ve got to stop “this madness”.
@Tshilliboy
IOL Sport