Minister Mbalula is stirring our pot of opium

Sorry... eh, sorry... Comrades! Can I say something please?

Thank you.

How about we take this “Bafana Bafana are useless” squabble, and all the tin scraps of opinions surrounding it - including this one - and throw them all in the scrap heap?

We have the public health system, public education, basic services, utterly inequitable workplaces, hoarded land and natural resources to deal with.

Soccer is our opium. Being the world beaters won't feed us, comrades. It won't educate us. It will not give us a caring public health system. It will not deliver us from this drab existence we are giving each other on daily basis. In fact, soccer is the spectacle to put our mind off this existence; to salve our social scars.

We are often diving into rapacious consumption, which in most cases we taste through borrowed money, in order to look and feel 'nice' as we root for our pathetic national team. We take swig after swig, off our brewed bottles, knocking ourselves dizzy, while hoping to beat the sober rivals.

The spectacle to glorify the banks, breweries and telecoms who take turns to stir up the brainwash project – our pot of opium – comes through soccer. Could it be that we love ABSA because we are familiar with its brand, not because it is making us wealthy? How possible is it that we love Vodacom and others not because the smart phones, calls and data bundles we consume are making us wealthy, but because we are happy to live on this borrowed (air) time - this drab existence? It is only the commercial houses, soccer executives and Sepp Blatter gang who line their pockets.

Does it not embarrass us enough that of the two major soccer tournaments we've participated in - 2010 world cup and 2013 afcon - we qualified on the grounds of being the hosts? Blatter is richer; Hayatou is richer; SAFA is sleepier; Minister of Sports is popular; and we are… just angrier.

This rant, the Minister Mbalula's spectacle, and our rant over the spectacle, are not about soccer. It is about our pathetic self-concept! We know that we are not doing things the right way. Yet we believe that we are special. Our snobbishness is killing us all!

Frothing in the mouth about Bafana Bafana's woeful showing is similar to how we create a spectacle of the matric results, or that fashion show we call the Opening of Parliament (where the people gleefully dress to the nines today; the very next day they are sleeping on the job; and all we can do is laugh about it.)

If we are not glorifying the finish line, we are stressing over it. But very few ever concern themselves with how good we are at the starting line. Kids are shuffled through the 12 years of low-expectation schooling, and get hailed for coming out on another end through pathetic performance. It is okay. We will just hire many motivational speakers to keep them going.

I will stop here, comrades. Thank you for reading.