Weird celebrations for Brave Warriors’ “E” achievement at Afcon
By Victor Angula /
If the African Cup of Nations (Afcon) in Ivory Coast were a school test, Namibia’s Brave Warriors would have come back with an “E” as its achievement.
“A” is for eventual winner of the Afcon, “B” for the loser of the final, “C” for the winner of the two semi-final losers, “D” is for anyone having made it to the quarter-final stage, and “E” is for those having made it to the last 16, while “F” is for ending up in the group stages.
All the time Namibia has been ending just in the group stages. That is an “F”.
But this time the Brave Warriors went further and achieved an “E”. And so lots of people are ecstatic.
Even the Minister for International Cooperation Madam Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah released a statement congratulating the Brave Warriors for having achieved an “E” and stating that the Brave Warriors have “made us all proud”.
If a child has come home from school with an “E”, this is cause for concern and not cause for celebration. Anyone celebrating an “E” is actually celebrating mediocre performance.
And this is one of the problems we have as a nation, celebrating mediocrity in everything. Getting an “E” is an embarrassment and not an achievement.
Instead of celebrating we supposed to sit down and reflect; that as a country we don’t have a sport stadium of international standards, so that we play our “home games” in a neighboring country, and our two top strikers: Peter Shalulile and Absalom Iimbondi play in South Africa and Namibia respectively, so what if …?
What if we had proper football facilities like other countries? What if our strikers were playing in Europe like other countries? What if our government and our corporate entities really had a serious interest in sport development?
Would the Brave Warriors have ended up where they have ended up this time? Probably not.
While the Brave Warriors made history by advancing beyond the group stages, and also by winning a match for the first time at the Afcon, this is not enough of an achievement.
Look at Cape Verde, a small poor island country, look at what they have done at this Afcon? This is what is called “achievement”.
Instead of feeling shame that Namibia doesn’t have a stadium, Ministers are waving national flags apparently celebrating the Brave Warriors performance, which is poor performance actually. We can’t even beat Angola ever over a 30 year period, and we are celebrating?
Ag, Shame.
– Victor Angula is the editor of Omutumwa News Online. He can be reached at victoranguka@yahoo.com
