What Happened To The Dream?

I have a dream; I have a dream that all talented people will fulfill their talents before their last breath. In my quest to find out what exactly happens to our childhood dreams I came across heartbreaking stories. And I became aware of the ubiquitous stench of broken dreams lingering all corners of the beloved country.

My research took me to many places, in Durban I came across a 24 year old mother begging on the streets with her beautiful 5year old son. Thembi’s story reads like a horrible storyline in a soapy, not long ago she made the elite academic top 20 list of the highest scoring matriculants in the country; she got a scholarship to study medicine in a university in London. But two years later she was back in SA, scholarship cancelled due to her pregnancy, now Thembi is a street-beggar, once she was destined to be a top doctor.   

I went to Kwa-Mashu, the notorious township just outside Durban, I met Bongani, he was doing his final year at UKZN studying LLB, he found out he was infected with HIV and subsequently dropped out, his reasoning, ‘What’s the point? I’m going to die anyway!’. Now Bongani is a fearsome car hijacker who’s developed a drug addiction.

Earlier I’d met a young man from Thembisa, a township east of Jozi. S’busiso passed matric in 2004 getting six distinctions, today he works at a car wash, washing cars for a living.

Themba is a talented vocalist, but he now works as a car parking attendant in Braamfontein, he even looks like a hobo now.

I could go on, I came across many stories, all with one common denominator – a dream betrayed. Sometimes life could devastate you so hard you forget how much you have to offer, you forget just how talented and gifted you are. Most of the young people I came across seemed like they’d forgotten just how preciously-gifted they are, they seem to have made peace with their mediocre lives, they are not even 30 yet they are singing ‘’In my time’’.

What went so horribly wrong?

Witchcraft, some claimed. I just listened objectively, I couldn’t judge, I didn’t know the whole story. Speaking to friends and relatives didn’t help either, well maybe it did, they say it was the love of booze, it was the love of a ‘good-time’.

Ultimately though, I didn’t have to be a psychologist to notice that most of the people I spoke to are like many other young people in Mzansi, they have so much talent (be it academically, artistically or athletically) BUT not enough determination and perseverance.

At the fall of the first hurdle they gave up, and when the universe was seemingly conspiring against their dreams coming true they just gave up, sometimes they tried to put up a fight, but it was never good enough.

It’s a story all too common for us in South Africa, Jabu Pule-Mahlangu had the skill and the talent to be counted as one of the finest in the world, that was before his internal demons took over.

It does not just happen to our sports stars, it happens to your brother, to your neighbor, to your cousin, to your sister, to your friend, to your uncle.

What happens to our childhood dreams?  

They get betrayed by our lack of self discipline, they get betrayed by our lack of determination and perseverance, they get betrayed by our lack of a strong will to get up after we’ve fallen.

SA’s got talent, amazingly mind-blowing talent, but like a blooming flower not taken care of, it soon withers and sometimes and sadly, some are now beyond redemption.

 But as long as there’s life, there’s hope.

A few weeks ago a certain Kenneth Kunene made the headlines for his now famous R700 000 sushi party. Six years ago he was in prison, as a matter of fact I interviewed his friend and senior partner Gayton McKenzie who’s also a former convict. We became friends, sort of. I tried help him sell the book on his life-story (the book is titled ‘’The Choice’’, you should actually get yourself a copy). A few years ago they were just ex-convicts struggling to make ends meet, now they are shopping for Lamborghinis. They worked hard, and of course they were very lucky along the way, but then fortune favours the prepared mind.

They chased their dreams after a diabolically-horrible start. What happened to your childhood dream?

Today I’m chasing mine, are you going to chase yours too, or you’ll just let it rot and make peace with mediocrity?

I’m too scared of common fate, you should be too.

Just imagine if we all kept the promise we showed as youngsters, just imagine if we all reached our potential.

Revive that childhood dream of yours.

And part of my dream includes telling you all these stories audio-visually, just keep watching your television, and reading this blog.

   

Open Letter to Teko Modise

Dear Teko Modise,

Yours reads like a classic rags-to-riches story, just over five years ago not many knew about you, you were just a boy with a dream. I imagine your journey to a dream must have been something to cherish, and being a star player at Pirates is a mind blowing and sometimes surreal experience.

Having 75 000 fanatics scream your name in admiration of your skill and talent sounds like a dizzying experience, the after effects of such spells are known to be the swelling of the head, and ofcourse that animal called ego gets inflamed. Not every star suffers these unfortunate side-effects though. The inflammation of the ego and the swelling of the head have such depressing symptoms, which I’ll tell you about in a second.

It was not long ago I found myself in your presence at an Audi dealership, you drove a slick Audi S3 then but you were trying to trade it in for a spanking new Audi TT Coupe, I heard the salesman tell you nicely you didn’t qualify, that bothered me on so many levels;

Was my team Orlando Pirates not paying its star player enough to qualify for this lil’ beauty?

Why would you want a 2-seater as your only car? I wondered. I remember wondering why you were stretching yourself so thin financially.

But ofcourse your starlight shone brighter and not long you were rocking in a BMW 645Ci and Range Rover Sport.

In no time you had ballooned to be arguably SA’s biggest soccer star.

Black child, it’s possible. The message was loud and clear.

But then the symptoms of a swollen head and an inflamed ego started showing their ugly head. Teammates complained you were screaming at them if they did not pass the ball to you, you were at times travelling separately from the rest of the other teammates, reports alleged.

And I read an interview where you are quoted saying, ‘The overseas based Bafana teammates already treat me like I play in Europe’, that got me thinking, how were you treated differently from the rest of the other locally-based players?

Soon you had lost form, but then that happens to the finest players on the planet.

But after almost two years out of form, one thing is clear, you have a massive problem. Ntsie Maphike, the former Chiefs player now their development coach alleges that it’s a natural ageing process because you are in fact thirty-six years old, and not turning twenty-eight as you claim.

I’m not sure I believe that, you don’t look thirty-six, but then again judging age by looks is just a lottery at times, Julius is twenty-nine but looks forty-two, go figure!

You are losing your way Teko, you haven’t scored a goal in more than six months, I still read interviews where you say you have nothing to prove, you couldn’t be more wrong, you have so much to prove, in fact no SA soccer player has more to prove than you do. And you are going to have to come down from your high horse and accept to be treated like every other Pirates player. You are no Ronaldo, Ronaldo scored a mind-blowing thirteen goals last month alone! That’s what superstars do, they let their game do the talking instead of tweeting ‘’I can’t stand this BS, I wanna play!!!! I think this is deeper than football’’.

Maybe we should just accept that you’re not very smart and let you be Teko, so you think the coach has a vendetta against you? Why would he? You honestly think he’ll compromise the team’s chances by not playing the ‘best’ player in the team?

I heard you now roll in one of the ‘cheaper versions of the Astin Martin, but knowing your fetish for sports cars you probably blew half your life earnings on that car, that car is driven by overseas soccer stars earning millions a week! And your ego has ballooned to unprecedented levels, you probably think you should be in some exotic location shooting a Nike ad with Christiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, LOL, you are such an airhead with irredeemable arrogance. As a result, the skill has escaped you, you no longer got game, all you have now is a big head and a big ego, and that Pitso Mosimane dude keeps stroking your ego. Teko, no player in the history of football has been given more chances than you, recognize that.

Once you were a humble boy destined for stardom. You see, all the money you’ve made in your entire career, Steven Pienaar makes it in a few months, yet he remains so down to earth he does not think he’s superhuman, I thought that sober mindedness was going to rub off you, but clearly there’s not much grey matter behind that tired Mohawk of yours. Another thing Teko, you not a pretty-boy by any stretch of the imagination, so stop trying to look pretty, gosh! *rolling my eyes*

Now please sort yourself out, starting by apologizing to your teammates for treating them like lesser humans than you, or please go join other big egos at Sundowns.

If your real age is 28, it leaves you with just about five years of football, and a big Europe contract seem an impossible dream right now, but you can still make the best of playing locally, you already earn around R150 000 a month at Pirates, you are blessed to be where you are boy, there are many boys with more game than you but they never got the opportunities you got. Show some respect son! And respect that famous black and white jersey, hloniph’i-life boy.

 So do you have the will to bounce back? Do you still know how to be humble? I really hate to have had to write this letter to you, but you are a national asset, you play for my legendary team, so I had to say something.

Let’s see if you have the character to bounce back, for two years we’ve been waiting on you recapture your form.  Be grateful. Remember Steve Lekoelea, remember Thabang Lebese, yes it will happen to you too Teko!

Now go out there and break a leg, son. Time's not on your side.

The 'Vuvuzela-blowing Idiots'

If you are a South African you’d by now have heard someone mention ‘’soccer age’’ which is (true to South Africans nicknaming everything) another way of saying false age. Soccer players are notorious for being age-cheats who reduce their age so they can look like they still have lots of soccer left in them and have long careers ahead of them.

For a moment though let’s shift the spotlight to soccer journalism in Mzansi, because of age cheats there are now many soccer players with authentic ages but have a cloud of doubt hanging over them. If we had at least average soccer journalists we’d know exactly who’s cheating and whose not, I think the first port of call would be high schools the soccer players whose age is in doubt attended. If Tso Vilakazi matriculated in 1994 then we can safely conclude that  he was 12 years old in matric, and ofcourse his former schoolmates can testify to that fact, if it was a fact at all.

But here in SA we have soccer journalists who only feed us their lame opinions instead of any credible investigative journalism, the only investigative work you see is transfer rumours, which is quite easy considering that player agents hand out that info on a silver platter.

If you read match reports you’d think you were watching a totally different game, its not uncommon to read that the goal was scored by this player when it was actually a different player, or that it was a header when it was actually kicked into goal. Strue!

Then there’s KickOff magazine, they are running a ‘story’ on how the current Pirates coach is unpopular with supporters, and I swear that’s according to the voices in their heads. Ruud Krol has just helped Pirates win a cup competition for the first time in 10years. Every fanzone I go to Pirates supporters are happy with Krol but that’s not the sensationalist junk KickOff was looking for. How low can these dimwits stoop?

It’s such a long road for us soccer supporters, journalists and soccer officials think SA soccer fans are just vuvuzela-blowing idiots who must just shut up and go to the stadium, in fact Bobby Motaung once said that, well minus the ‘vuvuzela-blowing idiots’ part. Cecil Motaung, Chiefs Supporters Coordinator this week said ‘Supporters must come to the stadium’, ‘’must’’? Or is it a case of darkies using English words they don’t fully understand?  Well there is a perception especially amongst Pirates supporters that Chiefs supporters are ‘moegoes’ while Pirates’ are more the street-smart type, you’ll be forgiven for believing that considering how the club officials address them sometimes.

SA soccer supporters just don’t the respect they deserve hence the seats are still empty at the stadiums, someone tell me which Einstein at Pirates think Mickey Modisane’s dancing qualifies as halftime entertainment?

You know that last Chiefs game was attended by less than 5000 supporters? LESS THAN 5000! Damn! More supporters watch Real Madrid train! It’s really bad, very bad! And we thought the spirit of Phillip was gonna remain in Mzansi after the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

I don’t know what’s going to get people back in the stadiums, but quality soccer journalism will sure help.