If, in this country, there is a body that needs to wake up— and fast— it is the Super League of Malawi (Sulom).
Without that long-awaited awakening, Sulom will continue to mess things up in this country.
And that is just the way it is.
I am saying this because I have observed that some Sulom officials keep shooting themselves in the foot. Such people seem to have a penchant for taking one step forward and two steps backwards.
Take, for instance, the issue of coming up with season-long fixtures. When Sulom President Fleetwood Haiya indicated that he would end the chaos at Sulom by, among other things, ensuring that Super League teams have fixtures for the whole season, the move was regarded as one of the greatest feats in football administration in the country.
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In fact, it was regarded as something Malawi had never seen. Of course, yes.
When I looked at the fixtures the Football Association of Malawi (Fam) affiliate released, I was impressed. I felt that the moment of positive change had come.
As I feasted my eyes on the fixture, I felt like it seemed practical. Little did I know that it [the new system], perhaps, was not here to stay. Maybe it is here to stay but, every now and then, some people at Sulom will deliberately be forgetting it and pretending that they have done nothing wrong.
And this is exactly what they did last Saturday, when they made people believe that— in line with the fixture that was released at the onset of the season, Blantyre-based Mighty Waka-Waka Tigers would face team of the moment Chitipa United.
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It was not to be. Someone, or some people, at Sulom knew that the match had been shifted to the next day [Sunday] but did not even bother to inform some stakeholders by, say, Friday or even Thursday.
Someone who is employed to do just that at Sulom chose to keep quiet about it while enjoying tea, cocoa, coffee or whatever keeps people busy— or makes them forgetful— these days.
My own cousin travelled all the way from Nsanje to watch the match on Saturday, only to be given a bluff meal by, of all people, those responsible for fixtures at Sulom.
In my case, I was at the Umhlangano wa Maseko Ngoni annual cultural festival in Ntcheu District on Saturday morning but was intent on being at Mpira Stadium in Blantyre on the dot so that I could watch the match at Mpira Stadium. Guess what? I only learned about the change of match day three hours before time, when I had already left Ntcheu District.
I know many people who were inconvenienced by Sulom’s regrettable behaviour. Talk of advertisers who booked radio and television slots on the understanding that the match between Mighty Waka- Waka Tigers and Chitipa United would be played on Saturday.
People must realise that they cannot run football they way my grandpa back in the village runs a ndagala. Far from it.
When, back then, I was one of the people that learned about Football Public Relations and Marketing when Fifa and Fam organised the training in Malawi in the early 2000s, this is not what we learned.
What we learned, instead, is that football can be used for building relationships and financial bases. Football is the real deal. The mighty unifier.
But someone at Sulom is taking all this, and football lovers, for granted by pushing them left, right and centre.
Why should people at Sulom secretariat be detached from stakeholders? We must not forget that Sulom has a fully-fledged secretariat but, guess what, people there spend more time thinking about nobody-knows-what instead of engaging in constant communication with journalists and all who matter in football.
It is simple to keep the fire of football burning; keep communicating and make it constant.
There must be no time for on-the-job-training at Sulom.
Malawians cannot continue to be subjected to inefficiencies at Sulom. Wake up— and now.
