At about 4pm last Sunday, Orlando Pirates were 2-0 up against AmaZulu in their last game of the season, thanks to goals by Gilbert Mushangazhike and Rudzani Ramudzuli.
The fans at home and at the Johannesburg Stadium were happy that their beloved team were finally finding the form that had eluded them at important times of the season.
Mushangazhike is Zimbabwean and Ramudzuli is Venda. Ordinarily this would be meaningless detail to the score sheet. Except that these are not ordinary times.
Ramudzuli and Mushangazhike are, by virtue of playing for one of the country’s best-supported teams, heroes to some, if not many, who later that night went on the rampage, killing Africans carrying foreign citizenship and, in some cases, Venda and Shangaan-speaking South Africans.
Despite the latent xenophobia that has always existed in South Africa, those who perform well on the football field have been heroes and thus exempted from the slur that comes with being from the wrong side of the Limpopo River. Ernest Chirwali (Malawian), Etienne Nsunda (Congolese), Collins Mbesuma (Zambian) and Raphael Chukwu (Nigerian) remain folk heroes long after their last games in South Africa because they brought much joy to their clubs.
Unfortunately, the clubs themselves prefer to treat the xenophobic attacks engulfing Gauteng as something out of their range. “It’s politics, not football” is the recurrent refrain.
Many of the foreign players have obeyed the club decree to keep their mouths shut, even if the attacks have a bearing on their personal safety or that of their next of kin. Zimbabwean maestro Esrom Nyandoro of Mamelodi Sundowns and Nigerian goalkeeper Greg Etafia of Moroka Swallows refused to discuss the issue. “I’m so sorry, my brother. This is crazy and very political, so I cannot comment on it. You can maybe try my teammate, Patrick Mabedi,” said Etafia.
But a club spokesperson poured cold water on the idea of Mabedi talking, saying the players had discussed the matter among themselves and decided not to talk about the violence.
The Pirates pair of Mushangazhike and Ramudzuli are among the few brave players willing to talk about the absurdity of hero-worshipping men by day and demonising them when the sun sets.
Mushangazhike said: “We are heroes when we score goals but we are people’s enemies on the streets. Although I’m here legally, I’m so scared that I’m even afraid to walk on the streets or go visit my friends. This whole thing has affected me and many of my teammates: we are simply not taking this whole thing very well.
“We are all human beings and people must treat [us] with respect and dignity. There are many white foreigners out there but they are not attacked.
“It’s a good thing that I’m flying out to Zimbabwe for national team duty because I don’t know how I would survive, because I’m even scared to go shopping.”
The attacks have left Ramudzuli terrified of going to visit his friends in Johannesburg.
“There is no law that says no foreign people can come to the country. We are no longer feeling comfortable in our own country. We have relatives everywhere so how are we going to visit them, or our friends for that matter. Our fellow teammates are not taking it that well. They are very scared, as some of us are,” he said.
“People who are doing this are very stupid because there are foreigners everywhere. We have ambitions of working overseas and surely this kind of behaviour would not be happening somewhere else. And it also affects us Shangaan and Tshivhenda-speaking people because we are not seen as South Africans by these criminals,” he said.
Moroka Swallows coach Ian Gorowa, a former Zimbabwean international, said the Premier Soccer League and particularly the big Gauteng clubs could play a more peace-making and educational role in the battle against xenophobia.
“I think that perhaps we and another club, or Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs, should play a match in the affected areas, bring all their foreign players with and say: ‘Here they are, they are foreigners — so where is the problem?'” he said.
Football is missing an opportunity. The behaviour of players and clubs in South Africa is a far cry from the attitude of Barcelona and France defender Lillian Thuram, who believes that players’ high profiles give them a voice and a social responsibility, especially to the fans they perform for weekly.
Maybe local clubs are waiting for a star player to get injured or worse to appreciate the complicity of their silence in the makings of an ethnic-cleansing process.