Following on the success of hosting the 1997 Africa Under-20 championship the powers that be have decided that we are now ready to host the real thing – the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations. Forget that our ‘A basimane Ba Kgwathe’ cohort in 1997 seemed to view the white and black spherical thing as incidental and continued to embarrass the locals by losing all 3 of their games, conceding 10 goals in the process and scoring only 1, in our book the tournament was a ‘success’. So our sports leaders have decided that 30 years is enough time to heal from the embarrassment, see professional counsellors and forget it ever happened.

I think they also wanted to ensure there are no remnants of the 1997 team who are likely to make it into the 2027 team and perpetuate the 1997 embarrassment. But the CAF inspection team ruptured our excitement by declaring our stadia unfit to host such a tournament and gave a myriad of reasons.

BNSC chief executive officer was quoted as saying “They have failed inspection but the things that have caused the failure are minor at Obed Itani stadium. We have to install a light so that the brightness meets the set standards,”. Now this turned out to be the most deflating statement we heard from the whole stadium fiasco. I mean everyone who has been resident in this country knows how difficult it is to ‘install a light so that the brightness meets the set standards’. It is at the same level of difficulty as explaining to Ipelegeng workers the difference between communism and socialism. Most of our streetlights have never been fixed ever since they were installed and our cities and villages are Dark Parks. It probably is easier to increase a stadium capacity than fix a light and when CEOs call installation of lights ‘a minor job’ there must have been a collective cringe of dejection across the country. No one knows how to fix lights around these shores.

But I personally believe the real reason why the stadia failed the CAF inspection is the restrooms. I wanted to use toilets but these days journalism requires a great deal of euphemism and political correctness. Otherwise one would have to deal with backlash from pressure groups with names like Citizens Against Journalists Who Call Restrooms Toilets. I didn’t learn this from Journalism School – heaven, I didn’t even go to one - but more from the Journalism Sidewalk University. I also have a cousin who schooled overseas in the US where toilets are called respectful names. There they respect restrooms unlike us where you find our restrooms built in a corner right at the back of the yard like a poor cousin at the dinner table. I am certain the CAF officials looked at the filthy, wet-floored restrooms and decided ‘no, not in this country’.

At football games by halftime the men’s restroom is the littered with guys teetering back and forth while aiming pretty much at random like firemen at a fire emergency, which is why no sane male would ever wash his hands in a stadium sink. On the ladies’ side it is no better. I have never strayed into a ladies’ restroom of course so I got this information from a distressed female restroom user. The filthiness is stuff for horror movies. Using the restroom means one cannot come into direct ‘buttular’ contact with the seat and so one hovers above it, thereby turning the seat into a Weewee Waterpark. Hover-peeing is now a popular solution in our stadium women’s restrooms.

And the powers that be don’t seem to have ever heard of toilet paper – or restroom paper perhaps using the American notation. Not one cubicle has a roll of toilet paper and there’s no one in sight to dish out same. I have been going to the National Stadium since 1976 and not once have I seen anything remotely looking like toilet paper in a stadium restroom. Only on the VIP side do people need restroom paper. I discovered this when I won a VIP ticket one day. The competition required one to answer one very tough question that went something like ‘Who is the sponsor of this year’s Orange Kabelano Cup’. So when I got there at half time they served us some tasty snacks unlike on the other side where people subsist on little packs of biltong and peanuts and frozen water served from buckets by vendors.

The thinking is that the VIP snacks elicit a burning need for restroom paper. So when you go to the restrooms there’s plenty of that stuff. So in short until the restrooms are fixed, until the restrooms are cleaned and until hover-peeing is a thing of the past we are not hosting any continental competition.

*Thulaganyo Jankey is a training consultant who runs his own training consultancy that provides training in BQAaccredited courses. His other services include registering consultancies with BQA and developing training courses. Contact him on 74447920 or email ultimaxtraining@gmail.com.

Using the restroom means one cannot come into direct ‘buttular’ contact with the seat and so one hovers

above it