On the question of excellence!
Growing up in rural Limpopo during apartheid times there was not so much to look for inspiration.
As a child you have dreams, you want to be this or that in life. But when you look around you don't see any medical doctor, lawyer, engineer or something. The only careers we were accustomed to were those of a teacher, a nurse, a police or a priest. I am not implying the latter are not important or ‘essential' professions as one politician would say. The point is there was no pool of successful people to look up to.
The same was the case in sports; you couldn't come across a person who made success out of sports, say a professional footballer. The result was that such a lack of role modelling would give the youth less hope to be anything in life. You really had to dig deep to get extra motivation and in most cases you had to get that inspiration within you. You had to take a vow that the peripheral rural conditions and underprivileged surrounding are not going to pull you down and make you lose hope about the future.
One magazine that I found enthralling to read during those times was called "Tribute". Painted in black colour on its cover page the magazine was imprinted with these fulfilling words, "Tribute to black excellence". In its editions it featured black personalities who made it in various areas aspects of life, be it education, science, arts, business or sports. Well now the magazine is no longer in publication but what we can denote from it is the concept of excellence.
Do we believe in excellence as South Africans? I listened to the interview of the Afcon LOC Chief, Mvuso Mbebe by Metro FM sports anchor Robert Marawa based on problems that football fans experienced during the Afcon tournament, mainly the purchase of tickets. Most listeners called expressing their frustrations about the ticketing system which was mainly dysfunctional. Instead of lending an ear and sympathy to the callers Mr Mbebe kept on defending the system. He repeatedly said for some of the supporters the system worked fine; even though the overwhelming evidence pointed to the contrary as most callers during the show expressed unhappiness.