Field of Bafana dreams
Molefi Ntseki began life on a farm, watching his father working for the baas. Now he is his own boss as coach of Bafana Bafana and is ready to work as hard as his old man did, writes Bareng-Batho Kortjaas
● Shirts, suits, shoes! booms a voice on the wireless, advertising a men’s clothing store. To some, such threads are reserved for Sunday best.
When Molefi Ntseki prepared for a presser at which he was to be announced as the umpteenth Bafana Bafana coach, he decided to dress to the nines.
He must consider himself lucky that the fashion police were absent among the pack of hacks gathered to greet the new head honcho of SA’s senior men’s football team.
Those with an eye for sartorial elegance would have accused Ntseki of committing a fashion crime.
A fusion of a blue-checked jacket on top of a bluechecked shirt is considered a fashion faux pas.
“I’m somebody who likes bright colours. On that day I had a lot of blue,” said Ntseki. “Blue means peace and happiness. It happens to be my favourite colour. When it comes to the dress code, I prefer to be more casual.”
Those fancy threads are a major upgrade from the hand-me-downs the last-born of 10 children — seven boys and three girls — got from his siblings.
Life for the now 50-year-old, who started school aged nine, was not rosy growing up on a farm near Excelsior in the Free State.
“Growing up on a farm, you didn’t have all the benefits like a township boy would have. You’d go to school barefoot, wearing worn-out hand-me-down khaki pants.
“Your mother will be sewing and doing things for you to look good going to school. That was part of the lesson you learn in life, that nothing comes easy. You need to work, do everything you need, to have character, because if you don’t you would always be complaining.”
Home was a mud structure with a rondavel kitchen, a sitting room with a few chairs and three bedrooms — one for his late farm-labourer parents Elizabeth and David, one for the girls, and one for the boys. Sleeping on a mattress was a privilege Ntseki enjoyed by virtue of being the last-born.
“Those days we didn’t have beds. A blanket would be spread on the floor and that was that. I was the privileged one, sleeping on the bed with my mother. I was born very late in terms of my mother’s age. She was 40-something. It was more of the last-born being very close. I got the privilege of the mattress.”
The privilege of graduating from assistant coach to Bafana boss has left many questioning Ntseki’s suitability for the job.
The poisoned chalice that is the Bafana job has claimed a whole cemetery of men.
From World Cup winner Carlos Alberto Parreira to his Brazilian compatriot and world-class clown Joel Santana — you name them — the South African Football Association (Safa) has hired and fired them.
Ntseki is the father of three boys. He holds a teaching diploma and a degree in psychology and history and disagrees with the notion that he has bitten off more than he can chew.
“In any job environment you can’t confirm success until you’ve put your mind, effort and passion into it.
“Sir Alex Ferguson was not the best coach from the beginning. If you look at Pep Guardiola, he was a junior-team coach who taught himself to understand the game and learn human behaviour.”
The former under-17 national coach, who qualified that team for the age-group World Cup, believes he has paid his school fees.
“I think I’m no different. I’ve gone through all those phases and stages of my development. I’ve been a Bafana assistant coach, working with the best that we had [Shakes Mashaba, Owen da Gama and predecessor Stuart Baxter].
“If I do the same that I did when I started coaching in 1998, I give myself a chance to do well, to prosper, to grow as an individual as a coach.
“It is a job for me, which has so many challenges and demands, but also an opportunity one has to respect, projecting your future to be that of a success. I have not bitten more than I can chew. In so saying, one doesn’t have to be arrogant. I’m here to do my best for the country so that we can all be supportive and have the faith and the belief that our national team is in good hands.”
He moved from the tranquil atmosphere of the farm to the fast-paced life in Botshabelo township, 45km east of Bloemfontein, to finish primary school. There he experienced the awakening of a political consciousness.
It opened his eyes to the sharp contrast of his two worlds.
“Growing up on the farm made you to grow stronger and work very hard. You were made to walk long distances. You had a farm boss that was always referred to as baas. You grew up seeing your father being so subservient to this person, trying to keep the home fires burning by waking up early in the morning to toil on the land and coming back late at night.
“In the township, there were struggles of a different kind. There were riots, people getting arrested because of the political setup of our country then.”
We are talking in his office at the football association’s headquarters. It is a warm spring day, marking 42 years after the assassination of antiapartheid activist and Black Consciousness
Movement leader Steve Biko.
“When you get to high school, you get involved with the comrades and your understanding of where we come from is shaped. You start to know about Steve Biko. You see a different life altogether. Coming from the farm you didn’t see any black person driving a car or owning a shop.
“In the township you had people who owned cars. At school you had bigger classes. On the farm you had one huge class with no partitions, which housed several classes within a class.”
In the township, classes were disrupted when the police descended on the school yards. They were intruders who visited violence on the school children.
Ntseki’s body bears the scars of those times. He has one on his forehead and another on his right thigh.
“I remember when I did my standard 7, we had to jump fences because police invaded our school and they were sjambokking us. That, in a way, shaped my thinking in terms of being a black man growing up through those political imbalances and disturbances. My children don’t understand that these are the times and periods that we had to go through for us to be where we are today.”
Despite the disruption, pupils still had to pass with distinction and Ntseki was no exception.
“You had to survive all that and still have to do well at the end of the year.”
A life in the bowels of the earth as a mine worker awaited Ntseki upon finishing matric. He was to follow in the footsteps of his big brothers, who had found such employment in the mining town of Welkom.
But his school principal would have none of it after seeing Ntseki’s impressive matric results.
“He looked at my results and asked, what are you going to do? I said I’d go to work in the mines. He said it can’t be, and paid my registration fee at the Tshiya College of Education [in Phuthaditjhaba]. He had been a lecturer at Tshiya before he became a principal.”
Ntseki taught for 10 years before trading the chalk and classroom in 1998 for the tracksuit and field of play.
“I was playing for Welkom Unisaints Vodacom League team. We got promoted in 1996 to play in the first division. In 1998 I got injured and that was the end of my career.
“After a knee operation, I was told I needed to replace my kneecap. I said to the doctors I’d rather retire from football. I thank Dick Nkuna and Vax Mayekiso for giving me a chance to coach their team.” The late Nkuna was a national executive member of Safa and Mayekiso is a leading ANC member in the Free State.
Twenty-one years after that chance, Ntseki gets his big opportunity to perhaps realise the country’s, often shattered, football dreams.
Ntseki has his own theory on the downward spiral of the national team.
“When we were readmitted to international football in the early ’90s, we wanted to show Africa and the world that we could play. We had the likes of [the late] Ace Ntsoelengoe, Jomo Sono. There was Chincha Guluva [Kaizer Chiefs owner Kaizer Motaung].
“The country was actually at a level of saying, let Africa and the world know about us.
“Everything started very badly with us getting the 4-0s [against Mexico and Nigeria]. In ’95 we won the African Champions League with [Orlando] Pirates. In ’96 we won the Africa Cup of Nations with Bafana. That hunger, commitment, love and passion coming from administrators, players and fans was there for all to see.
“But when we started to enjoy the fruits of freedom and democracy, there were too many distractions coming our way. Technology. Money.
“When money came in … remember, we don’t come from a background where we learnt and we were taught how to handle money, how to handle fame and look after our talents. We started losing that hunger and passion.”
It is one thing pointing at problems. As the head honcho, Ntseki must be part of the solution and breathe life back into Bafana so they can scale the dizzy heights of success they once did. “We need to cultivate a new generation of footballers who are not comfortable in home confines.
“Let’s get back the hunger, the drive to succeed, to achieve more. The example I’d always make is that of top players in the world. You look at [Cristiano] Ronaldo and his finances, and [Lionel] Messi and his finances. They are still training hard, committed to their cause, honouring their national teams and still breaking records.
“It is time we had a society of football players who want to break records. We can’t talk of Mark Fish, Lucas [Radebe] and Benni [McCarthy] all the time.
“We should have new Bennis coming in to break records. I’m hopeful that this generation will give us something different. We are all smiling, looking at the under-23s and saying let’s manage this talent.”
Away from football, Ntseki enjoys taking his boys, Kgotso, 12, Lerato, 9 and seven-year-old Tumelo out to have meals and play in the park.
“They like telling and showing me how good and better than me they are as soccer players.”
Gospel sounds soothe his soul as much as the beat and message of reggae give him positive vibrations.
“I’m more into gospel. If I’m not listening to gospel I’m more of a reggae guy. Even if you can’t dance and you don’t have co-ordination, you can enjoy it.” One of his favourites is the late Lucky Dube.
Currently he is burying his nose in the book titled Influencer.
“It was recommended to me some five years ago by coach Ernst Middendorp.
“It has got stories of people in leadership who influence from behind, allowing people to be in a leadership position while you are still the leader.”
With his debut delayed until November, when Bafana face Ghana in an Afcon 2021 qualifier, doubters will continue to wonder why they should trust Ntseki.
“Because coaching is teaching and teaching has to do with learning, and learning will result in wellexecuted tactical plans that will give us the right results.
“I always say that for one to trust me I need to get a buy-in from the players. We need to trust each other.
“Trusting each other will give us positive results and those positive results will turn every South African into a supporter of Bafana.
“As South Africans we need to be proud of our own. We come from a background where everything black has always been looked at as inferior.
“The question is why don’t we give respect to our people. Every coach has worked hard to be a coach. Even with white coaches who have been here before, they had to work hard for their profiles.
“We should always look at blacks who have the experience, the passion, the understanding to take our football to the next level.
“Whenever somebody gets a position, we always refer to BEE, which is not the case. Does Molefi qualify for the position based on his experience, qualifications and knowledge?
“This position is not necessarily about how much you make but about the responsibility of being a leader of the football community.
“I’m appealing to everybody to say, let this not be about Molefi only. Let us bring an end to what we normally say about black coaches whenever they get higher positions at a club and national team level.”
We should always look at blacks who have the experience, the passion, the understanding to take our football to the next level
Molefi Ntseki
New coach of Bafana Bafana