TOM EATON | Banyana bring back the feelgood factor after Safa and Bafana’s own goals

Whatever happens on Sunday against the mighty Netherlands, Banyana Banyana have already done something extraordinary at the current football World Cup, not just for the morale of sports lovers in South Africa but for our struggling society as a whole. 

I know it might sound hyperbolic to claim that the outcome of a football match against Italy can do something concrete and powerful for a country like ours. What we need most are urgent and sweeping interventions in our public service, in education, in law enforcement. Kicking a ball into a net seems pretty low on that list of priorities. 

But not all balls and nets carry equal weight, and when Thembi Kgatlana launched that particular ball into the top of that particular net to knock Italy out of the tournament, it is possible that it set in motion a subtle but powerful process in the hearts and minds of thousands — perhaps hundreds of thousands — of young girls and women across South Africa. 

Sports fans want winners, or at least competitive teams that look as if they’re enjoying themselves, and that Banyana Banyana are therefore a more valuable asset than Bafana Bafana, or, indeed, many of the high-profile men’s clubs. 

Not that Safa cares about such things, of course. The national football association and its boss, Danny Jordaan, were quick to send out a press release to bask in reflected glory after the extraordinary victory, but these are still the same people who thought it entirely sensible that the team’s official send-off to the World Cup should be against 150th ranked Botswana — less minnows than krill — at the Tsakane Stadium, which is just about as far from the FNB Stadium as you can go before you’re in goat pasture in the rural East Rand. 

To be fair, it’s possible that that fiasco was an honest mistake made by honest idiots floating in the jacuzzi of sheltered employment that is Safa. Still, there is a moment that disinterested half-arsery tips over into clear contempt, and that was surely it. 

Thanks to the continued rise of Banyana Banyana, however, there is a chance that the limited, complacent and almost certainly prejudiced boys’ club may in time be forced to reckon with a new and, to it, deeply scary fact: that sports fans want winners, or at least competitive teams that look as if they’re enjoying themselves, and that Banyana Banyana are therefore a more valuable asset than Bafana Bafana, or, indeed, many of the high-profile men’s clubs. 

I don’t know if anyone has dared to whisper those words to Safa, but thanks to Banyana Banyana, I suspect that South African girls are hearing the message, loud and clear. 

Far away from the boardrooms and TV studios, in thousands of far-flung towns Danny Jordaan doesn’t care about, girls are hearing that they don’t have to sit and watch the boys play; that they have a right to play the game, too; to ask their teacher or priest or councillor to give them access to the same field, and a ball of their own. 

They’re hearing that they have a right to be coached, just like the boys, and to dream of making a living by playing the world’s favourite game, just like boys do. 

And they are listening to the cheers in New Zealand, hearing that beyond the goat paddocks of the East Rand and the institutionalised failure of men’s football in South Africa, there is a big, bright, beautiful world that is waiting to watch them play, and that will roar when they do.