I’m writing this the morning of 1 February. It may not seem like such an ominous day for most people, but for Botswana today is the day we redeem our pride. Every Motswana, football fan or not, is waiting. Tonight our national team will play against Mali in what will in all likelihood be their last match in the African Cup of Nations (AFCON) and, come 8pm, quiet will descend on the country as we wait to see if we remain the laughing stock of the continent, or walk away with our heads high.
The Botswana Zebras have spent years being the whipping boys of African football. Losing seemed to be all we knew. But then something shifted. A new local coach, Stan Tshoshane, took over the reins after foreign coaches failed to transform a team sourced from a small national population (1.8 million), full of primarily small players compared to their northern counterparts. Stan was a former soldier and football player himself. He grumbled about how the Botswana Football Association (BFA) only hired him because they ran out of funds for the foreign coaches they preferred, but he took the post anyway and got to work.
