Shooting From The Hip Carlos Kambaekwa There is nothing more depressing than positioning oneself alongside a high profile official during international conferences or by just watching a football match in the VIP lounge, and making damn sure some itchy photographers are on standby to zoom in on the who’s who in attendance. A certain official at the helm of one of Namibia’s most powerful sport disciplines has developed an undying desire of making sure his subjects and those who might entertain any doubts about his leadership abilities are kept up to date that this dude is not made out of ordinary stuff. The brother going by the name of Tobie Cronje, his real name always escapes me, is in the habit of having photos of himself taken alongside the big guns and sees to it that these shots don’t miss the back pages so that people could check the brother is no small fish in the pan. Maybe yours truly should be ruing the opportunity for some lost opportunities in not having adopted the Tobie Cronje style in an attempt to inflate his somewhat sketchy CV- after all, not many of us had the privilege for a one-on-one interview with the likes of Sepp Blatter, former Manchester United legend Dennis Law, Frank Fredericks, Lucas Radebe, Doctor Khumalo, Jomo Sono, Lamine Diack, Andrew Dipela, Tommy Sithole, Brian van Rooyen, Fanie de Villiers and the late Juan Antonio Samaranch amongst a horde of sport celebrities. Sorry, my broer that’s just not the style – ultimately, it is not always the size of conferences or quality of people you mingled with that counts during these workshops, but the application of knowledge picked up from rubbing shoulders with these big guns. Yours truly always has this nasty feeling that sport officials and politicians must have something in common, and I must confess that suspicion is somehow confirmed after the chaotic manner in which last weekend’s general elections of the Namibia Amateur Boxing Federation was conducted. When I paged through one of the daily newspapers earlier this week, I almost fainted after coming across the phrase “spoilt ballot” !!!. Jokes aside, the Association’s longest serving President Kelly Nghixulifwa was re-elected after narrowly beating closest rival Joseph Shikongo by five votes to four. I took a deep breath and uttered to myself, wait a minute China, something is wrong here – there are supposed to be (10) ten eligible votes but 5 against 4 is a total of 9 votes, so what happened to the remaining vote. After some soul searching which yielded very little, I resorted to other methods of gathering information, because I could just not figure out the exact definition of “spoilt ballot” deriving from a paltry ten votes cast by fairly educated men nogal. Upon closer inspection, yours truly finally got to the bottom of the confusion – yes, the tenth vote was indeed a spoilt ballot because a third candidate in the person of Joe Kaperu was allowed to stand for the presidency despite the fact that his nomination was not seconded, which literally made him ineligible to enter the ring without his boxing gloves. Anyway, who cares about procedures when it comes to elections, Kaperu was in it and fell by the wayside without throwing a punch after the first round with only a single cross next to his name. Under any normal structures, and fairness suggest voters should have gone into the second round because that single vote (Kaperu) could have had a crucial role to determine the eventual winner. Technically, the entire process was illegal, and the election should be nullified to make way for fresh elections under credible observers, and to worsen matters, a sport officer in the line ministry was drafted in as an additional member which is in total contrast to his line of functions. So, it’s payback time now for the Namibian Football Association The Association’s media shy Secretary-General has finally been given the boot to reward Barry Rukoro for his undying loyalty towards his masters, while Markus Damaseb was shown the door as Brave Warriors’ manager – making space for the shrewd Tim Isaacs, who is believed to have played a major role in swinging the vital NPL vote. It’s a case of zero tolerance on incompetence while putting a lid on fraudulent practices and misconduct. A leopard just never change its spots, what happened to the promises of bringing former footballers back to the fold, my learned friends – you failed to clear the first hurdle by shunning an ideal chance of roping in one of the former players as Team Manager. The opportunity presented itself to win a few friends, albeit temporarily, but some of us never took your bluffing seriously anyway. Well done!! Job for the boys my brrra!!