Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro
As the saying goes you can’t keep a good man, or woman for that matter, down. This saying rings true of our national rugby team, the Welwitschias, that has for the fifth time since independence, qualified for the Rugby World Cup.
This is a feat few of any of our national sport codes can lay claim to. Yet despite this feat the profile of our national rugby team be it in the national eyes of the broader Namibian public, let alone in the eye our sports administrators if not in the eyes of our national sports policy, remains seemingly one of indifference if not total disregard and neglect for one or other reason.
Whatever these reasons and whether this is justified remains a question for various conjectures. But the fact remains, our national rugby team seems to remain but only a shadow of what it ought to be in the national sports priority despite having represented the country at the auspicious rugby flagship event, the World Cup and by next year this will be the fifth representation.
Perhaps more than anything else, it has got to do with the country, or its political principals, including its sports administrators still being trapped in old paradigms in view of rugby having been in the past predominantly a code of the previously advantaged, irrespective of the fact that in modern day Namibia this may no longer be the case and that surely but slowly the previously disadvantaged are as much part of the code.
Perhaps the transformation of the game to an all-inclusive one inclusive of the previously disadvantaged may not have been moving at the requisite and desire pace to the liking of the political principals.
But the pertinent question is, what is this requisite and desired pace?
And after all who is and may be blamed for the lack, if at all, of progress at the desired pace?
Whatever, the fact remains, other than we may wish to admit and/or appreciate, tour sport codes, and our Namibian women and men ambassadors, are as much envoys of the Land of the Brave, especially on the international platform.
That this is the case has already been testified by the likes of Frank Frederick, Johanna Benson and many others. Currently we have many of our sportswomen and men plying their trades in different parts of the world. Unknown to us that far from merely practicising their trades, and eking out a living for themselves, they are indeed representing their country in their own specific and unique way.
Not on the expenses of the taxpayers but on their own expense. Their voluntary feat in this regard, if one can term it as such, is by no means negligible to our official representation in many centres of the world on which we expand much needed resources without necessarily any immediate or tangible returns.
But with a stroke of a sprint, try or that vital blow, from many of our sportswomen and men, Namibia many a times has landed on the international map. And rarely during many of such happenings has the state expanded anything of note towards their notable exploits.
This is of course not to ignore that official motivational send-off that many a sportswomen and men have received from leading states principals before their international sporting escapades. But in general, the interest especially with regard to some of the sport codes, and rugby is no exception, has been at best lukewarm and at worst indifferent if non-existent.
Now that rugby has qualified for the World Cup, surely each and everyone would want to bask in the initial falling glory, ignorant and unappreciative of the trials and tribulations that may have preceded it, and many more still ahead to get to the actual finals.
For some reasons, rugby, has over recent years lost the trust of not only sponsors and the powers that be but also the general public, that be, and thus a widespread support base. With their recent exploits, which are obviously not intrinsic in themselves but come at the backdrop of some notable administrative improvements, one cannot otherwise but wish for a new beginning for this sport code and a much more goodwill on the part of sponsors, politicians and the public in general.
England 2015 is far away, not in terms of time, but essentially in terms of the necessary preparations that the Welwitschias need to embark immediately upon if they are to make any mark in the finals. To do this they need the whole country to rally behind them!