BFL saga: From cheers to tears
Mqondisi Dube | Saturday July 19, 2025 06:00
The distance between May 28 and July 14 is 47 days. It can be a long or short period depending on the context – but for football, it has represented a stretch of uncertainty. Wednesday, May 28 saw the league’s chief executive, Bennett Mamelodi break into tears after his chairperson, Peter Kesitilwe presented him with the Chairperson’s Award.
But 47 days later, the two were no longer part of the BFL structure, a swift turnaround that has stunned football.
Football, a sport that is no longer a stranger to controversy, returned to familiar surroundings at the weekend thanks to what was supposed to be a routine trip to the central town of Palapye. The town has become a notorious ‘Bermuda Triangle’ as an epi-centre of violent confrontation from political to football gatherings.
The leadership of 16 clubs quietly slipped into the fast-growing central district focal point, without the preying eyes of the media. But despite the stealth tip-toe to the Botswana Football League (BFL) Annual General Assembly (AGA), chaos ruptured after two days of football deliberations.
The cat was now amongst the pigeons as a set of disagreements emerged with Mamelodi and the Betway sponsorship, at the centre of key discussions.
Often football has failed to maintain the expected decorum, and after months of papering over the cracks, the centre could not hold and finally burst open in Palapye.
There was a collective agreement that the previous FNB Premiership season had delivered on many fronts, but there was always the lingering question of when the implosion will arrive.
It needed nothing more than a standard AGA to kick football back to default settings. Reports are that there was concern amongst some club representatives over maladministration issues at the secretariat which included financials, whilst there was emerging discontent over the Betway deal. “The feeling heading into the meeting was that the chief executive should be given a one-year as opposed to a three-year contract. But as discussions progressed, there was a suggestion that the board together with the CEO, should go. But eventually, it was resolved that the chief executive, based on what was presented, needed to be suspended,” a club official who attended the meeting said.
Mamelodi had to endure long, cold hours out of the meeting as he became the subject of tense discussions over the operations of the secretariat. The media could not immediately eavesdrop and the nation had to rely on unconfirmed reports on the outcome of the meeting. By Sunday morning, social media was awash with reports that the meeting had resolved to suspend Mamelodi. But towards evening, that story had shifted after Kesitilwe issued a statement discrediting the suspension reports. All was well, as the message conveyed by the statement late Sunday afternoon.
But by Monday evening, the author of the statement, was no longer in charge as the situation deteriorated. Kesitilwe had thrown in the towel following a board meeting meant to review the Palapye meeting on Monday evening. The situation had imploded, and efforts to represent a united front had hit a cul-de-sac.
After the resignation of Kesitilwe, it appeared inevitable that Mamelodi would walk through the same door, and by Tuesday afternoon, the first reports of his exit started making their way to the media.
On Wednesday afternoon, the confirmation of Mamelodi’s departure was delivered by Sipho Showa, who has been installed as the interim board chairperson. The pieces that held the peace truce together had scattered, sending football into another unending frenzy of blame-game. The cheers of last season are fading into distant memories as repair works start but with the real possibility of a drawn-out process that could throw the scheduled August 15 start of the league into doubt.