AFCON bid, the cart was indeed before the horse

Mqondisi Dube | Tuesday September 29, 2026 09:43

Beyond the disappointment of losing an opportunity to host one of Africa’s biggest sporting spectacles, it is the manner in which the entire process was handled that raises uncomfortable questions.

Why were discussions allowed to continue right up to the submission stage if government knew all along that it was not prepared to provide the required guarantee?

Government should have been forthright from the beginning. If the position was that Botswana could not afford to provide the guarantee, that should have been communicated at the outset.

It would have saved everyone time's and critically, the embarrassment of pulling the plug when the starting gun had already been fired.

Instead, hopes were raised only for the door to be slammed shut at the eleventh hour.

Of course, the government is facing financial constraints but why was the bidding process allowed to go right up to the submission of documents stage?

The hosting responsibilities were going to be shared, with South Africa expected to shoulder the bulk of the burden. Botswana was not being asked to build an entire AFCON infrastructure from scratch and carry the tournament on its own back.

There were also potential economic spin-offs from hosting matches. Instead, Botswana has walked away with little more than another missed opportunity. With AFCON set to move to a four-year cycle after 2028, another opportunity may not come knocking anytime soon. Botswana could find itself waiting for years before another realistic chance to host the continent’s premier football tournament emerges.

I previously wrote a column under the headline 'Putting the cart before the horse' and the sequence of events has proved that indeed the order was reversed. The government guarantee should surely have been the horse and the bid discussions, the cart.

Instead, the cart was loaded and pushed before anyone checked whether the horse was actually available.

A government guarantee is not a minor detail that can be dealt with at the end of a bidding process. It is the vital cog and inquiries should have been made before hand to find out if the government was willing to back the bid.

Minister of Sport and Arts, Jacob Kelebeng had previously indicated publicly that Botswana was prepared to host AFCON. If that was the position, what changed between that declaration and the government's eventual refusal to provide the guarantee?

Kelebeng is not an outsider, but a part of the executive, the very machinery that ultimately makes decisions. If government was never going to provide the guarantee, he was ideally placed to communicate that reality to the football leadership before Botswana became deeply invested in a bid that had no government backing.

There is nothing wrong with changing minds, particularly when 'sepache se makgwakgwa.' However, decisions must be made early enough rather than allow the building of plans around a commitment that does not exist.

The football leadership may have been guilty of being overly optimistic but the government, however, held the keys.

There is no room for operating on optimism, otherwise, the country will continue preparing carts for horses that were never coming. Perhaps the more important lesson is that the next bid should begin with the guarantee, not the grand plans.