Poor Masters; victim of BFA internal wars

Thuso Palai | Friday February 13, 2015 10:25

The BFA has always been in the news for all the wrong reasons and my guess is that the internal politics are now playing out in the public arena. It seems like everyone within the BFA is trying to make the next person out to be a bad person. And this time around, the target was one Keith Masters. For me, this smacks right on a witch-hunt and a well-orchestrated set–up that achieved what it was set out to achieve.

I’m no God, and I won’t pretend to be self-righteous and judge Keith Masters. Well, we all do something ‘immoral’ at one point or another in our lives but here we are trying to play God and judge him. I’m pretty certain 90% of people reading this have at one point or another watched some pornography or own some kind of pornographic material on their mobile phones, DVDs or even in their laptops. Yes, we might not watch it in the office, but we have watched it. Yes, we might not watch it during working hours, but we do watch it.

 I’m pretty sure most mobile phones right now have some untoward content, pornography movies and nude pictures, but here we are trying to play God and pronouncing judgements on another. Yes, if indeed it is true; It was irresponsible of Keith Masters to watch that material in the office, during working hours, but give the man a break. He hasn’t killed someone or done something that the next man hasn’t done before.

Masters is just being a ‘normal man’ and it is rather unfortunate that this has been used against him, by cowards who want him out but  resort to use something not related to how work performance to get him out. So they connived to embarrass him so they get leverage to fire him or get him fired. Yes; it is embarrassing and he has brought the Association into disrepute. But for me, I would actually fire someone for stealing money rather than watching pron.

I have always maintained that Keith Masters is not a top performer, but we should judge him based on his performance at the BFA, not on whether he watches porn or not. If indeed we wanted to fire him, we should judge him on his performance as BFA CEO. If the powers that be feel he is not performing well as expected, then he should be released, based on those reasons. If not, let the man be, re tswe mo go tse a di lebelelang.

It is an open secret that in-fighting is rife at the BFA. We have seen some public spats play out in our faces and this is another of those. As things stand, the level of spite at Lekidi is so much that everyone is looking to set up the other and embarrass them. We might just be in for a roller-coaster ride as Masters and those who are on his side will most probably look to retaliate. I won’t be surprised. But why should we be bothered? The BFA is tasked with running Botswana football smoothly and ensuring development. With all this in-fighting and shenanigans, focus will surely be on peripheral, unnecessary issues and it is Botswana football that will eventually suffer. It is rather unfortunate that instead of focusing on football matters, focus is on something else.

The bitter in-fighting in the BFA will surely result in more revelations, in some cases personal stuff that we should not be subjected to. All in the strive to embarrass the next person. Yes, to many it is rather ‘immoral’ to be watching untoward content in the office, during office hours, but what I’m more worried about is the lengths that people would go to set-up another person.  

However one looks at this matter, there is definitely more to it than meets the eye. As it is, the gloves are off and we might just witness more skeletons tumbling out of the closet.