The ManicaPost
Morris Mtisi Post Correspondent
Sadio Mane is more than a footballer. He is more than a superstar. He is more than human size.
I believe the Liverpool soccer pin-up has a lesson the world must learn. He kicks the kind of football every African must learn to kick.
I have learnt it well. I am inspired. I will kick the ball . . . pass it on to my teammates and fellow players, until goals are scored in all our proverbial life games.
I am proposing the launch of a huge international-size campaign for a Sadio Mane mentality and conscience for Zimbabwe. Personally I do not like the game of soccer but I am awed by Sadio Mane’s heart and conscience.
Sadio like many of us (Africans) comes from a very humble background. That is a grammatical way of referring to a pitiable background. His fame is not in where he is coming from but where he is today and where he is going. The world has no shortage of the rich and famous . . . forget their from-rags-to-riches stories.
It is the same as many other heroes who rose from zero to hero. What makes Sadio’s story unique and both amazing and amusing is his mind and conscience that enable him to remember his community and country. And not only remember, but do something wonderful for it.
How many kings, queens, legends and heroes do you know that use their Midas touch to climb higher into their own heavens, forgetting their kinsmen and kinswomen languishing and wallowing in the hell of their stinking poverty and suffering?
When Sadio found himself at the end of the rainbow, of course travelled over talent and religious commitment to the world’s most beautiful game, he remembered what it felt like to be poor and suffering. He remembered his people back in rustic Senegal.
In the midst of British splendour . . . Liverpool neon lights and dazzling 21st century civilisation, Sadio remembered the plastic balls played on the dust roads of Senegal by hungry and barefooted imps who did not know the door of a school because going to school was an unaffordable luxury. He remembered the poor sick to which every kind of illness was a death sentence because they could not afford to pay for decent healthcare service.
Sadio first built a school in his home village. Second, he built a state-of-the-art hospital in Senegal . . . a feat many pilots, engineers, lawyers, doctors and professors in Senegal . . . sadly anywhere else in Africa, nauseated by the plenteousness of their own money, could not accomplish, let alone dream about.
Not many high profile politicians or so-called men and women of God ever understood politics or religion to this extent! Many Africans in Africa talk wholeheartedly and painfully but they do little or nothing to change the fates of their poor and suffering.
Is there any amount or size of evangelism that can beat Sadio’s building a school and hospital in his village home and country?
It is this inspiring story of Sadio Mane’s philanthropic conscience that I wish to use on radio to open up the minds of fellow Africans . . . fellow Zimbabweans . . . to begin to develop their communities in their former schools and communities in the areas of education, sports and healthcare delivery.
How can radio and the newspaper help to develop the Sadio Mane mentality and conscience amongst our own people? The Manica Post and Diamond FM Radio will publicise the huge campaign for community development through genuine African heroes and celebrities.
I urge all to learn about how you too can be part of this great idea and how we, together, can lift ourselves from the valley by learning, emulating and walking the Sadio Mane path of developing our communities.
