Ponderings of the Man from Mpofana...

You know, there are national team kits & club team kits that look so fitting. The Serbia, France & USA kits for the FIBA World Cup looked great. I'm not a Manchester United fan but their 2024/25 season home team shirts are alright. AC Milan looks great, Real Madrid needs some work with the number prints, Liverpool is ok...  Lots of people complained when Orlando Pirates brought out the red strip & I couldn't understand because it looked really good. Adidas, Puma, Reebok & Nike gave us some of the best kits in the recent past. Adidas Euro 2008 kits were great, the kits & number prints for the 2010 World Cup were ok & in 2014 the kits were great. Puma gave us the best African kits in the late 2000s also, I still remember that number design with the little line shadow for Ivory Coast, Ghana & Egypt - those AFCON shirts were iconic. With Junior Agogo (R.I.P.) & Michael Essien looking like real national heroes. Puma also gave us really good designs wi...

I really wanted to put a voice onto this & make it a podcast but content on podcasts isn't taken as seriously as content on blogs these days. I just wanted to comment on President Paul Biya & the Transatlantic Slave Trade again.  You know, the human mind goes wild sometimes & I'm not Cameroonian or up-to-date on the day-to-day happenings of Cameroon but by my understanding Paul Biya is virtually the king of Cameroon. I even saw a YouTube video titled "Paul Biya est un dieu" ("Paul Biya is a god"). Mes amis camerounais, comment ça va?  Biya is said to be 92, I'm not ageist but 92? If he can govern, fine but ruling for 40 years? Is Cameroon really a democracy or a monarchy, they need to start telling the truth. And why are Anglophones being killed in the Ambazonia region of Cameroon? Both English & French are not our languages.  Donc, pourquoi c'est que les Ambazoniens être dans le génocide?  I've seen very disturbing pictures of pe...

A while back US sprinter, Noah Lyles, mocked the USA's sports trend of calling their national champions "World Champions" & he was right in doing so but the manner he did it rubbed many in US sports the wrong way. How can any team call itself "World Champions" if it has not beaten every team in the world? This led me down a rabbit hole, now I'm questioning how a knockout competition is a real test of ability? You beat the teams that beat other teams only once & not consistently & you sometimes don't beat every team you face. Knockout competitions are often just one leg, surely they could - at least - have two legs. A knockout competition where teams play each other just once almost seems cowardly. If FIFA World Cup qualifiers are like mini leagues, why can't the FIFA World Cup itself be a sort of league?  Imagine this; it's FIFA World Cup 2022, thirty-two teams divided into four groups. Eight teams each group & each national team ...

I've been searching for African manufactured firearms but have found very meek results. Kongo Kingdom & Benin were said to be able to manufacture guns but I guess it was in the age of gunpowder-loaded rifles & flintlocks. Today, the only Sub-Saharan African manufactured firearm I can find is the OBJ-006 which is an AK-47 replica from Nigeria. In South Africa, we have the Vektor series which was made by the Apartheid government (who called themselves Europeans until the 1990s) & some MILKOR guns, MILKOR is owned by a Polish-South African.  Nigeria's AK-47 replica, the OBJ006. I asked Llama 3.2 AI to come up with the following list:  Here's a list of some African-manufactured firearms: Rifles 1. *South Africa*: R4/R5/R6 assault rifles (manufactured by Denel Land Systems) 2. *Egypt*: AK-47/Egyptian-made Maadi MISR 7.62mm assault rifle 3. *South Africa*: CR-21 bullpup assault rifle (manufactured by Denel Land Systems) 4. *Nigeria*: OBJ-006 assault rifle ...

In the news :  Forty-four young Ethiopian men were found locked inside a Sandton house - starving, cold & kept in darkness. Police believe they were trafficked & that their captors demanded up to R50 000 for each victim’s release. Ethiopian men believed to be in SA illegally were found locked in a Parkmore house. Trapped in two rooms, some needed medical help. The trafficker ran before security arrived.  I think there are more illegal immigrants in South Africa than officials would care to count.  We've even heard of hoardes of illegal immigrants from Europe being hidden in the Western Cape & Cape Town.  Ethiopians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis & Somalians are among the most trafficked people to South Africa & it's always just men. I have not seen a single Somalian, Ethiopian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi woman in South Africa but dozens of Somalian males. This is how forced ethnic dilution happens & how race replacement happens. The same ...

South Africa has always had good athletes. Upon our first inclusion into the Olympics after Apartheid, we won the defining event of the ancient Olympics - the marathon. We've had above-average middle distance runners in past but today, we have a generation of really fast guys across many events. Akani Simbine & Wayde van Niekerk being the faces of the recent sprinting renaissance in South Africa.  The relay mentality :  As much as there's chaos & anarchy in South Africa, there are pockets of order. This is why we rarely fuddle simple tasks. Our army for example, isn't the best in Africa but we get some small basic things right. And if you can get small basic things right, you can do surprisingly well. And this is why relays are almost perfect for South Africa. We are seldom wasteful because we don't often have the luxury of plenty & relays are about efficiency as much as they are about speed. That switch between athletes in a race can cost you or save you a ...

I've heard some people quoting from King Shaka's praises claiming that he was "like the sun" therefore light-skinned. But I'd like to ask how comparisons with the sun equate with being light-skinned? If anything, if King Shaka was light-skinned, they'd compare him to something terrestrial like the colour of a cow hide, wood or other object because very few extraterrestrial objects have the colour of any human skin. Even white people are called "ondlebe zikhanya ilanga" ('those who have translucent ears") & not  "abakhanya okwelanga" ("those who shine like the sun"). King Shaka's mother was from Elangeni & there is the Langa clan in KZN, all of them are black with many being exceptionally dark-skinned so I don't think the comparisons comparing King Shaka with the sun have anything to do with his complexion. Even the whites who first saw him & drew him wrote that he was dark & fairly tall. I also don...