BEING AFCON 2012 CHAMPS, WHY IT HAS TAKEN US THIS LONG

Success favors’ a prepared mind, or so they say.  It is indeed not a secret that one of the antidotes to success is the ability to plan, without planning we give failure a chance. The celebrations that engulfed the country after winning the African cup is an eye opener to one of the reasons the cup failed to touch this great land until now, failure to plan.

The moment Zambia qualified to the final round of the prestigious tournament; preparations should have been made on how we were going to receive our heroes. Whether or not the Zambia national soccer team failed to bring the trophy home should have been inconsequential, we should have prepared to receive them as heroes for having made it to the finals of the tournament after a staggering 16 years of absence.

But alas, as the thousands of soccer fans lined up along the great east road and filed the show grounds main arena to capacity to welcome the Chipolopolo boys from the airport, it seems the police had no capacity at all to control the crowds and have a safe and harmonious celebratory environment. The moment the plane touched down, the crowed descended on it, and it was almost painfully comical to watch it from home as the ZNBC cameras struggled to get clears shots of the heroes.

After having played soccer for a relentless 3 weeks and having a match the previous night and of course having traveled thousands of miles, one would have expected the national heroes to be given a comfortable mode of transportation from the airport to the showground’s. We had our national heroes seating or must we say squatting on the hood of the trucks and others standing for the rest of the journey to the show grounds. On a fair day those army trucks would have been impounded by traffic police, the drivers could barely see the fan filled road ahead.

With no proper seating arrangements, the appeals from DJ Dazzle for the crowd to be silent were not worth mentioning. It was a shame to watch the roof to one of the buildings in the showground’s main arena, filled with excited soccer fans collapse before our eyes. Lucky enough apparently no one lost their lives in that incident.

Needless to say, we failed to plan as a nation as on many occasions, this time to receive our team with the honor that they well deserved. We hear news of floods in Lusaka every year, the Luck of proper drainages, but there is never a working plan to resolve such problems. Instead we wait for the rain season every year to whine and complain about the flooding in Kanyama.  Much as we celebrate this victory, let us learn to plan as a nation and of course on a personal level. Indeed let us start planning and prepare adequately to win the next African cup of nations in 2013, for success is infallibly dependant on planning.