BY SPORTSCAST WRITER
HARARE – Gayton McKenzie, South Africa’s new Minister of Sports, can foster greater ties between Africa’s most successful sporting nation and the rest of the continent, Rugby Africa president Herbert Mensah has said.
Mensah commented that McKenzie – a gangster-turned-minister – is capable of taking his meteoric transformation to another level by contributing to greater sporting success in Africa.
Opposition politician McKenzie was recently appointed South Africa’s minister of sports, arts and culture in a government of national unity following a watershed election in the once deeply divided country.
“Gayton McKenzie is real, I think that’s what you need to understand first and foremost,” Mensah, a close associate of McKenzie, told SportsCast on Tuesday.
“He is somebody who can identify with the average person, because he is the average person. He has been through the tribulations, and the difficulties of being an average, normal human being. And he get’s it. He hasn’t been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He has had to fight a system his way, rightly and wrongly. Over a period of time.”
Ghanaian tycoon Mensah first interacted with McKenzie in business circles on the continent before both assumed their current sports roles.
“I first met Gayton many, many years ago,” Mensah said. “Not in South Africa, but the first meeting was in Accra, Ghana. And he was so dynamic that he gave a motivational talk to the corporate world. A good friend of mine said you need to meet this guy. So the big companies, the global companies which had representations in Ghana, listened. And he gave extraordinary talk. And there was one big take I took away from that: you’re dealing with people you know are negative towards you. What if you just turn around and just say to them ‘hi, good morning, you are looking good, so nice to meet you, I have had heard so much good things about you’. You can disarm people by being flattering, or positive, than being negative about them. And Gayton doesn’t suffer fools. Everybody knows that about Gayton. And that’s pretty much how I operate as well, so that’s natural bonding, understanding our vulnerabilities as human beings, understanding that we are not perfect, understanding that we do need a consensus. Understanding that it’s the person you least respect who can contribute in a situation that can serve everybody. From there we kept in touch, I went to SA, to his hood (…chuckles), we hang out late into the night to see who Gayton really was, and that was Gayton. He is a leader and people believe in his authenticity. Is he always going to get it right? No. Is he going to get it right sometimes? Absolutely. Are you going to judge him on on his overall morality? I hope not. Are you going to judge him because he is human and he means what he says and he defends the person that other people will not defend? Absolutely. I tell people that Gayton is proudly South African, don’t be confused about that. Beyond that, for somebody who has lived in South Africa all his life, he’s also surprisingly global. He understands the need for global equity and the needs of those who are less well-off.”
McKenzie’s country South Africa, an African power which often competes well against some of the world’s best sporting regions, should according to Mensah look to inspire the same level of excellence across the continent.
“I’m hoping that we can have a marriage,” remarked Mensah. “And Africa is not seeking something from South Africa, Africa is seeking something from the world. Africa is slowly being told by people like Gayton and myself that in a continent of 1.4 billion people, we truly have great potential. Double world champions in the Springboks. Last week, Dricus Du Plessis, who I had the honour of sitting with at the (rugby) World Cup in Paris, and getting to know him as a human being – becoming the best after beating (Israel) Adesanya. We’ve also seen it in the Proteas, who’ve been brilliant. But it’s not only in South Africa. We’ve seen it in Botswana with (Letsile) Tebogo winning in the 200m sprint at the Olympics. We’ve seen it in Kenya in the athletics, excelling, Uganda excelling. The Ethiopians not so good this year, but excelling. We’ve seen it in football especially in western Africa from Ghana, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Cameroon, Nigeria and now in the north with Morocco, Algeria and Egypt. We’ve seen now Rwanda going to host the world cycling championships next year. We recently had the rugby Under-20 world champions in South Africa and in the past the football World Cup over there. We’ll see Senegal host the Youth Olympics in 2026. In rugby, we’ve had the Africa Cup in Uganda. I don’t think that Rugby Africa has ever put together a tournament like that before, on and off the pitch. And that’s the Ugandan minister of sports getting it, it’s the Ugandan rugby president getting it.”
Mensah said all these milestones in fellow African nations should encourage South Africa to lend a helping hand.
“Across the continent, you’re getting this upsurge,” said the ex-rugby star from Ghana. “And I don’t think Gayton thinks that it’s important for South Africa only to be part of the global world, and that Africa isn’t important. I remember before Madiba (late iconic South African president Nelson Mandela) came out and I was lucky to meet him on a few occasions. There was a big fund-raiser in Sandton, which I attended. I remember I left and went back to my part of the world, and the chief marketing officer for South Africa was Madiba. But a lot of Africans would complain that South Africans would get onto a plane, fly over Africa to Europe, America or the Far East, forgetting that the struggle in the liberation days was done in Africa north of Limpopo and south of Sahara. Not excluding those north, across the Mediterranean. Our own president, president (Jerry) Rawlings (ex-Ghana president) at the same time gave something to support the anti-apartheid movement in SA, as small as economies were.”
