For a South African leader to claim the country his compatriots so often revile as home was a gesture no tourism campaign could manufacture
by STAFF WRITER
Patrice Motsepe, the president of the Confederation of African Football, arrived in Zimbabwe on Saturday morning to a red-carpet welcome, and then said something that landed with the weight of a thousand diplomatic cables: “Zimbabwe is my home, we are all one people.”
In any other context, the words might have passed as the routine flattery of a visiting dignitary.
But Motsepe is a South African citizen and billionaire, a son of the country where Zimbabwean nationals have for years been derided as amakwerekwere, blamed for crime and joblessness, and subjected to waves of murderous xenophobic violence from Soweto to Diepsloot.
When such a man stands on Zimbabwean soil and claims it as his own, it is an act of deliberate rebuke—softly delivered, but unmistakable.
The CAF chief, whose presence at regional football gatherings carries considerable political weight, was met at Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport by the tourism and hospitality minister, Barbara Rwodzi, alongside Zimbabwe Football Association (ZIFA) president Nqobile Magwizi and Zimbabwe Tourism Authority chief executive George Manyaya.
The choreographed welcome was designed to project a message: that Zimbabwe is open for business and that sport, tourism and diplomacy move in lockstep.
But Motsepe’s words supplied an unscripted layer of meaning that no communications team could have engineered.
Motsepe, never shy of a diplomatic flourish, went on to praise Zimbabwe’s president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, for “championing sports tourism through football” and fostering “unity, investment and international engagement”.
The remarks were of a piece with the South African’s tenure at the helm of African football, during which he has repeatedly invoked the game as an antidote to the continent’s stubborn divisions.
That he chose to do so in a country whose citizens have been made to feel unwelcome in his own was not lost on those watching.
Minister Rwodzi, an energetic advocate for the sports-tourism nexus, emphasised the role such gatherings play in advancing “soft diplomacy, regional integration and economic growth”.
She said the Cosafa Elective General Assembly offered an opportunity to “amplify Zimbabwe’s image as a peaceful, welcoming and competitive tourism destination”—language that doubled as a rejoinder both to the country’s lingering international perception problems and, more quietly, to the hostility its people sometimes meet just across the Limpopo.
The assembly brought together football administrators from across southern Africa at a moment of modest renewal for Zimbabwean football.
ZIFA, readmitted to international competition in 2023 after a Fifa suspension triggered by government interference, has been working to rebuild its reputation.
Hosting a regional elective congress, complete with a visit from the CAF president, is the kind of validation Harare has been chasing.
For the tourism ministry, the calculus is straightforward. Sports events fill hotel rooms and generate headlines; the challenge has been converting one-off gatherings into a sustained narrative.
Yet Motsepe’s declaration of kinship offered a different kind of value—a fleeting but powerful reminder that the ties between South Africa and Zimbabwe run deeper than the ugly spasms of xenophobia that periodically scar the relationship.
Motsepe, who has made a point of visiting every African nation with a football federation during his presidency, presided over the assembly and departed. His parting words were already in the can: “Zimbabwe is my home.”
For once, the marketing department really couldn’t have scripted it better.
Do you have a story to share? Email bchiketo@gmail.com