Mikia Kalati
Bantu will be holding early executive committee elections next month in a bid to bring stability and success to the team following a disastrous 2015/16 season.
Insiders claim there is no harmony among club officials hence Bantu’s seventh-place finish on the 14-team premier league table which was a bitter pill to swallow for their fans.
And in a bid to revive the team, which won the league title in 2013/14, the club decided to hold elections one year ahead of schedule, while also announcing an overhaul of the club’s administrative structure.
Yet the writing was on the wall for Bantu throughout the campaign and one can only hope the early elections would bring answers needed to boost this colourful outfit.
Like I have said before, our league is interesting when all the big guns are doing well and the any of them can win trophies, not just two teams.
But with Bantu failing to come to the party as expected this campaign, one could feel something was missing to make the season and our elite league, a truly remarkable one.
Bantu made a lot of mistakes in the just-ended season, among them constant changes in the coaching department which broke their rhythm.
It would be interesting to see what transpires during the 12 June poll at Mafeteng Golden Hotel and the people elected in this conference would have their work cut out in fixing what was broken last season, if not over the past two seasons.
There was no way that a team would chop and change coaches like Bantu did and still have a successful campaign.
But again, what happened to Bantu was a wakeup call that serious measures needed to be taken to bring stability back to the club.
Bantu had proved over the last five years that they were a big brand and it was not even surprising they could now attract sponsorship from the corporate world. Metropolitan Lesotho, Lesotho Flour Mills and Lesotho Funeral Services were some of the companies which partnered the club in an endorsement of its development and worthwhile platform to market those organisations.
But surely the instability at the club this season was jeopardizing everything the team did to be such a respected name and I guest this was what drove the powers-that-be to call for an early poll to arrest the rot.
I still feel Bantu players could have done much better on the pitch than ending a distant seventh on the 14-team premier league table, which means they would not be able to defend their Top4 title, which was their only success story of the season.
Again, this was a season I expected the best of Hlompho Kalake after the midfielder showed so much maturity the previous term. But like the rest of his teammates, Kalake lacked the motivation to perform to the best of his ability.
It did not make sense that Litšepe Marabe scored a whopping 23 goals during the 2014/15 season but managed only six in the just ended campaign. Hopefully next season will be better for these players for the sake of Lesotho football in general and their fans in particular.
I have always believed players can only perform when they have officials who know exactly what is needed to run a football team.
So like I said, I hope the elections will bring the much-needed stability to help A Matšo Matebele be a force they were just two seasons ago when they won their first ever league title to end an agonizing 87-year drought.
