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The leadership lessons of Bafana Bafana.

 South Africa has always had a competitive soccer style, brand, or genre. South African players' capabilities have been a victim of how they are harnessed into a national asset for a while. The Premier League remains the most rated and best in the African continent. It competes with the top twenty leagues in the world. At the current AFCON tournament, South Africa has the most players in its domestic league. At the past seven World Cup Soccer tournaments, the South African Premier League was consistently represented by one or more players and coaches who worked with clubs from South Africa. 

The poor performance of South Africa in qualifying for the AFCON and World Cup tournaments was more a function of leadership boldness than a lack or absence of talent and skill by players or coaches. In the past thirty years, South Africa has had two teams winning the CAF Champions League in … and 2016, and one winning the CAF Super Cup in 2017. South African teams are feared well up to knockout stages, quarterfinals, semi-finals, and finals. South Africa is the first team to win the CAF Women's Champions League and the first African Football League. Notwithstanding this exceptionalism, South Africa could not rise to its full potential as a country. 

 

There is also the dynamic of the technical coaching teams and coaches. South Africa has had its local coaches and technical coaching teams representing the country at soccer's most prestigious tournaments. Pitso Mosimane leads the pack with the accolades of winning the CAF Champions League three times, the CAF Super Cup, and the Club Soccer World Cup bronze medals. Pitso led … Saudi Arabia to be promoted to the first-division league. Gavin Hunt took over from Arthur Zwane and led Kaizer Chiefs FC into the CAF Champions League Finals. Benny McCarthy is in Manchester United's technical coaching team. Roger de Sa was Iran’s assistant coach at the 2022 World Cup Soccer Tournament.


In this vortex of excellence is the dynamic of Women's Soccer Teams, who command two CAF Champions League titles, an AFCON Championship, Two Women's Soccer World Cup Qualifiers, and one World Cup knockout stage qualification. These performances, particularly at the 2024 AFCON tournament, indicate the ascendance of bold leadership and acceptance that excellence should be prioritised over nostalgic criteria, which has had the impact of aggregating mediocrity as a form of excellence.  

 

The brute scientific truth for almost any situation where group or team influence is a dynamic to yield success concentrations of skill and how permutations in the selection process determine ultimate team performance. Science teaches that diffusion is the movement of molecules from areas of high concentration to low concentration until a state of equilibrium is maintained. For diffusion to readily occur, certain conditions are required. In team building or group dynamics contexts, these would include differences in concentration, selection of concentrates that would help achieve set objectives, collection of attributes necessary for the group’s or team challenge, and the low-viscosity team spirit.

 

In his selection of the Bafana Bafana team, Hugo Broos, and this rendition argues, has worked based on creating positive diffusion. Positive or negative diffusion occurs when the bar set as an equilibrium point is either upwards or downwards. Given the recent performance of Mamelodi Sundowns (MFSC) in the domestic league and, most significantly in continental competitions, the concentration of competencies (skill, knowledge, and attributes) found in MSFC would naturally give South Africa the edge over teams that had to be composed of various team cultures.

 

The concentration of tactical discipline, team character fit for continental battle, established team ethos, low-viscosity team spirit, team temperament convergence, and experience of survival working together amongst the eleven MSFC players is emerging as the glaring positive diffusion equilibrium point the twelve players from other teams can only go upwards towards. The dominating team, collaboration, excellence, and national interest intelligence in the team comprises players with the nearest and immediate experience of carrying the obligations associated with representing the national flag.

 

The national lesson from coach Broos and his technical team is that quotas not instructed by excellence have the highest propensity to generate negative diffusion, as mediocrity might be the equilibrium point. Thought of differently, teams, and all teams, including leadership teams, that have a high concentration of mediocrity will go through negative diffusion. Because many in the 'team' have an abundance of mediocrity, the team can only equilibrate downwards.

 

In teams that share the excellence of not winning in most things they do together, their exceptionalism will be how mediocre they can all be, including purging those who are their opposites. The race to the bottom becomes so intense among team members that being mediocre starts developing artificial intelligence and system algorithms. Anything that tries to pull the team to the opposite side might easily be characterised as countering the redefined (revolutionary) objectives. As a society, we must learn from how the Bafana Bafana team was assembled for the purpose at hand.

 

Beyond the AFCON tournament, we will be engaged in our most consequential national election process. Pundits and analysts predict a less than 50% performance by any contesting political parties. This will enforce the need for a coalition government and, at best, a Government of National Unity. Either way, South Africa needs to emerge with a team that is etched on positive diffusion and set the bar where the equilibrium point should be upward and towards objectives that would take the country out of its many challenges. Team selection by the 7th Administration, coalition or otherwise, must have low viscosities in many areas where the country has underperformed. Bafana Bafana Ba Style is a case study we must all scale and replicate as a nation to follow what the Springbok Team has equally achieved. CUT!!!


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