A good week for Desiree Ellis
Ellis has impressive football credentials: 23 wins as a national player, African women’s coach of the year three times and winner of many boardroom battles to have Banyana accepted as a serious team
A good week for Desiree Ellis
Banyana Banyana coach Desiree Ellis and her SA women’s football team have shown up their abysmal male counterparts, by not only winning the African championship but doing so in style in the hostile atmosphere of Rabat against the home team, Morocco. Ellis, 59, has impressive football credentials: 23 wins as a national player (out of 32), African women’s coach of the year three times and winner of many boardroom battles to have Banyana accepted as a serious team, if not one with equal pay. She also persuaded the mostly male SA Football Association to provide decent kit to a team who once had no tracksuits.
A bad week for Sihle Zikalala
It’s got to smart, watching your grand political ambitions turn to dust in one solitary weekend. Sihle Zikalala not only failed to win re-election as ANC KwaZulu-Natal chair this weekend; he couldn’t muster even a seat on the party’s provincial executive committee. And now his position as premier looks dicey too. It’s unlikely the people of KZN will miss him: there was, for example, the matter of the tanker providing his home with water while residents went without in the wake of the floods. And his tepid response to last year’s unrest. Ultimately, though, it was his inability to read the Zuma cards right that ensured his exit from power.