Reward your helpers —Case of MaNoma
You cannot get help and then think you have zero obligation to those that help you. And this is the problem I had in the last several months—as a serious fan of MaNoma [Mighty Be Forward Wanderers], the Blantyre based football club. I have been a Wanderers supporter for decades. Of course, I know that our main opponents are more in count and rather more ‘noisy’! The good thing is that we are the ones who make them think they are very good! Of course, in return, their respect for us makes us a great team too! It is more symbiotic than anything else.
I have been worried that despite getting a very generous sponsorship, MaNoma were not registering the results that would logically be expected following the boost in the funding. It made no sense at all. I feared that if my team did not show big results for a long time, we would not sustain the situation of being generously funded.
In the Super League of Malawi (Sulom), we have not made a big statement. We have not shown the performance that would be expected from a well-funded team. We have to accept this reality and then we need to take action to address it. We cannot expect to be well funded and then perform at average level or at the same level as where we were before the funding boost.
This is where I find the triumph at the finals of the Carlsberg Cup that were played in Lilongwe last weekend important. It is a turning point for the club I love most—MaNoma. We have now made the statement that we needed to make immediately following the award of the sponsorship a few months back. You cannot get help and then remain the same. When you beg help and you get the help, you have a logical and moral obligation to return the favour in terms of serious boost in results.
In any case, we beg help on the premise that we are in a poor state because we do not have the resources required to do better. Therefore, when we get the help, we need to demonstrate the power of the help by producing much better results than before we had the help. Life before and after help should never be the same.
It is bad habit to get help and not expect some responsibility on our part. We cannot be getting help and not offer anything, no duty, no responsibility in return. In fact, I think the principle of donor conditions is correct. What may be wrong may be some of the conditions, but the principle is correct. I support and promote the principle.
Why should donors help without expecting you to be responsible—even if for the minimum they expect you to commit to help others or to be responsible with the help so that you do not return to your poor state again? What if donors want to eliminate poverty and then demand that once they help you, you need to ensure that you upgrade yourself to comfortable non-poor state? What would be wrong with that?
That is why I find the triumph by MaNoma good—beginning for paying back to the sponsors. MaNoma had no choice to remain a sorry, struggling club after getting the generous funding. We needed to improve on our winning record. In fact, we need to easily go to the top of the league tables with wide margin and win a couple of cups to show gratitude to our sponsors.
We have seen how MaNoma needed to reward back to the sponsors. They did not do it for some time. Some of us were getting worried that potentially, the help could actually be withdrawn. They have now done the reward back to the helpers or sponsors. MaNoma now have the obligation to show gratitude by winning seriously. It is the same in life in general. We all need to show our gratitude to helpers by producing results that justify the help that we get. All the best!
