It's a new brave world for the South African national team after a decade or more of underachieving as new coach Shakes Mashaba begins his new tenure on Friday.
Playing in Sudan is not the kind of start any new coach with an untested squad would wish for, especially without the benefit of a preparation match in a form of a friendly international. But that's how the game at this level rolls. Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers is serious business, more so for countries who wish to be counted among the best football nations.
This is not hard to fathom, if you look at it in these terms: for a country like SA to fail to qualify for the Afcon, then it simply means we have no right to say anything smart about African football. What would qualify us? Before benefiting from hosting the 2013 edition, South Africa had failed to qualify for two consecutive editions - 2010 Angola and 2012 Gabon/Equatorial Guinea. The 2013 tournament marked the changeover from even numbered years which clashed with World Cup years, to odd numbers; hence 2015 is next on the list.
There's so much hope in Mashaba that he will revive Bafana Bafana. His first squad selection points to the beginning of a new era, something which should have happened under his predecessor Gordon Igesund ahead of the CHAN tournament which South Africa hosted in January this year. In the blog published on February 10, 2014 we asked why Igesund overlooked the success of the national under-20, the obvious base of his future work as Bafana coach? At the time his team had just spectacularly imploded in the CHAN, which is by many degrees below the Afcon.
In the same blog, headlined "CHAN failure points to SA's lack of development vision", we highlighted Igesund mistake for working without future stars in the form of Ayabulela Magqwaka, 19,Rivaldo Coetzee, 17, the Under-20 kingpins, and some of their teammates.
Mashaba responded in the manner that assured the nation, by calling up the the Ajax Cape Town pair, as well as their junior national teammates such as keeper Dumisani Msibi and midfielder Nhlakanipho Ntuli.
It is such brevity and foresight that has made Mashaba the most successful coach of the national teams in South Africa. Lest we forget, he had already qualified SA for the 2004 Tunisia Afcon when the SA Football Association fired him weeks ahead of the tournament, just because he refused to yield to his bosses' pressure to select players who were never part of his squad during the qualifiers.
Sudan will provide a formidable challenge to Mashaba and his charges as they start out for 2015 Morocco. But there can never be a lighter challenge in the overall quest for SA football to rise up from the ashes and shine again.
So much weight is being put on the heat factor in Omdurman. But to be successful in Africa, this team will have to overcome the worst there is on their path, including hair-raising rides to places like Congo-Brazzaville later on.
Vasbyt boys, time to rise up and be counted among men.
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