The over-dog must step aside as it appears this may well be the season of the underdog.
From Botswana’s historic election which saw opposition coalition leader Duma Boko being elected President to unfancied Simba Bhora football club from Shamva winning Zimbabwe’s Castle Lager Premier Soccer league, this may well be the moment for the underdog;; the season for those that pollsters and pundits often write off by dint of the gargantuan odds stacked against them.
No one gave Duma Boko and his Umbrella for Democratic Change a chance. But they wrote a fantastic story in history when they ended a 58 year political dominance by the Botswana Democratic Party.
In what could be interpreted as interference in the sovereign affairs of a neighbouring State, Zanu PF had even sent emissaries to help the campaign of a fellow liberation party. But it all ended in tears when 54 year old Boko was sworn in as President just about a week ago, marking the demise of a political behemoth that had presided over Gaborone’s affairs for almost six decades..
Against all odds, the underdog had trounced the overdog, just as happened in Mauritius a few days ago when the opposition swept to victory with a massive landslide.
Dear reader, welcome to the season of the underdog!
The African National Congress, the oldest liberation movement in Africa founded in 1912, has always been a mammoth edifice. But a political underdog called the Democratic Alliance (DA), formed only in 2000 and a motley of other smaller and younger opposition political parties, managed to push back the 112-year old ANC, eroded it’s influence and forced it into a coalition government.
This may well be the season of the underdog.
In the United States of America, one Donald Trump, a convicted criminal who at 78 became the oldest Presidential candidate in Washington, won a landslide against Kamala Harris. Pollsters may have called it a close race, but many neutrals were shocked by Trump’s landslide given his brazenly racist and fascist rhetoric.
This on top of his criminal record, which ought to have disqualified him in the first place.
But then he won against the odds and notwithstanding his divisive vile and racist rhetoric that was so unbecoming for one seeking the highest office in a country that purports to be a paragon of democracy!
Indeed, this may well be the moment for the unfancied; the joyful season for those that the world often writes off.
In the United Kingdom—-and against all odds—a 44 year old black woman of Nigerian descent, one Kemi Badenoch, was recently elected to lead the Conservative party.
She may have been born in England, but nobody had budgeted that a party widely presumed to be the most conservative, the most fascist and the most racist in Europe would elect a black Nigerian woman as its leader.
Olukemi Olafunto Adegoke Badenoch only returned to England at the age of 16, having spent many years in Nigeria.
From a humble life of eating foofoo in Surulere, Lagos, Kemi is today the leader of the Tory party; known to be a haven and thriving bastion of racist, chauvinistic white Britons.
But then this is the season of the underdog.
Our Kemi, the black daughter from the African land of kola nuts and egusi soup, is now leading the party of Margaret Thatcher in England, right in the heart of Europe.
To win the leadership of the Conservatives, Kemi, the black daughter of African descent, polled 53 806 votes against Robert Jenrick’s 41 388 votes.
The cardinal lesson from all these events that feed into my underdog theme for this week is that in this life, it is trite to write anyone off.
There is just no underdog on this earth. The underdog can surprise you with a triumph, even with the odds heavily staked against them.
In the world of Zimbabwean football, the underdog recently grabbed the headlines.
Forget the familiar story of Dynamos, Highlanders, Caps United and FC Platinum as being the ultimate football giants of our land.
This season it was a small team called Simba Bhora from Shamva that was crowned Castle Lager Premier Soccer League champions after winning the title with two games to spare.
The country’s known football giants were defeated at Simba Bhora’s fortress of Wadzanai stadium in the sleepy Mashonaland central town of Shamva.
This is indeed the season of the underdog and it is trite to write anyone off.
Elsewhere in the same world of football in Europe, it was little Sporting Lisbon of Portugal that put moneybags Manchester City of England to the sword by beating this fancied team of galacticos 4-1.
Yet another underdog had written its own fairytale.
For a moment the world took notice of the Old Trafford bound Ruben Amorim and forgot a legend called Pep Guardiola while the press lauded underdog Viktor Gyokores who scored a hat-trick at the expense of the highly fancied overdog called Erling Haaland who missed a penalty in the match.
The small African country called Equatorial Guinea is an underdog in the geopolitics of the continent, or in any other field for that matter.
The tiny nation of Equatorial Guinea is widely deemed inconsequential and has always been relegated by the trending doyens of the continent that include Rwanda, South Africa, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Morocco, Kenya and other bogey nations.
But then this is the season of the underdog!
Thanks to the romantic and libidinal prowess of one Baltasar Ebang Engonga, the little-known country is trending.
Cyber-news analysts have even reckoned that underdog Equatorial Guinea became an overdog overnight and at one point trended more than the election in the United States of America, a global superpower that has the world’s biggest economy.
Yes, as the votes were being counted in the world’s superpower, it was Baltasar Ebang Engonga who trended more than Donald Trump, Kamala Harris and Elon Musk.
This is the era of the underdog and next time you go betting, there may be no harm in putting your money on the one against whom the odds are stacked.
You may thank me later!
The only logical conclusion one can make out of all these events is that the biblical story of David and Goliath was no fluke. It was no aberration. To this day, there are many Davids that continue to slay their Goliaths.
Luke Tamborinyoka is a citizen from Domboshava. He is a journalist and a political scientist by profession. You can interact with him on his Facebook page or via the twitter handle @ luke_tambo.
