12 Mar 2015

In 2011, the DailyNews quoted the then Botswana Football Association’s vice president, Boyce Sebetela as saying that time was ripe for all the national teams to have individualised names.

“I hope that we will treat the issue as a matter of urgency and that the president of BFA will make a formal announcement as to how to go about deciding the names,” Sebetela said at the time. 

However, it is almost four years now since Sebetela made known his dream yet he and Batswana are probably still waiting to know whether it will be realised or not. As a result, it has become common for people to confuse the senior national team with the Under-23 squad because they carry the same ‘national team’ name.

Near home in South Africa, national teams have nicknames of their own: Bafana Bafana for men’s senior national football team; Banyana Banyana for women’s senior national football squad; Amabokoboko for the national rugby team; and Amajimbos for men’s junior football team.

It is easy to understand who Banyana Banyana are as their name uniquely identifies them differently without using ‘senior or junior national team’.  In sport, it is a norm for teams to carry with them unique names that specifically identify them differently from others.

The name ‘national team’ can mean or be used to identify teams across all the sporting codes including karate, rugby, softball and volleyball, and, of course, football teams. Now the trick is that, all these teams have ranks from senior levels down to junior levels, and this alone can confuse fans in knowing exactly which national team is being referred to.

In an interview, Moteledi Mantswe, one of sport followers, said a name should have a connotation attached to it so that it showed where the nation camefrom, adding that the women national teams and their junior teams did not have names with a meaning.

Another sport enthusiast, White Ramagapa said Botswana was undoubtedly a country well known for its richness in tourism; therefore sport could be used to market the country. He suggested that all the national teams should carry with them a name associated with the country’s tourism products such as Zebras, which is used for the senior football squad. 

BFA, vice president-technical, Stephen Phetlhe said the association would work hard to rectify the anomaly, admitting that branding the national teams was inevitable. He added that the technical committee had been tasked with looking into the issue of branding the national teams. ENDS