Why does local football make heavy weather of producing many Meemes?

Your columnist speaks purely from experience in coming to the conclusion that TV punditry begs of one exhibiting remarkable creativity and wit. Put simply, it is no cakewalk. 

This goes without saying, not least because TV punditry is an art, complete with its painful complications that demand perseverance. It may not beg of the rhythmic exactitude and tossed-off physicality of a dance performance, but it is just as gruelling. If not physically, then intellectually.

As anyone that lays claim to having a sense of humour will tell you, nothing ruins a joke quite like having to explain it. With TV punditry, making a submission that does not rise to a peak of being intellectually stimulating can be quietly brutal.

This is why Ruth Meeme's performances while on media duties at the ongoing Netball World Cup with SuperSport—a South Africa-based group of television channels carried on the DStv—should not go unnoticed. More than being devilishly clever with her two cents, Meeme has been devilishly good.

A veteran of two World Cup tournaments (2015 and 2019), knee complications, likely brought on by the ravages of advancing age, ruled Meeme out of contention for a berth in Fred Mugerwa's squad. Rather than being relegated to near-irrelevance, the 30-something has delivered words on the SuperSport set that have proved prescient.

Meeme's performances in front of the camera can hardly be seen in isolation. She is far from being the last Ugandan netball player whose unpretentious excellence has registered at close range over the past few days. Post-match duties have offered Ugandans in Cape Town, South Africa, nuanced pleasures, the delivery of players becoming significantly more refined with each passing day.

This, in case you are wondering dear reader, is an unreserved compliment. Here is why: A growing majority of Ugandan football players continue to be routinely accused of shirking responsibility in front of the camera. And with good reason.

The attendant conceptions of shyness and being uninitiated are, it must be noted, wide off the mark. See, the culprits are intentional in their refusal to learn soft skills that usually stand many in good stead in most spheres of life. This is largely cultivated by the sense of entitlement that is bred right after being recruited into school as leading lights.

Consequently, the inflated ego of school football stars pushes back against any idea that eloquence and basic writing skills be polished. Less known, but no less consequential, is the fact that the shelf life of a player is remarkably short. That it does not occur to many football stars in the country that soft skills continue to crack open opportunities well into retirement is a sad reality.

A colleague in the media industry recently shared about how players have a hard time filling travel and identification documents at airports while on national duty. Many, he added, can barely write their names let alone hold meaningful conversations with airport officials. How then would you expect them to effortlessly do what Meeme is currently doing on SuperSport?

If it seems like it is only Ugandan football that has not been spared the visitations this column has sketched thus far, it is because the so-called beautiful game is indeed an outlier. The likes of Adrian Bukenya (rugby), David Mutaka (rugby), Davis Karashani (cricket), Denis Musali (cricket), and Gloria Kyomugisha (basketball), to mention but a few, have not looked like the metaphorical fish out of water whilst having a crack at TV punditry. 

Why is it then that when it comes to Ugandan football, you can name off the fingers of one hand TV pundits who are worth the while? This should be a damning indictment in more ways than one for the responsible authorities.