Dreams & dashed hopes

[View this email in your browser]( [Mail & Guardian]( [Mail & Guardian]( [Twitter]( [Facebook]( [Instagram]( [YouTube]( Hi there, The shutdown of Kickoff magazine was a foul nugget of news to bite into this weekend. Its glossy pages were a mandatory pick-up to multiple generations of football fans; the perfect consolidation of match reviews, interviews and gossip. Although the web iteration will continue, the closure of print operations is another dagger to penetrate the media industry, an industry that is still choking on the toxic fallout of New Frame’s regrettable closure. For Carlos Amato, [Kickoff’s farewell coincides with the death of a dream that it had catalogued for 28 years]( — the Bafana Bafana project. When the publication opened its doors on the eve of democracy in early 1994, South African football had unbounded potential. The world was opening up to future immortals such as “Shoes” Mosheou, Doctor Khumalo and Phil Masinga. By 1996, the national team would reach the continent’s peak, claiming the Africa Cup of Nations. No one would have opined in Kickoff’s pages back then that we would never glimpse that level of success on the pitch again. Today, Amato writes, we have a “chronically weak national men’s team and a slickly packaged but mediocre PSL. The reasons for this decline are many; a mixture of South African Football Association ineptitude and corruption, decades of short-termist profit-taking by PSL club owners, a refusal to research and follow best practice and a social backdrop of deepening poverty and trauma.” Keeping with sport, today is Kobe Bryant Day (no, you are not the only one who did not know that was a thing). To celebrate the occasion, Kabomo [has picked out the top moments]( from the late basketball star’s life. Bryant left behind a complex legacy, one that is still being interrogated two years after his death. You can also check out an older article of ours: [Kobe Bryant wrote his own legacy](. Also, be sure to check on the M&G front page for the latest on the [national shutdown]( and the teeth-chilling [rise in inflation](. Yours in solidarity, Luke Feltham [Subscribe now]( Enjoy The Ampersand? Share it with your friends [Share]( [Share]( [Tweet]( [Tweet]( [Forward]( [Forward]( [Share]( [Share]( Copyright © 2022 Mail & Guardian Media LTD, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in to receive communications from the Mail & Guardian either at our website or by taking out a print subscription. Our mailing address is: Mail & Guardian Media LTD 25 Owl St BraamfonteinJohannesburg, Gauteng 2001 South Africa [Add us to your address book]( Want to change which mails you receive from Mail & Guardian? [Update your preferences]( to tell us what you do and don't want to receive, or [unsubscribe](. *If you are a paying subscriber, we recommend updating your preferences rather than unsubscribing, as you may miss important information relating to your subscription.