Dear Zimbabwe,Congratulations. You are back.

After 5 years of playing home games in Rwanda, South Africa, and other people’s hospitality, you finally brought the Warriors home.

National Sports Stadium, full house, VIPs in the air-conditioned box, vuvuzelas tuned to C-sharp.

You lost 2-1 to DRC.

And then, as is tradition in our republic, you decided to take matters into your own hands.

Literally. With your feet.

Onto the pitch.

It was beautiful, in an anthropological sense.

European hooligans invade pitches out of rage. Ours invade out of helpfulness.

We are not vandals. We are consultants.

The fine young men who breached the perimeter fence at the NSS were not there to fight.

They were there to offer technical assistance to the midfield. To show Nakamba how it should have been done.

To explain the offside trap to the DRC centre-back, personally.

This is who we are. We don’t believe in boundaries. A queue is a suggestion.

A “No Entry” sign is an invitation to negotiate.

We invaded farms, we invaded mines, we invaded council stands, we invaded the US dollar when we said we were using ZiG.

Of course we would invade our own pitch. Why would football be exempt from national culture?

Now, let’s juxtapose this charming local custom with the small matter of CAF.

CAF does not have a sense of humour.

CAF is that strict boarding school matron who still uses a ruler.

CAF’s disciplinary code is a very boring document that says things like:

– Pitch invasion = minimum US$20,000 fine

– Failure to guarantee safety = US$50,000 to US$100,000

– Repeat offence = playing two to four matches behind closed doors

– Death or serious injury linked to poor organisation = stadium banned, home games moved to neutral venue again.

You remember that neutral venue, don’t you?

That was our home for five years. We sang “Simudzai Mureza” in Kigali while a groundsman from Kigali looked at us with pity.

So here is the erudite punch, as requested:

We are a people who will spend US$10 million renovating a stadium to CAF standards.

Paint it, install bucket seats, bring a FIFA inspector with a clipboard, invite the President, invite the cameras, and then, at minute 90+3, decide the most logical thing to do is to turn that US$10 million stadium into a village soccer field where anyone can take a penalty.

It is what economists call destroying value at the point of consumption.

And the supreme irony?

At Gate 2, at 6:30pm, before a ball was even kicked, one Zimbabwean died in a stampede.

One man died to get in. Then 200 men decided to get in further onto the grass.

We mourn with such efficiency that we create another incident while mourning the first.

Sarcasm aside, dear fellow Zimbabwean, the pitch is not yours.

It is not the Ministry of Lands. You cannot claim it by occupying it.

That 110 by 75 metre rectangle belongs to 22 tired men.

Next time we lose and we will lose, we are Zimbabwe, let’s try a radical concept:

Stay seated. Clap. Go home angry. Argue in the kombi.

Let CAF keep our stadium open.Because if we keep this up, we will be watching Zimbabwe vs Morocco from a bar in Francistown, saying “Ah, but at least we showed passion.”

Passion is not trespassing with reckless abandon.