Between Thoughts -Intellectual Musings

A World Cup dispatch from Mexico City, a football metaphor, and a friend’s inconvenient truth. 

I flew approximately 14,620 kilometres, spent between 22 and 26 hours in the air, crossed time zones and hemispheres,  to watch Bafana Bafana play not to lose.

I was in Mexico for the opening match of the 2026 FIFA World Cup: South Africa vs Mexico. Partly to live the football dream. Partly to relive the electricity of 2010, when Mexico and South Africa met on home soil and a nation held its breath together. This time I was there with people I love, buying experiences instead of things, collecting moments instead of material.

What I got instead was a masterclass in fear.

Losing is not always the issue with fans. It’s how you lose that matters.

Bafana set up with a shit-load of defenders and defensive midfielders. The tactical instruction was clear: do not get embarrassed. The unspoken ambition? Survive. Mexico and the cab driver who collected us from the airport said it himself, a man who played professionally, were not a great side. Yet when you play not to lose, you make even an average team look great. We got two red cards. We lost 2-0. And then Coach Hugo stood before the microphones and told us,  the fans, the believers, the long-haulers,  that his team had played well.

He looked us in the eyes and said: your eyes are lying.

That is what a prevention mindset does at scale. It gaslights everyone, including the person holding it.

Football as Metaphor  and Why Definitions Matter
Since football is a metaphor and an analogy for life, let me,  for those shaped by Bantu Education, who were systematically denied access to rich conceptual language,  offer the proper definitions.

A metaphor states that one thing is another, to create vivid meaning. “Time is a thief.” It does not ask permission. It takes.
An analogy draws a comparison between two different things to explain a complex idea. “Life is like a rollercoaster.” There are highs, lows, and moments when you cannot tell which way is up.

With that in place, consider what watching that opening match made me think about,  not just Bafana Bafana’s tactical setup, but my own.
The Science Behind the Mindset: Regulatory Focus Theory

In behavioural psychology, Columbia University professor E. Tory Higgins established what is now a foundational framework: Regulatory Focus Theory. It identifies two distinct orientations that govern human motivation.

Regulatory Focus Theory.  Two Orientations

Promotion Focus (Playing to Win):

Driven by growth and ideals. Pursues positive gains. Fuelled by strategic eagerness. Sensitive to the presence or absence of positive outcomes.

Prevention Focus (Playing Not to Lose):

Driven by safety and security. Minimises negative losses. Fuelled by strategic vigilance. Sensitive to the presence or absence of negative outcomes.

Empirical research consistently shows that a heavy prevention focus under pressure produces exactly what we witnessed in Mexico City, Estadio Azteca, officially branded as Mexico City Stadium for the tournament and locally supported as Estadio Banorte.

Attention shifts from fluid, automatic skill execution to the conscious tracking of mistakes. Cognitive overload follows. Physical stiffness sets in. Errors multiply. Red cards accumulate. And when leaders are trapped in a prevention mindset, they develop confirmation bias as a form of ego protection. Coach Hugo telling us the team played well was not arrogance,  it was a classic defensive psychological mechanism: reshaping failure into the successful execution of a plan, thereby protecting a self-concept built on survival rather than ambition.

Anxiety is a terrible coach. It tells you that surviving without a 7-1 blowout is a victory.

Running Towards vs. Running Away
Watching the match, I found myself drifting,  as I often do,  from the thing happening in front of me to the thing it might be pointing towards. I started thinking about an old conversation with a dear friend.

She told me something I have never fully shaken.

“Mzi,” she said, “you are running away from poverty. But you are not running towards anything.”

It was the kind of observation that lands like a diagnosis. Precise. Uncomfortable. And unmistakably true. The psychological architecture of ‘playing to win versus not lose’ maps directly onto the mechanics of approach versus avoidance motivation. The research is unambiguous:

Running Towards Primary Goal: Attaining a positive, desired outcome
Running Away Primary Goal: Escaping a negative, feared outcome
Running Towards Energy Source: Sustainable, inspiration-driven, expansive
Running Away  Energy Source: Finite, anxiety-driven, exhausting
Running Towards  Emotional State: Excitement, hope, engagement
Running Away  Emotuinal State: Relief (temporary) or chronic fear

End State
Running  Towards: Fulfilment of potential
Running Away: An endless treadmill,  the threat never fully gone.

Running Away – Primary Goal
When you run away from poverty, poverty remains the organising anchor of your life. You accumulate the expensive clothing, the well-decorated exterior, the premium experiences,  a long-haul flight to watch your national team at a World Cup,  as protective armour. Proof of distance. Evidence of escape.

But because you are playing ‘not to lose’ your security, you can never actually enjoy it. You can never stop checking. Avoidance goals do not produce psychological nourishment. Avoidance only ever produces relief  and relief has an incredibly short half-life. Once the relief fades, the emptiness returns, right on schedule.

The void is not a mystery. It is the inevitable experience of a life organised around escape.


A Word for Those Cancelling South Africa.
There is one more thing I need to say before I leave the subject of that stadium. South Africa is being cancelled by parts of the continent for our shadows,  for xenophobia, for not being kind enough to strangers, to other Africans who come seeking safety or opportunity. The criticism is fair. We have work to do. I carry that shame alongside my pride.
But since West Africa has some of the most religiously observant Christian populations on the continent, and since scripture is being wielded as both mirror and weapon, let these verses also find their mark:

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye.”
— Matthew 7:3–5

“You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.“
— Romans 2:1

“God warns against oppression and the ‘pointing finger and malicious talk.‘”
— Isaiah 58:9

We all have country shades and shadows. To cancel South Africa from the World Cup story is to mistake the speck for the plank.

I am proudly South African, amidst our flaws, and amidst the world’s tendency to hold us to standards it does not apply to itself.

From Defence to Attack.  A Life Reframe
So. What do you do when you realise you have been playing defensive football with your life?
First, you redefine the win. Identify what you are building, not what you are escaping. If you are no longer running from poverty, what target are you actively hunting? Freedom? Creative legacy? Community? The next generation of young men who never had to run from anything because you built them a different starting point?
Second, you audit your defenders. Look at your lifestyle choices honestly. Are you buying premium experiences because they genuinely ignite your growth, or because they prove to the world you are no longer poor? One is promotion. The other is prevention dressed in expensive clothes.
Third, accept the risk of losing. Teams that play to win accept they might concede a counter-attack goal. Living a fulfilled life requires leaving yourself open to vulnerability, to bad matches, to emotional risks that have no guaranteed outcome. The defenders did their job. You are no longer in poverty. The threat has been neutralised.
Now it is time to take some defensive midfielders off the pitch, put some strikers up front, and play the rest of your life to win.

The Core Insight
In psychological research, escaping a negative state only returns you to zero. To baseline. It does not produce fulfilment,  it produces relief. True fulfilment requires actively pursuing a positive ideal. The goal is not the absence of poverty. The goal is the presence of purpose.

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Dr. Mzamo Masito
Between Thoughts – Intellectual Musings 

Where the uncomfortable questions get a seat at the table.