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Robert Mukondiwa
As the sun’s rays start getting a bit lazy on a Friday late afternoon. Everyone knows what is on the sun’s mind.
It is a shameless conspiracy with Harare’s night-life loving hordes to make darkness come hastened and allow the party and drinking to start in a city that has alcohol and adrenaline pumping in equal measure in its anatomy.
But there is no alcohol here. In fact, there is a certain tension that will no doubt be so palpable even a knife can cut into it.
Sitting in an idling car is a man who has been difficult to get a hold of. Partly because there seems to be a conspiracy between the devils and the god’s to keep him away from some sections of the media. Partly because the last time he and I had had a confrontation, it was a nasty ongoing media brawl.
That was almost a decade and a half ago in 2005.
My pen, spewing sulphur, fire and brimstone, had burnt him repeatedly as students and pupils from his college had drenched the city streets with their numbers causing commotion. I had argued that they needed to be in uniform and a stricter regime that ensured they do not cause problems in the central business district.
Finally, he had heeded my voice and years later, he has one of the most disciplined institutions of learning.
The United Nations Security Council was set to meet if the first meeting between this man and I since that epic media war, were to ever degenerate into physical war that could threaten world peace.
And there sitting in the car our eyes lock. And the palpable tension sets in before a stern handshake and an offer of some place to sit.
But this time he is not a “social criminal”, he is an example of how impossible it is to fail if you have the heart of a lion and the stubbornness of a mule; or two.
Innocent Benza, the owner and player at Herentals Football Club, has hogged the limelight for a number of reasons. Having been drafted into the team to play, many thought these were the antic gestures of someone who was manipulating his ownership of a football team in order to fulfil childhood fantasies of playing at the very top of national football at the expense of the club’s performance.
He would seem like a jester. Or a clown.
The man that sits before me, in a Prussian blue shirt with little pink, magenta and neon floral tear drops is however, far from any of the two. He is a man with resolute intent.
With a salt and pepper coloured beard stud littering his chin, he cannot hide his age. And he does not want to. This is the man who broke records when he scored a goal against Chapungu to become, at the age of 45, arguably the oldest goal-scorer in the Zimbabwean top flight football since records began.
And even though the landmark was spoilt by a response from the airmen in the dying embers of the match, the joy was not lost on the team.
“I am not driven by breaking records. I have always wanted to do this (play football) and I am the type of person who when I have conviction to pursue something, I follow it and work hard towards it,” he says.
Some may recommended that he seeks urgent help because of his tenacity. He is after all studying towards his second Master’s degree while also pursuing a PHD with an international institution. He can never get enough until his heart is satisfied. Which would seem like never!
I have to follow my coach in order to become the best I can be and contrary to what others may think I am a man under authority and have to listen to the coach who is the ultimate authority at the team. Yes I own it but no, I am a player when I sit before the team and so if my son (Tinotenda),” he says of the young man aged 17, who plays alongside him.
He is proud of his son, who has had limited playtime but leads the scoring so far at the team at the time of the chat. He is clad in a pair of shorts after rigorous training.
“We are playing Ngezi tomorrow,” he says. That was for the Chibuku Super Cup.
It was a forgone conclusion for any punter. Herentals versus the lethal, vicious miners in a football confrontation? Obviously the miners were going to choke them and send their corpse dumped down a mine shaft somewhere never to be found again.
False. On penalties, Herentals staged an upset and dispatched Ngezi out of the encounter. But what makes a man who had had brickbats thrown his way all season and been the butt of all jokes turn the tables and show his seriousness, earning the respect of even his fiercest critics?
“Discipline. I have to be disciplined to listen to my coach. To listen to my inner voice which tells me not to give up and to listen to my co-players and our fans who speak positively to0 ensure that I stay with my resolute confidence,” he says.
And that weekend he sat at a perch alongside another stubborn resolute man. Because as his Herentals was upsetting the course of history deep in the mine shafts of Ngezi, another butt of jokes, old and forgotten, Tiger Woods, was upsetting the world with a spectacular comeback.
“Anyone can score that goal. All they need is to keep fighting and aiming to achieve their dreams.
Benza should know. He is living that dream!
Forget the golden goal, Benza is god of the “Olden” goal!
Online Reporter