Online Reporter
Tadious Manyepo
Zimpapers Sports Hub
KUDAKWASHE BASOPO’s crashing end was unmistakable.
The viral nature of her disgusting video was beyond doubt.
There, she stood aloof and broken. Defeated.
Her smartphone froze with the sheer amount of shameful commiserations.
She made no attempt to get it fixed. She crashed it and just threw it into the bin, instead.
Instinctively, that was some sort of relief. But that was far from it.
The name she had built over the years had been badly soiled and in the depths of dust.
Her sky high brand she had patiently polished especially after helping her team Black Rhinos Queens to four straight Zimbabwe Women’s Premier Soccer League titles and a year after scoring Mighty Warriors’ first ever goal at the Olympics in Brazil had fallen into a precipice.
Her inspirational stature across the ghetto and back in her village in Mhondoro had suffered a sudden death. Everything, in an instant, became delicate.
The year is 2017 and there is still so much excitement around the women’s game, not least, after the Mighty Warriors had become the first team to qualify, remember the Golden Girls of Hockey in 1980 were invited, for the Olympics in 2016. Although the Shadreck Mlauzi girls didn’t win a game in their group, losing all the three, suffering identical 6-1 defeats to Germany and Australia which sandwiched a 3-1 loss to Canada, they had captured the imagination of the world with their determination and spirit especially after scoring in each of those games.
Everyone who was part of that team was getting attention back home, Basopo, the scorer of the goal against Germany before performing a Cristiano Ronaldo-inspired suuu celebration, included. And boom, the nation woke up to a controversial video featuring Basopo and a married woman.
“That was my end, I was dead, essentially,” she recalls. “Everyone turned against me even when I had decided to come out in the open to confess it and to say I had become a born-again Christian.”
Nothing worked and that episode still plays in her mind like it happened yesterday. Everything became touch and go. No one wanted to be associated with her.
Even Mighty Warriors coach Sithethelelwe “Kwinji 15” Sibanda just axed her from the COSAFA squad without giving an explanation or even consulting her assistants. That was how much Basopo was hated. And hurt.
“I also lost my job and consequently axed from Black Rhinos Queens,” added Basopo.
“My world just crumbled under my feet.” No one wanted her. She turned to the church. And she publicly announced it saying, ‘I don’t know what was happening with me. I think it was some spiritual forces, but I am now a Christian and let bygones be bygones’.”
Still nobody cared. No one leapt to her defence. She had to battle the demons, all alone. Her friends deserted her. Her extended family rebuked her even when she needed an embrace. Her own family didn’t say a word. But they weren’t anywhere close. She contemplated the worse; suicide.
But her mother, Emmaculate Chikodzi, quickly rushed to Harare from Mhondoro and took her back to the village.
“I quickly forgot or attempted to forget about it all,” said Basopo.
“I went back to basics. I was herding cattle with village boys. I was tilling the land, all the village stuff. I was normal again. But I never considered playing football again.”
But village life isn’t easy and can never be easy for someone who had become accustomed to the fast-paced ghetto life.
“It was a sort of rehabilitation for my daughter when I decided to take her to the village,” said her mother Chikodzi.
“No matter the crime or deviation she was being accused of committing, I had to stand with her.
“The more I made sure, she got accepted by villagers, the more things became better for her.”
Basopo found herself back in Harare. She knew she no longer had friends in football. Or just normal friends.
“That’s how I turned to drugs,” revealed Basopo. It was the sort of opium I needed.
“You know drugs are associated with criminal activities. We became dangerous syndicates always playing cat and mouse with the police.”
That kind of life ran her down.
“Then I had a dream where my late father was instructing me to go back to football,” she said.
“Suddenly, I stopped drugs and took a break from criminal activities.
“I then contacted Harare City Queens coach Rosemary Mugadza in 2019.
Mugadza extended the olive branch. Mugadza, a veteran of the game herself said: “When she contacted me, I was like, okay let me give her a chance to redeem herself and possibly take her away from drugs and crime.
“She wasn’t looking good. But we decided to work with her. Her concentration levels were down, but we were determined to get her back into the groove.” Basopo showed some good signs that season but the COVID-19 pandemic set in and literally reversed everything she had gained.
For the two years that followed, with football locked down, Basopo never returned to her old ways; instead she was doing lone sessions back in the village, detoxifying her body.
That worked well and in 2023, she joined Black Mambas Queens where she reinvented herself, scoring crucial goals and eventually getting a recall into the provisional Mighty Warriors squads.
“Just getting back into the picture made me feel good,” said Basopo.
“That’s when I started to realise how much I had been missing. I was scoring for fun and the football world started to appreciate me again.”
Eswatini giants Nsingizini Hotspurs came knocking. She got aboard. In only one-and-a-half seasons, Basopo smashed records in the Eswatini top-flight, winning the Golden Boot with 40 goals in the league and 10 more in the Ngwenyama Cup in the 2024/5 season.
She followed that up with 38 goals last season.
Basopo is now back home after joining reigning ZWPSL champions Herentals Queens this month. In only five games, she has scored seven goals to elevate Vagoni Vebasa into the frame for what will become their fifth championship triumph at the bounce. She will be heading to Botswana with Herentals Queens for the CAF Women’s Champions League COSAFA qualifiers this August.
Herentals Queens coach Simbarashe Dedza said Basopo is the ultimate star he needed to stuff up his team.
“Basopo is currently one of the best players if not the best in our league,” said Dedza.
“I am very sure she will give us a huge dimension going into the CAF Women’s Champions League COSAFA qualifiers.”
Sibanda is back as the Mighty Warriors coach and she is convinced Basopo can now fit in her squad given the determination and the experience she has picked along.
For Basopo, it all feels like she is back from the dead.
