Online Reporter
Tadious Manyepo
Zimpapers Sports Hub
WHEN Dynamos had collected just 15 points from 19 games and were favourites for relegation, Tempation Chiwunga was one of the troops set for the unwanted record.
He had signed for DeMbare at the start of 2025 after spending a significant chunk of his playing career at South Africa’s first division side, JDR Stars.
Chiwunga was one of the star men at the Johannesburg-based team but the lure of playing for Zimbabwe’s biggest team brought him back home.
Yet disaster awaited him.
It got to a point when he started to ask himself tough questions about the gamble he had taken.
“It was a year I want to quickly forget,” Chiwunga says. “I tell you, I was always asking myself tough questions when we seemed to be permanently wedged on 17th place.”
He spoke with conviction, but this time with a glow on his face after the Chibuku Super Cup triumph.
Yet the great escape from relegation and the Chibuku Super Cup victory cannot remove the 2025 scars overnight. His is a tale he will reflect on for a long time.
The Harare giants endured a torrid term when they struggled for breathing space down the Premiership ladder before rallying late to save their top-flight status, right on the final day of the season.
They ended up being the biggest winners of some sort in the league after collecting two trophies, earning a CAF Confederation Cup ticket in the process.
Earlier in the year, they got the better of Simba Bhora to take home the Super Cup.
Saturday’s Chibuku Super Cup triumph was Dynamos’ third on the bounce after winning the 2023 and 2024 editions.
“I am extremely happy to have won this year’s Chibuku Super Cup accolade in particular. It’s a year that everybody lived with a lot of pressure on the team.
“We spent a lot of time in that precarious position. So I was like, Dynamos have never been relegated in history.”
He says he did not want his name to be remembered for the wrong reasons.
“They have always been in the league since 1963. The thought of becoming part of a generation to have sunk Dynamos to the first division for the first time ever troubled me.
“Our names were on the line of being tainted for good. It was a really bad year for us so we thought.”
It was the decision to hire coach Kelvin Kaindu that seemed to change the script.
After that, DeMbare was unbeaten in 11 league matches while they also went all the way in the cup competition.
“ . . . Here we are; we have won two cups in a year we thought we were so bad. The match against Triangle was never going to be easy.
“We knew we had never won a game there (Gibbo) since 2016 but we carried with ourselves some belief and confidence,” Chiwunga adds.
“Triangle dominated us through and through but we knew how to manage the match and that’s what we did.
“In the end the podium was ours. It’s one of those years when you thought everything was upside down but then it turned out to be actually a good one in the end.”
Chiwunga says Dynamos needed to remain focused for them to perform well in the league next season.
“Honestly, we don’t want to see a repeat of what happened in the 2025 season when Dynamos, of all the teams, was massively involved in the relegation dogfight.
“It was such a bad year, although we ended with two accolades. We shouldn’t struggle in the league, that’s for sure.
“We need to plan ahead and make sure that we have a deliberate effort to do well next season. We have a duty to make our fans happy in the Premier Soccer League next year.
“We have dominated the Chibuku Super Cup and now we need to improve in the league,” he says.
