Online Reporter
Tadious Manyepo-Zimpapers Sports Hub
SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD Bethel Kondo hit the turf screaming, her left leg bent at a sickening angle.
One Commando Barracks fell silent. The Faith Drive Academy striker had gone in for a routine challenge with Black Rhinos Queens midfielder Daisy Kaitano and came out with her leg (both tibia and fibula) broken.
In that instant, her dream seemed over before it had even begun.
Bethel’s mother, Sylvia Muzanechita, was at home in Mutare waiting to welcome her daughter back from the league match. However, the call that came left her shaken.
“At first I thought the injury was just another normal knock,” she says.
“Then they told me she was in hospital and needed urgent surgery. That’s when I knew it was serious.”
Sylvia cried all night.
Football was more than a game in their household — it was a lifeline.
Bethel, already courted by Zambian giants Green Buffaloes, had become the family’s hope to escape poverty.
“I immediately stopped going to church,” Sylvia recalls.
“I saw no reason to continue. My daughter, my saviour’s career, had gone at 17.”
The injury had come just after Bethel’s return from a six-month loan spell with Green Buffaloes. She had dazzled there, though Zambian rules barred her from a permanent CAF Women’s Champions League registration because of her age.
For Buffaloes, she was a player for the future.
For Sylvia, she was the family’s present and future rolled into one.
Doctors fitted the broken leg with metal plates and a long rod. Recovery looked long and uncertain. But even as her mother wept, Bethel remained focused.
“Looking at my mother crying daily made me feel sorry for myself,” she says.
“But inside I kept hearing a voice telling me to fight. I wanted to play again.”
She began with the smallest steps, literally, learning to control the ball with her left foot all over again.
“It was difficult,” she admits, “but I had to do it.”
Weeks stretched into months. The pain remained, but so did the resolve. By the start of the 2024 Women’s Premier Soccer League season, she was back in the Faith Drive line-up, scoring as if nothing had happened.
“That was a miracle for me,” she says.
Her comeback has been remarkable.
After a year and a half of strong performances with Faith Drive, Herentals Queens called. They wanted her firepower for the CAF Women’s Champions League COSAFA qualifiers.
Bethel answered, scoring freely even as Herentals fell short of the semi-finals.
At home, she is chasing the Golden Boot, only one goal behind seasoned striker Rudo Neshamba of Chapungu.
Sometimes the thought of that brutal tackle still flashes through her mind.
“But I remind myself it’s gone,” she says, even though the rod and screws are still inside her leg. Early this year, she played for the Young Mighty Warriors in the 2026 World Cup qualifiers in Rwanda and even found the net.
“I am eager to win the league title with Herentals Queens and possibly the Golden Boot. I am not sure when the iron rod will be removed, but I am happy I can still carry it and kick the ball.”
Sports medicine specialist Nyasha Banga says she can safely continue for now.
“The leg isn’t operating at full capacity, but she can play. The rod should eventually be removed, and she can still return to top form. We have seen similar recoveries with players like Luke Shaw and Paul Gascoigne.”
That Bethel stands here at all is the product of years of hard work and uncommon drive. Born on January 20, 2006, she grew up in Marange, Manicaland province, without knowing her father, who left for Botswana before she was born.
Life for a young girl there could be perilous.
“In Marange, there were all sorts of issues affecting the girl child, from forced marriages to general prostitution,” she says. “I needed a way out and I found it in football.”
Her talent blossomed early.
Starting at Muwangirwa Primary School, she soon caught the eye of St Noah Secondary School coaches during district finals.
From there, she was scouted by Faith Drive Queens coach Admire “Ngangira” Mahachi, who arranged a football scholarship for her at Nyamauru Secondary School in Mutare.
Off the field, she showed the same grit.
“She was very industrious,” Sylvia remembers. “I am a vendor, and Bethel would join me whenever she wasn’t at school. Sometimes I was blown away by how she hawked for customers. She was as energetic in this as she is on the pitch.”
By 2019, she had led Nyamauru to national glory, representing Zimbabwe at the Under-15 Copa Coca-Cola continental meet in Kenya.
Covid-19 interrupted her rise, but she soon captained the Zimbabwe Under-17s at the COSAFA Championships in South Africa and was named in the Region V Games squad before a late pandemic outbreak kept the team from travelling to Lesotho.
Coach Mahachi never doubted her talent.
“I have coached a lot of girls but Bethel stands out for her never-say-die spirit,” he says.
“I am not surprised she is playing with an iron rod in her leg. I know she will go places.”
Her story is one of faith lost and faith remade. Sylvia, who once quit church in despair, still prays for her daughter’s healing.
Bethel keeps her sights on bigger dreams, titles to win, goals to score, a professional career to build and a promise to lift her family.
The rod in her leg may one day come out.
The fire in her heart shows no sign of fading.
