Online Reporter
Zimpapers Sports Hub
There is nothing about Chizhanje to suggest it should have become a nursery for Premier League footballers.
It is a small enclave in Mabvuku, a densely populated corner of Harare where football has long been played on dusty pitches and with more enthusiasm than resources.
There are no grand academy buildings here, no rows of immaculate training pitches and no expensive development programmes. Yet this modest neighbourhood has produced players who went on to win Premier League titles and establish themselves at the highest level of Zimbabwean football.
Among them are brothers Irvine and Kudakwashe Tinarwo and Sageby Sandaka.
Their story began long before the trophies, the big stadiums and the professional contracts. It began when they were children, playing for Chizhanje Junior Football Club, sharing a pitch and competing in local tournaments before any of them could have imagined where football might eventually take them.
The age gap between Kuda, now 49, and Sandaka (44), did little to separate them in those formative years. Different generations could play together, and the local tournaments provided an environment in which young players were able to test themselves against older children.
There was little money.
There was little equipment.
But there was football.
And plenty of it.
Chizhanje Junior Football Club was founded in the 1970s, part of the grassroots network that helped feed Zimbabwe’s leading clubs at a time when Dynamos and Caps United dominated the domestic game. More than four decades later, the legacy of that club remains visible.
Former Sporting Lions centre-back Simon Choyenda came from the area. So did Kevin Ariferi, who played Premiership football with Kwekwe Cables, Lancashire Steel and Kwekwe Stars. Former
Black Rhinos winger Ranga Mubata and Northern Region Division One stalwart Lovemore Misho are also Chizhanje products.
FC Platinum centre-forward Alex Chitsaka and former Dynamos goalkeeper Siba Maponga are further reminders of the footballing talent that has emerged from the neighbourhood.
And now Chizhanje has two semi-professional clubs of its own, Ghetto Pirates and Kufatichitonga.
The names have changed. The football landscape has changed.
The hunger has not.
“Go to Chizhanje, come back and then ask me the question,” Ivan Tinarwo said when asked why so many players from the neighbourhood have reached the Premier League.
“It’s probably the passion, the hunger and the need to get past poverty we all had. It is probably about opportunities, and someone has to believe in you.”
That belief is perhaps the most important part of the Chizhanje story.
Because the neighbourhood could offer little in material terms. What it could provide was competition, community and an environment where football mattered.
Kelvin Ariferi remembers playing against the other boys before eventually becoming part of the same footballing generation.
They developed their game on the Chizhanje pitch, a place that would later become home to the modern-day Ghetto Pirates and Kufatichitonga.
“We’re just a tiny neighbourhood in Mabvuku; we’ve been lucky enough to coincide with a generation of players that is historic,” said Asa Ariferi, chairman of Ghetto Pirates and uncle to Kelvin.
“When the Tinarwos and Sandaka were children, they played on a dusty pitch. For clubs like ours, it is a source of pride to see how these players, whom we saw grow up as footballers, triumphed as players in their playing days, each winning a league title.
“At that time, players born the year before could play with those born in the following year, for example, so the Tinarwos and Sandaka all played together in several local tournaments at some point.
“Kuda was a very shy child with exceptional talent. Irvine was a leader then, just as he is today. Sandaka was very loud, but on the field he was an excellent goalscorer.”
Sandaka, in particular, stood out.
He was regarded as a match-winning attacker, the sort of player who could change a game and who inevitably attracted attention whenever he played.
Ariferi, meanwhile, had football in his blood. The son and nephew of the Ariferi footballing family
— Asa, Alec and Lameck, Kelvin’s father — was always expected to make an impression.
But Kelvin’s route to the Premiership was less straightforward. He moved to Mutare when he was only nine months old and spent much of his childhood away from Chizhanje, returning during school holidays. His eventual move into professional football therefore came with a degree of uncertainty.
“I was worried when moving to Kwekwe where I began my professional football career,” he admitted.
“It’s several hours from my home in Chizhanje, and I wondered whether I would have the level to play with these guys. I was changing clubs, having played for lower division teams in Mutare, but I quickly saw I could play at that level and it came quite early.”
His coaches saw something in him.
He executed the fundamentals well, adapted quickly and, whenever the level rose, appeared capable of rising with it.
Eventually, he became regarded as one of the finest players to emerge from Chizhanje.
The same could be said of the Tinarwos and Sandaka.
For Irvine Tinarwo, however, Chizhanje was never simply the place where he learned football. It was home.
But the Chizhanje story is bigger than three players. The once-dusty surface is being converted into a quality grass football pitch courtesy of Mabvuku-Tafara Member of Parliament Pedzai “Scott”
Sakupwanya, who also owns reigning Premier League champions Scottland.
For Chizhanje, the investment represents more than a better playing surface. It is an acknowledgement that talent does not always emerge from the places where the football industry expects to find it.
Yet there remains a frustrating imbalance. Despite producing more than 40 players who have gone on to play in Division One and the top flight, Chizhanje-based clubs have received little more than token development payments when their players have progressed into professional football.
The bigger clubs have greater resources, better facilities and increasingly recruit talented players at younger ages. That makes it harder for grassroots clubs to retain their best players long enough to build teams and sustain themselves.
“It was a very special generation, yes,” Asa Ariferi said.
“At that time, professional clubs didn’t recruit players as early as they do now. That allowed them to stay together at small development sides for longer.”
Today’s youngsters may not be afforded the same luxury.
Still, the pitch remains.
The clubs remain.
And the boys continue to play.
“We are a society with a very strong sporting culture, and people from Chizhanje are very competitive,” Asa Ariferi said.
“It’s that character that makes us different.” Perhaps that is the simplest explanation for why such a small corner of Mabvuku has repeatedly produced players capable of making the long journey from a dusty local pitch to the summit of Zimbabwean football.
Chizhanje has never needed the trappings of a great academy to produce great stories. It has always had the one thing that cannot be bought: a belief that the next player might be the one.
