Online Reporter
Tadious Manyepo
Zimpapers Sports Hub
I never really knew Shyline Dambamuromo.
For me, she was just another girl playing in the Zimbabwe Women’s Premier Soccer League for Faithdrive Academy.
She was just another girl who was sometimes made it into the Mighty Warriors squad. Nothing less, nothing more.
Then she joined Herentals Queens, on loan, for six months from June 2022.
She didn’t make the move alone from the Mutare club. Maudy Mafuruse and Alice Moyo tagged along.
Until then, Herentals Queens were still not next-level.
They would win some, draw and lose some games just like any other team in the Women’s top-flight.
Then everything changed. They never lost a match for the remainder of that season and guess what?
They would be crowned the ZWPSL champions for the first time in their history. Then they retained Dambamuromo, Mafuruse and Moyo.
Herentals Queens have never been toppled up to now after defending the championship in 2023, 2024 and last year and since the trio joined, they have lost only three league games, twice against Black Rhinos Queens and once against Harare City in four years.
But it was two months after Dambamuromo, and her crew from Faithdrive Academy, had joined Herentals Queens, then under Stephen Mudawapi that I decided to contact her.
Eventually we met. I had picked something in her. She was aggressive. She still is. Her sheer industry turns heads. Yet she can be a smart dribbler. Yes she is, that’s why her coach now Simbarashe Dedza at times deploys her as a 10.
But what stood out and still stands out about her game was endurance. She was only 22 then and I sought to know her better.
What she told me prompted me to quickly arrange a trip to interview her parents Joseph and Juliet (nee Mujana) in San’anza Village, Honde Valley.
“I could have been married off at 15,” she calmly told me.
What?
“Yes at 15, I was already about to become someone’s wife. It’s not that taboo where I come from.”
“Then what happened?” I inquired.
“On the eve of it all, I dashed to my mother and cried my heart out.
“I wasn’t prepared for marriage. I had worked hard in the banana plantations and literally paid for my own school fees from the money I earned from selling bananas at Mbare Musika.
“That way of life was better than getting married off.”
Then her mother hatched a risky plan.
“We arranged for her to be picked up by a commuter omnibus at night by someone who we paid through the nose,” her mother said.
The plan was well executed. But where was Dambamuromo going?
The kombi headed straight to Dangamvura in Mutare where a goddess called Gogo Nelia Musikavanhu was waiting to welcome her.
She already knew Dambamuromo from Nyamhingura Secondary School in Honde Valley; that girl who had mesmerised the crowd with her intelligence when her school beat Hatzel 2-1 in a Nash Schools Provincial final in Nyanga a year before.
Gogo Musikavanhu had contacted Dambamuromo’s mother after that final wanting to sign her in her team Faithdrive Academy.
There was bickering. Joseph, by his own admission, wanted her to get married. Juliet was seeing a window of opportunity for her daughter.
And finally Dambamuromo was in Dangamvura at Gogo Musikavanhu’s house now converted into a club house with 18 young girls staying there.
Converting her only house into a football den invited fury from her six children.
“But I was determined to fulfil my vision,” said Gogo Musikavanhu back in 2022. I was a netball player growing up, doing wonders as a Goal Shooter. But I decided to put together Faithdrive Football Academy in 2004 to help the girl child who I was seeing getting married at a young age and those who got unwanted pregnancies and dropping out of school.
“The academy was set up to plug that up. I have been taking girls from rural areas like Bocha, Buhera, Honde Valley, Checheche, Chimanimani and Chipinge among other areas.”
For Dambamuromo, that midnight escape from the brink of getting married off opened new doors.
She had dropped out of Nyamhungira Secondary School at the time.
Gogo Musikavanhu then enrolled her, just like she did with all the others, at Nyamauru Secondary School on a scholarship.
At the clubhouse, Dambamuromo stayed with other girls with their own scrambled backgrounds including Moyo who had just been adopted from a Children’s Home.
There was also Mafuruse, Cathrine Gwangwara, Morelife Nyagumbo and Bethel Kondo who had all been rescued by Gogo Musikavanhu from deep down the rural settlements in Manicaland.
Quite striking is the fact that Gogo Musikavanhu, a gifted herbalist, bankrolled the entire thing from the proceeds realised from selling herbs.
Mere herbs.
She even paid salaries for the technical team led by head coach Admire “Ngangira” Mahachi.
“Gogo Musikavanhu is a guardian angel,” said Mahachi three years ago.
“I have always worked with her without any problems”.
The girls that Gogo Musikavanhu saved through football, tens of them, have gone on to serve the country playing for the Mighty Warriors and Young Mighty Warriors.
One of her sons Dumisani, who once opposed the conversion of the family house into a clubhouse, is now the chairperson of Faithdrive Academy, safeguarding and promoting the interests of the players ensuring that very house is always safe for them.
It’s sad that Gogo Musikavanhu has now departed the earth aged 72 after losing her battle to a short illness at the Victoria Chitepo Hospital in Mutare early Thursday.
Her burial is expected today in Mutare with Dumisani saying she chose to be buried right in the town where her academy is.
When the news filtered and Moyo got to learn it, she said she saw her world spinning.
“It’s the most devastating news that I have had all my life,” said Moyo.
“I am a child who grew up in a Children’s Home, the only family that I had was those from the home.
“Then Gogo Musikavanhu adopted me. She was my mother, my grandmother and everything else.
“I think without her I couldn’t have been here, maybe I could have been in jail or I could have died but her guidance shepherded me on.”
Dambamuromo, Kondo, Cynthia Shonga, Concelia Madotsa, Edline Mutumbami, Purity Mugayi, Moyo and others are now the mainstay of the national team.
The girls are now an inspiration for others especially from where they come from with Dambamuromo’s father now an advocate of women empowerment in San’anza Village where his daughter is championing football through her own academy.
Gogo Musikavanhu lived her dream.
The dream is all over the ZWPSL teams with almost every club having a player groomed at Faithdrive Academy.
Football has lost. The game is poorer.
The Heavens have gained an angel. An angel who protected the girl child. An angel who promoted the girl child. An angel who was ready to rescue the oppressed girl child. No matter how much the costs. An angel who sold herbs to sustain her dream for the benefit of vulnerable girls . . .
Go well Gogo Musikavanhu!
