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Sharuko On Saturday
I HAD planned an ordinary piece this week – writing about Chegutu Pirates, the BIG lie the PSL sold us and why we were far better off playing our football in Division One.
I wanted to remind people that Pirates are the oldest football club in the country, having been formed in 1912, which then explains the nickname Dzinza (Ancestors).
I know other records show that the club was founded in 1963, but that was the transformational year from just a social club into something that could compete in the lower leagues.
I wanted to say it’s also important to note that, if we take away our social story, we are as old as Dynamos, who were also formed in ’63.
I wanted to say that we wasted decades chasing a place in the PSL unaware that we were chasing a hopeless dream and playing in the top-flight league would be a waste of both time and money.
It would separate us from our fans, who are our heart and soul, our home matches would no longer be played at Pfupajena and we would now be incurring expenses of travelling to Hwange and Chisumbanje.
I wanted to say that we don’t fear relegation.
Because, relegation will help us rediscover the soul we lost when we chased a hopeless PSL dream where we would be losing tens of thousands of dollars and getting nothing in return.
That will give us a diplomatic passport to go back to Pfupajena, play before our own people, thousands of them every home game and we will feel their love again from up close and personal.
A return to Division One will breathe life back into our town which, because of the PSL regulations, now resembles a ghost football town when, in reality, it is one of the most vibrant in the country.
It would have been a beautiful story of personal reflection highlighting, once again, that our domestic Premiership, in which a club like Dynamos get less than half the Math Day revenue they generate at home, hoodwinked us with its fantasy.
Then, boom, on Thursday, the DeMbare leaders decided to deny our story that ahead of their showdown against Highlanders they paid a sangoma US$1 000, and everything changed.
This article’s focus changed, from the Pirates tale pregnant with chasing PSL fantasies to the Dynamos tale of trying to deny that the reflection in the mirror was a perfect image of these Glamour Boys.
That no one within the Dynamos leadership could put his name to the statement highlighted the difficulties that they had to overcome just to send out this Mother of All Lies.
No one wants his or her name associated with a lie, especially in public, and this includes those running Dynamos even though we know that they lie to their players, their coaches and all the supporting staff.
The statement claimed the Glamour Boys don’t believe in sangomas because they believe football is now a science and they also have to respect some of their players who don’t believe in juju.
We all know those are just lies because this is the same club whose team manager, Richard Chihoro, was suspended by the PSL last year for his antics at Barbourfields.
The PSL took exception to Chihoro’s decision to go to the goal, which Hwange would be defending, and sprinkle some mysterious substance across the goal line.
The league suspended Chihoro for his “Iron Age” beliefs but Dynamos, despite the shame that came with their name being dragged into this circus, didn’t take any action against him.
They couldn’t because they believe in what he was doing and for them to turn around today and claim that they don’t believe in all this nonsense would have been laughable if it wasn’t horrible.
Chihoro is back on the DeMbare bench as the technical director, the same role which Arsene Wenger plays at FIFA, and that alone is a huge statement on its own, telling us why the Glamour Boys remain trapped in the past.
Should Wenger come here for meetings with technical directors at local clubs, Chihoro will be there, representing the country’s biggest and most successful football clubs.
Chihoro will be talking about low blocks, about defending without the ball, about transition, about loading the midfield, about three defenders and five midfielders and all the jargon that comes with football’s technical issues.
EVEN THEIR LEGENDARY SKIPPER CONFIRMED THIS
What I didn’t read from the Dynamos statement was that they don’t believe in juju because such a belief clashes with the beliefs of the man whose sponsorship has kept them going in the past few years.
For some reason, they didn’t mention that Kuda Tagwireyi, the Sakunda boss, is a devout Seventh Day Adventist and his spiritual beliefs do not allow him to be associated with the dark arts of sangomas and juju men.
That would have been a smart thing for Dynamos to say and highlight, in their denial letter, and that they didn’t even mention their sponsor tells you everything wrong about those running this club.
Memory Mucherahowa, in his autobiography, “Soul Of Seven Million Dreams” writes extensively about the use of sangomas and juju at the club.
He was a long-serving team captain and tells us in his book that coach Peter Nyama was pushed out because the leaders claimed he had mixed his juju with the club’s juju.
Mucherahowa had to travel to Bulawayo to confirm with a sangoma there as to whether this was true and Peter Nyama was axed.
He told us that, on one occasion, a sangoma slit players’ toes to apply his concoctions and the players played that match under intense pain.
“Whether it actually aided us, I do not know, every week before a game the team would consult a traditional healer,” writes Mucherahowa.
“I, as the team captain, would be the one to execute whatever the sangoma had said.
“My loyalty was with the team’s cause and I was prepared to do anything. I was prepared to die on the field for Chidzambwa and Dynamos FC and even volunteered to be the team’s juju carrier.”
My report this week about the payment to the sangoma made it clear there was resistance, from some executive committee members, who felt it didn’t make sense to make this payment in the week their players boycotted training over unpaid dues.
The report stated that those dissenting executive committee members were told that this is the Dynamos tradition and those who didn’t want to be part of this train, with all its dark arts, were free to leave.
Mucherahowa’s story confirms that it’s part of the tradition at DeMbare and no press statement, even one without a name to confirm that it wasn’t dropped from hell, will change that.
And, what will also not change is that despite all the substantial investment, week in and week out, which this Dynamos, under Bernard Marriot, has been making in servicing the sangoma requirements, they haven’t won a league championship in a decade.
Maybe, the guys who were there before can find justification to their beliefs in these dark arts because, at least, the Dynamos they were leading was winning major trophies and the league championship was something like their personal property.
They won four in a row at the turn of the ’80s, in a golden run in which they won seven of the nine titles on offer, and also won four in a row between 2011 and 2014.
Marriot took over in April 2014 and while they won the league that year both the winning chairman, Kenny Mubaiwa, and the winning coach, Callisto Pasuwa, were soon out of the system.
Since then, DeMbare have not won the league and, in the past 27 years, they have won just FIVE league titles, at an average of one championship every five years.
Five is also the number of games they have won in the league this season, with four of their victories coming against clubs that came into the Premiership this season, the likes of Pirates.
The challenge with these arrangements to pay sangomas is that they also create a loophole for some people to fleece the club.
These are the kind of people who will come every week saying that the sangoma wants, let’s say, US$1 000 for the game against Highlanders when, in actual fact, that sekuru wants US$200.
The sangoma doesn’t issue any receipt, so there will never be confirmation that the money that he was paid is the same money that he requested.
For argument’s sake, let’s say someone has been taking US$1 000 from the Dynamos coffers, every week, for payment to the sangoma and, instead, paying US$200, how much money has that person made in the last 10 years?
That’s about US$275 000.
The good thing about such loot is that it cannot be flagged out by the science of audit and the sangomas will never be brought as witnesses to say they were getting US$200 a week.
You can see that it becomes such a lucrative business initiative for some people and that probably explains why they will not be moved and why the club’s success, or lack of it, doesn’t mean a thing to them.
This year marks 50 years since Zaire, not Chegutu Pirates, but the DRC, became the first Sub-Saharan African team to compete at the FIFA World Cup.
They took nine sangomas to that World Cup and, in their final group game, they were thrashed 0-9 by Yugoslavia.
It was as if every sangoma, who was part of their delegation, got a goal each with fate wanting to remind the Congolese that football was not about all these dark arts but about science.
The surviving members of that Congolese delegation will probably be shocked to learn that, 50 years later, there are huge football institutions like Dynamos who still believe sangomas are the best prescription for them to win major trophies.
Maybe, it’s because Marriot is from the generation of those trailblazing Congolese footballers, and officials, who were in Germany for that World Cup in ’74.
Old habits die hard, so they say.
Zaire!
It reminds me so much of Chegutu Pirates because that is our most powerful nickname, the others being Dzinza and Sugar Malaga.
It’s very likely that we will be relegated this season but so be it and I’m so sure that, divorced from the PSL, we will enjoy our football again with our community in Division One.
And, unlike others, we don’t have US$1 000 to pay sangomas every week in pursuit of the fantasy that is represented by the PSL.
To God Be The Glory!
Peace to the GEPA Chief, the Big Fish, George Norton, Daily Service, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and all the Chakariboys still in the struggle. Come on Chegutu Pirates!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Zaireeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Text Feedback: 0772545199, WhatsApp: 0772545199, Email: [email protected]
You can also interact with me on the ZTV football programme, Game Plan, where I join the legendary Charles “CNN” Mabika on Wednesdays
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