The green grass of home

European adventure, Mbwando worked as a professional footballer, and he has spent the last three years working in the office as a Financial Advisor.
But despite having a settled life and family in the Bavarian city of Ingolstadt, Mbwando says his future is here in Zimbabwe and soon the bags will be packed for the return home.
While the last three years have been spent in the office, working at DVAG, Mbwando says his real passion remains on the football fields and he wants to play a big part in the direction Zimbabwean football will take in the future.
The George Mbwando who left Zimbabwe in ’96 for Poland, before settling the following year in Germany, is not the same as the Mbwando who is set to return home after all the years of his European mission.
The Mbwando who left the country 16 years ago was a 21-year-old rising football star, who had made a name for himself the previous year playing for Blackpool as a free-scoring striker. Lanky, bullish and with a pace to burn, Mbwando exploded on the scene one fine afternoon in ’95 at the Independence Stadium in Lusaka when he scored a hattrick as Ndochi shocked Kabwe Warriors 3-1 to advance to the semi-finals of the old Caf Cup of Cup Winners.
Dennis Liwewe, the veteran Zambian football commentator, said he could hardly remember a day when a visiting forward had scored a hattrick at the Independence Stadium.
Mbwando had made his mark and, soon, he was playing in the Zimbabwe Under-23 team that reached the final of the All-Africa Games on home soil that same year before losing to Egypt.
A move to Poland followed and after a year at Lech Poznan, he moved to Bonner SC in Germany during the ‘97/’98 season, starting a 12-year relationship with football in that country that would see him play for Vfb Lubeck, Alemannia Aachen, Jahn Regensburg, FC Inglostadt and TSV 1897 Kosching.
Along the way he played in the German Cup Final for Alemannia Aachen, losing 2-3 to Weder Bremen, two Nations Cup finals for the Zimbabwe Warriors and also raised a family with his wife, Doris, and the couple have been blessed with three kids — two girls, Munashe and Lisa (13) and a boy, Anaishe, who is four.
The George Mbwando set to return home is a holder of a Uefa A Licence coaching badge, which makes him a Fifa-accredited coaching instructor, who believes he has to play a big role, using all the football knowledge he has acquired in his European adventure, to help the national game here.
Older, wiser and with the maturity that comes from all the exposure he has had in Europe, Mbwando is bullish about his future back home and the part he intends to play.
“As soon as is possible, mate, I just want to return and settle back home,” Mbwando told The Saturday Herald, this week, from his Germany base.
“I’m just curious to give back all the experience I have acquired here in terms of coaching.
“Maybe, I can teach the local coaches one or two important things that I have learnt here together with my connections here from the German Football Association (DFB).
“I feel I have some unfinished business to take care of back home. We are also setting up an Academy with my partner, Edzai (Kasinauyo), specialising in the juniors and talent scouting and we want to create a lot of opportunities for our young football generation.
“My whole football generation came from a well-coordinated juniors’ development policy and structures those days and I think for Zimbabwe to make it big again, we need to invest a lot in our junior development programmes.
“I believe we have a lot of good coaches in Zimbabwe who can help make the game tick again but it’s very important for us to be very organised, I think the biggest problem in our football right now is organisation.
“You can never achieve anything in football if there is no order. We can achieve a lot with our limited resources if we are organised. This is what I want to do.”
Mbwando believes Zambia should always be used as a template, by future Zimbabwean football leaders and players, to show how a nation with limited resources can attain greatness in this game.
“I also challenge former players vanongofamba vachingoti hee bhora rinoda ku tongwa nevakamboritamba and yet they are doing nothing to make things better to rise from their slumber,” said Mbwando.
“Everyone can be useful in different ways only if we can organise ourselves because I have begun to realise that, as Zimbabweans, we are far better than what we think we are as a people and as sportspeople.
“I don’t think I would be able to live without football in my life anymore and they all call me the soccer junkie here and my dream is to come back and give back to my society in a big way.
“I have completed my coaching courses, I hold a UEFA ‘A’ license, which I did two years ago, which automatically qualifies me to be a Fifa Coaching Instructor.
“I think the way forward for us as a nation is to stop planning a lot and start to ACT and this is my big message to everyone who is in interested in football in Zimbabwe.
“If we put all our heads together and support each we can have good times again in our national game.
“The difference between German football and Zimbabwe football is simply because there they are organised and we are not, even though I believe we have rich talent.”
Mbwando isn’t only looking at playing a big part in football when he eventually comes back.
He runs the Football Against Aids Project, working in conjunction with Kasinauyo, which he started in 2008, which takes care of 200 orphans in Hwange.
It’s something that is very close to his heart.
“We are trying to break the cycle of the Aids epidemic that has taken away a lot of the future from our society,” said Mbwando.
“We are still looking for sponsors here in German and in Zimbabwe as we want to build an orphanage by 2015 to give these children a home and a future.
“This is my message to all prominent people in Zimbabwe that if we can try to work together in the same direction, giving the less fortunate in our society a better chance in life, we can achieve a lot.
“It doesn’t help me to move around Harare driving very expensive cars and yet my Zimbabwean brother on the street sleeps with nothing in the stomach.
“I played here in the German Bundesliga and for our Warriors but I don’t believe I’m special because of that and I just try to lead a normal and ordinary life and I try to respect anyone that I meet in my life irrespective of who they are.
“I’m one guy who is also not ashamed at all to jump into a kombi when I’m back home in Zimbabwe.”
Mbwando’s father still serves in the Zimbabwe Republic Police and is stationed at the Ntabazinduna training camp but the family home is now in Norton.
George and his young family have their house in Hillside here in the capital.
He grew up in a family that was fiercely CAPS United.
“At home we grew up as a green family, we were all CAPS United because it was and still is my father’s favourite team,” said Mbwando.
“My favourite national team was Holland because it was the only European country with many black players in the squad.
“My local football hero was Peter Ndlovu, he was the reason why I went so far in this game and he knows it because I told him that and it was a dream to play alongside him.
“I think Fabisch’s era was one of the best times in our football history but it’s now time to bring those happy days again and we can only achieve it if we work together and not against each other.
“My son has no other choice but to play football because that is all that he knows and sees since he was born in a football family and maybe one day he will play for our country, just like his daddy.
“I’m a bit worried, though, because he appears to be falling in love with Formula One cars these days.”
Mbwando describes his wife, Doris, as a “normal housewife” and says all his children speak English and German and, at home, they all know it’s compulsory to speak Shona.
Something appears to have changed in Mbwando, which probably explains his decision to return home, because his outlook to life is now different, if not radical.
“It took me 13 years in Europe to understand who I really am as a black man and I can now say I’m now a free person because I know who I am,” said Mbwando.
“I have read many books about African history, like Opinions and Principles of Markus Garvey, which showed me that our forefathers had a great history and pride which was hidden away from us in the history textbooks we read at school.
“This has changed me a lot because so many people are working so hard to try and get rich and they miss a lot in life because of their obsession with fame and fortune.”
If Mbwando could turn back the hands of time, he said he would like to relive his days with the Warriors, the excitement generated by just coming back home and the fun that he found in camp.
“I miss the national team days a lot, this was the time I knew I’m going home to laugh and enjoy myself because we had so many funny characters and it was just wonderful,” said Mbwando.
“If I can turn back the hands of time, these are moments that I would not miss.
“My best moments in football came with all my goals I scored against Zambia and I think I have a small record of being the only player who has scored against Zambian teams at club level (Kabwe Warriors), junior national team level (’95 Under-23s) and at senior national team level (2006 and the National Sports Stadium before Afcon 2006).
“The German Cup Final and Afcon (2004 and 2006) were the highlights in my career.”
We were in the same kombi, on the journey back home after his three-goal act had knocked out Kabwe Warriors in ’95, when we arrived at Chirundu Border Post to find a town that was rocking as it celebrated Blackpool’s sensational feat.
Everyone that day wanted a piece of George Mbwando, the new star who had made it all possible, and he was mobbed by immigration officers, customs officials and scores of the town’s residents.
We didn’t know it then that George’s career would last the distance, that he would go on to play in Europe, that he would even transform himself from a striker into a very good wingback and that he would be part of the cast of Warriors who finally ended the Nations Cup nightmare.
But we should have known.
After all, Dennis Liwewe has told us that only a special foreign player would come to the Independence Stadium in Lusaka and score a hattrick.