Online Reporter
Lovemore Dube-Zimpapers Sports Hub
IMAGINE playing football in a forest, dodging tree trunks and enemy spotter planes, all while carrying the hope of a nation on your back. For Charles Ndebele, Black Rhinos’ founding goalkeeper, that was reality. Recruited into the ZPRA in the 1970s and stationed at Foxhole Camp in Zambia, he and his comrades carved out a makeshift pitch to reclaim moments of joy amid conflict.
Charles Ndebele, once a talented winger before joining the ZPRA in 1976, found solace and sanity in what he and his fellow recruits called “carpet football.” The dense Zambian vegetation meant no open field, just narrow clearings between big trees, and no high balls allowed, out of fear that bouncing shots might attract the enemy’s spotter planes.
“We were forced just to clear spaces to allow us to play carpet football,” Ndebele recalls.
“We played under tree cover and in between tree trunks.” But as the war raged on and nearby camps were bombed in 1977, even that shudder of normal life had to stop.
The camps were meant for training, not sports, but they needed something more than drills, Ndebele says. Football became that break.
“Football was for recreational purposes. We were young men who had played the sport before we went to join the struggle. There was not much to do other than training and military drills . . . we’d kick around, aware of the looming danger,” he explains.
After independence, sport became an essential bridge between former fighters and civilian communities. At Gwayi River Assembly Point, Ndebele’s passion reignited. But before he could shine in the Matabeleland North lower division, nicknamed “Dynamo Kiev”, he was drafted into the Zimbabwe National Army. In August 1980, he landed at Mudzi Barracks (2.2 Battalion) in Murewa.
It wasn’t long before Army Commander Solomon Mujuru called for trials. Ndebele made the cut, one of over 40 players selected, and went on to help clinch the 1983 Northern Region Division One title. Shepherd Murape, once scouting him as a winger, transformed Ndebele into a goalkeeper, impressed by how he handled the ball during camp scrimmages.
In an exclusive chat with Zimpapers Sports Hub, Ndebele stressed the healing power of football after the ceasefire. “Naturally, communities feared ex-combatants and football helped us re-integrate into society. People got to appreciate that we were humans as well, not the propaganda they had been fed,” he says.
The matches brought emotions flooding back. Former fighters rediscovered relatives and friends they’d thought lost to war, sometimes bumping into them unexpectedly in Bulawayo or Hwange.
“Imagine someone you last saw in Bulawayo, now working in Hwange, least expecting to meet you there as a ZPRA combatant…Some believing that their brother or cousin did not survive the war only to meet when the team visits their areas,” he remembers.
Gwayi River Assembly Point travelled across Dete, Hwange, Kamativi, Lupane, even Bulawayo, leaving an impression with their passionate play. Notable names from the squad included Highlanders’ goalkeeper George Moyo, who had played alongside Ananias Dube just after Bruce Grobbelaar left in 1975.
After the war, Ndebele pitched in for those lower division teams he’d dreamed of, but his love for the game ran deeper.
Now retired from the Army, he farms at Heany Junction near Bulawayo, still carrying the stories from those forest matches and the field’s healing power in his heart.
