When football unifies feuding families

Bruce Chikuni

FOOTBALL once again showed its power when it helped end a feud between two families in Harare’s Waterfalls suburb and eventually united them.

Apparently, Prophetic Healing Deliverance (PHD) Ministries’ founder Walter Magaya and businessman Regis Zindoga’s families initially seemed to have an acrimonious relationship.

One Sunday afternoon, Magaya told his congregants that Regis, through a letter, had directed PHD to stop using their family name — Zindoga — when advertising the church.

The church is adjacent to Malvern shops in Waterfalls, which is popularly referred to as “KwaZindoga”, as the family owns several outlets in the area.

Regis’ letter prompted Magaya to direct his lawyer Everson Chatambudza to consider legal recourse. Regis similarly contemplated doing the same to settle the dispute.

But it was through football that the cold war between the prophet and the businessman thawed, albeit fortuitously.

As fate would have it, Regis’ son Junior, a budding footballer who was 16 at the time of the dispute, was a learner at St George’s College. He later went on to have a professional football career and played for Ngezi Platinum Stars.

However, at the end of the 2022 season, the 22-year-old was offloaded by the platinum miners and was subsequently bailed out by Magaya’s Yadah Stars FC.

According to Chatambudza, who incidentally is the chairperson of Yadah, the development showed the power of sport.

“As I remember this incident well, I wouldn’t want to talk much about it, but at the end of the day, issues are always resolved,” he said.

“I am happy that we are now a family; that’s the power of sport, and it was one of those great endings considering how we started knowing the Zindoga family.

“You cannot convince anyone that we once walked that road because of the relationship we have built.

“I also want to thank Prophet Magaya for being the person he is because he could have just instructed our coaches to ignore Junior, but he demonstrated what he preaches in a brilliant way.”

In his maiden season with Yadah, Junior became the first player to grab a hat-trick for the club in the Premiership.

In total, he scored five goals in a season in which Yadah needed to defeat Dynamos on the last day of the season to guarantee their survival.

Magaya said he was never going to drag the player into an issue involving his father.

“A leader has to lead by example and it never crossed my mind when we signed Junior that we once had a misunderstanding with his father,” he said.

“Junior was too young to be caught in the mix and it was going to be unfair to punish him when he was looking for a club just because of what happened when he was still a learner.

“Junior has made it possible for us to have a good relationship with his family.

“He is a good player with great potential and it feels good that he also made a mark as a Yadah player.

“He shall always be remembered as our first player to score a hat-trick in the PSL.”

Although Junior has been linked with a move to Dynamos, his father has become one of Yadah’s leading supporters.

And the Zindoga name, which had been removed on the PHD advertising billboards, has since been reinstated and now even appears on the team’s jersey.

Away from the pitch, Chatambudza is also helping the player to register his Junior Zindoga Foundation, which is meant to help underprivileged children.

Junior’s uncle, Johannes Madhiri, who was also instrumental in helping the families find each other, gave some insight into the conflict, which he believes was largely due to a misunderstanding “that could have been avoided from the onset”.

Madhiri is a former Black Rhinos player who won the Super League title with the army side in 1984 and 1987.

“It was a big misunderstanding and we never wanted anything from them, but all we expected was for them to formally ask to use the Zindoga name in their advertising campaigns.

“But it’s something which did not happen; they never expected that we would react the way we did and everything happened really fast.

“It is human to disagree at some point, but what is more important is to find ways to reconnect after such disputes,” said Madhiri.