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Messages poured in from far and wide, including from one guy who, somehow, still vividly remembered the first time I arrived in Mhangura, all those years back, to cover a league match at the copper mine.
A lot of the messages were pregnant with prayers, not surprising given the super storm, as powerful as Sandy, which hit the United States eastern coast this week and left a trail of death and destruction, which has engulfed our national game.
Other messages were simple and straight to the point, and one, sent through e-mail by Renias Mapfumo, captured the spirit of the occasion, and was a throw-back to what I had written on this blog last week.
“On this date, Thursday, November 1, 2012, the clock that keeps time on your service at Herald House reads 20 years or two decades,” Mapfumo wrote.
“Congratulations to the guy of a simple life and ordinary lifestyle who just loves his Manchester United and has committed himself to serving the nation as a public servant.”
Wow!!!
When super storms as powerful as Sandy strike, fears inevitably emerge, especially among people who really care for you, wondering if you will be swept away by the tide. It’s human to react, it’s normal to have fears, and for all those who have poured in their messages and prayers, during this trying time, I can only say “thank you, remain strong and keep the faith”.
It’s not easy to spend 20 years rooted in one newsroom, and of the original cast of The Herald Sports Desk team when I arrived on November 1, ’92, only Collin Matiza — may God bless his soul — remains. Along the way death took away Sam Marisa, a gentle giant who helped us with his fatherly touch and guidance back then, Phillip Magwaza, as good a football writer as they will ever come and Lovemore Musharavati, our lively correspondent from Kadoma. Jahoor Omar, our mentor, whose fiery temper and strict discipline combined to create a pressure cooker newsroom that helped shape us into professionals who could only strive to produce the best, left for other pastures in Europe.
The Editorship of this newspaper, during that journey, has changed hands seven times, two of the Editors are now late, and Tommy Sithole, who was the boss when I arrived, is now a high-flying International Olympic Committee director. Back then we all knew Anthony Mandiwanza as ‘that very good and educated referee’ and we used to meet at the Chinhoyi caves for a chat, and a drink, returning home to the big city after a day out in Mhangura for a league match. Today, Mandiwanza has risen through the corporate ladder, to become one of our most respected business executives in this country.
And, when you count the super brains that our football has lost along the way, men of integrity and wisdom who could have made a big change in these stormy times, it will be criminal if you leave out this man. Back then, Alec Smith, who had famously rebelled against the racist policies of his father, Ian, to the extent of applying for British citizenship while studying in South Africa, was a very influential figure in our national game through his ownership of Black Aces.
A few weeks after my arrival on this Sports Desk, Black Aces, also known as Shaisa Mufaro, were crowned champions of Zimbabwe football, a crowning moment for Alec, who would live a further 14 years, before collapsing and dying from a heart attack at Heathrow in London on January 19, 2006. Tragically, that super Aces team proved to be the last of the great sides to emerge out of a football club that used to mean so much for the people of Highfield and, as time went by, they watched helplessly as their proud institution disintegrated. Peter Nyama was the last coach to win the league title with Aces in ’92.
His team was powered by the likes of Wilfred Mugeyi (’92 Soccer Star of the Year), William Mugeyi, John Mbidzo, Emmanuel Nyahuma and Percy “Master” Mwase. Whether by coincidence, or by some mysterious design, my arrival on the stage also marked the end of an era for the domestic Premiership, as this was to be the last season in which the top-flight league would be run directly, on a day-to-day basis, by Zifa officials at 53 Livingstone Avenue.
Chris Sibanda had emerged, at that time, as a dynamic and young football administrator who was leading the crusade for the Premiership clubs to chart their destiny, manage their affairs, and be in charge of their day-to-day activities. The following year, the Premiership, as we know it today, was born and Highlanders, who had won just one league championship in the old order, became the inaugural champions of the top-flight league’s free world.
In a few months time, the domestic Premiership, in its modern format, will also join me in the 20-year club when they mark two decades of existence as an independent entity. I don’t know what Twine Phiri and his PSL executive have in store for us as part of the grand celebrations but, maybe, the starting point would be to parade surviving representatives, one official and one player, from the 16 teams that played in the maiden season.
They were Highlanders, CAPS United, Chapungu, Eiffel Flats, Dynamos, Black Rhinos, Zimbabwe Saints, Darryn T, Mhangura, Wankie, Fire Batteries, Black Aces, Black Mambas, Tanganda, Shu-Shine and Ziscosteel.
Only five teams — Highlanders, CAPS United, Dynamos, Black Mambas and Hwange — remain, in the top-flight league today, from the original cast.
Only the Big Three — Highlanders, Dynamos and CAPS United — have managed to avoid relegation, from the original cast of teams that played in ’93, while half of the teams, including Aces as we knew it back then not this academy that is there today, have collapsed.
So, as I mark 20 years on this newspaper, just a few months before the Premiership also marks 20 years of existence, maybe a toast and a sip of champagne would not be out of order – even in the eye of this super storm.
Here’s to another 20 solid and successful years for the domestic Premiership, a league so poor in financial resources yet so rich in talent and, which, in an unforgettable year in ’98, came very close to producing an African club champion only for Dynamos to fall on the final hurdle.

Twenty For The Premiership
A total of 64 teams have played in our domestic Premiership in the past 20 years and only seven — Dynamos, Highlanders, CAPS United, Gunners, Monomotapa, Motor Action and Amazulu — have been crowned champions at some stage. None of the lightweights — Amazulu, Monomotapa, Gunners and Motor Action — have found a way to win a second league championship and they all remain stranded, on one league title, with prospects to add to that looking gloomy as each season passes.
The big boys — DeMbare, Bosso and Makepekepe — have monopolised the championship with the Glamour Boys having five titles, in the era of the modern Premiership, Bosso (six) and Makepekepe (three).
But, overally, it might need another generation to catch up with DeMbare’s tally of league titles as they have 18 titles. Bosso have seven and CAPS United have four, which means Highlanders would need to double their current tally, and then add up what Makepekepe already have, just to get to where the Glamour Boys are right now.
It could even be another story if DeMbare hold their nerve and get the seven points, from nine available, they effectively need to defend their league championship crown this season. If that happens, the Glamour Boys will join illustrious company, walking on the same red carpet reserved for 19-time league champions where you also find teams like Manchester United, leaving behind the elite club of 18-time winners where you find teams like Liverpool.
If Dynamos emerge victorious, in this riveting championship race where they have been pushed all the way by a resilient Bosso, joining the illustrious company of teams like Manchester United would be just what the doctor would have ordered to kick-start their 50th anniversary celebrations.
Next year, DeMbare will celebrate their Golden Jubilee, and the country’s biggest football club will look back to a half-a-century of domestic dominance in which they have been the flagship football club of this country. The Glamour Boys will also look back to half-a-century of an enduring appeal, among successive generations of fans that doesn’t seem to be fading any time soon, with its loyal brigade of followers growing, in numbers, with each passing year.
They will look back at 50 years of greatness, in which their dressing room became the home of some of the greatest players to grace our football fields led by George Shaya and Moses Chunga. The people’s team will also look back at both missed and messed opportunities, during that half-of-a-century, and will realise, when they look at how Orlando Pirates have evolved into a multi-million dollar industry, they could have done far better on the commercial front.
That DeMbare are still steeped in poverty right now, despite all the potential they have of generating enough money to even rival blue-chip companies like Econet Wireless and Delta, is something that remains a stain on a profile that deserves far more, in terms of commercial success, than what this team has achieved.
That the Glamour Boys could be stalked by debts, involving just US$6 000, and such an issue could spiral out of control to the extent of the parent club of star player, Denver Mukamba, barring him from training, at such a sensitive stage of the season as what happened this week, hammers home the point of how much they have come short in converting their success on the field to their commercial wing.
The founding fathers will look back at the last 50 years and realise that they could have done more, in terms of resolving the ownership structure and freeing space for some entrepreneurs, the way Pirates did with Irvin Khoza, in a marriage that changed their destiny. They will look back at the time they came very close to conquering Africa, and fell at the final hurdle, and now that Dynamos have spent two years, struggling just to make the final eight of the Champions League, there is need for some sober reflection, and the right solutions, if this club could maintain its status as one of the giants on the continent.
But, given where it all started in 1963, just as a small team for a small community, there is a very big reason to celebrate the mere fact that the Dynamos brand has not only survived up to this day but, at 50, the Glamour Boys are not only stronger but certainly bigger as a football club.
How ironic, isn’t it, that in the year that the independent Premiership, which became operational in ’93, would be celebrating 20 years, its flagship team, Dynamos, will also be celebrating 50 years and both have a lot of stories and so much to reflect on come next year.

The Green Machine Turns 40
Now, it gets really interesting because the celebrations next year are not only confined to the Premiership and Dynamos but will also spread into the CAPS United corner.
Yes, the capital’s second biggest football franchise will turn 40 in a few months time and Twine Phiri and Farai Jere, the fans who keep this club alive, the present and former players who battled and won on the field and all the coaches associated with this team, will go down memory lane.
When CAPS United started, back then in ’73, it was a football club that was just meant to serve the interests of a pharmaceutical company and its employees. But the Green Machine have evolved, over the past 39 years, into a national football institution, the third biggest football franchise in this country and its rivalry, with city foes Dynamos, is one of those that every town, or country, needs to keep its football alive.
Some will argue that four league championships is a poor return for a team that has been decorated by the services of such legends like Joel Shambo, Stanford “Stix” Mtizwa, Shacky Tauro, Stanley Ndunduma, Friday Phiri, Duncan Ellison, Gift Mudangwe and Joe Mugabe. But it’s never an easy assignment to win league titles and that Liverpool, the most successful club in English football history haven’t won one in the past 22 years, puts that into context.
How the great CAPS United teams, which played between 1980 and 1990, failed to win just one league title will remain one of the major talking points of the history of our national game. Some have argued that the loss of some of its star players, like Ndunduma, to Black Rhinos had such a destablising effect on the team, just when it was about to reach its prime and win the league, and the majority of them have never forgiven Chauya Chipembere for that.
That Rhinos became the first team, in the post-Independence era, to stop Dynamos from winning the league championship at every turn, by powering to success in 1984, appears to vindicate those CAPS United fans who believe that a golden project was disturbed just as it was about to attain greatness. The Green Machine are no longer that team that belonged to that pharmaceutical giant and where, in previous years, their address was found in Manchester Road, now they have moved elsewhere and their offices are in Eastlea.
They have had their trials and tribulations, which they will reflect upon when life begins for them at 40 in a few months time, and if there is an area that they need to improve on, then it’s their championship medals tally. It’s important for this club to win something big again, just for a start, and they have a golden chance in the Mbada Diamonds Cup where they are just two hurdles away from a return to the Caf inter-club competitions.
What’s weighing in their favour is that the tag-team owners’ club of Phiri and Jere have found a way to weather storms and, in doing so, are now a more closely-knit unit than they were, let’s say, six years ago. Their grand mission to shake things up, a little bit, by bringing in a European touch in their coaching department when they hired Sean Connor, was a big flop but, then, they can only learn from such mistakes and they are better off, today, as leaders, than they were at this stage last season.
Reading through the newspaper feedback columns, it is becoming increasingly clear that the old fallback position of ‘blame Farai Jere when things aren’t going well’ has shifted and there is a better appreciation, among the club’s true fans, of their director’s vision today than was the case six months ago. They say life begins at 40, don’t they, and you can’t blame the CAPS United fans if today they are more bullish, about the future of their team, than they were just four months ago.
Dynamos at 50, CAPS United at 40 and the Premiership at 20, all coming in the same year, makes the forthcoming year a watershed one for our football and the two Harare giants could even cap it all by ensuring they play in the Caf inter-club tournaments.

Bambo Returns To Belgium
Talking of 20 years, it has taken that long for Belgian club, E. Aalst, to remember that they had a Zimbabwean football genius, who used to play for them, who returned to his motherland in the early part of the ’90s.
His name is Moses Chunga.
Last week, the Aalst president, extended an invitation to Chunga to return to the club that opened a door for him into Europe for a ceremony where Bambo will be honoured for what he did for this Belgian team.
Chunga will do the ceremonial kick-off a league match and will then be hosted for a dinner, where he will mingle with some of the players he shared the dressing room with, and some of the fans who idolised him. Bambo returning to Belgium brings back all sorts of memories.
And I still remember a joke that used to be run at our school about Belgian journalists interviewing Chunga, on arrival in Brussels on a bitter winter morning, and asking him how he would cope with the huge swift in weather conditions. So, as they talk through an interpreter, one of the journalists eventually asks: “So, Moses, how is the weather back in Harare?”
To which Bambo replies: “Partly cloudy and cool later, pressure is rising over Natal, a few scattered clouds, chances of an afternoon thunderstorm and rain in the evening.”
Of course, he never said that, but it was so funny, and so popular, as a joke at our school back then that no matter how many times we heard it, we just couldn’t stop laughing. I have always been one of those who believe that Chunga was a rare football genius and, if he had made the breakthrough in England when he went to Nottingham Forest, I have no doubt that he would have exploded into something so special the world would have taken notice.
Yes, something close to the impact that Jay Jay Okocha had on world football, the way he seduced us with his bag of tricks and ended up being sold for a cool US$10 million.
Something even close to the way George Weah impacted on the game around the world where, along the way, he became the only African player to win the Fifa World Player of the Year. Of course, some people will say “there goes that dreaming guy from that mine” but isn’t it an indictment on us, as a people, that the Belgians have chosen to first honour Chunga while we have done nothing to honour him for his service to our game?
Somebody told me that a prophet is not honoured in his home area.
After all, they even doubted Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Matthew 13 verse 54: And when he was come into his own country, he taught them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished, and said, ‘From where has this man this wisdom, and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And his brothers, James, and Joseph, and Simon and Judas…And they were offended in him.”
To God Be The Glory!
Come on United!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Chicharitoooooooooooooooooooooo!

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