Just before DoomsDay, the world forgot that Godfrey ‘Ucar’ Chitalu, the Zambian legend, scored more goals than Messi

bringing the curtain down.
On December 21, they say, it will all come to an end because that’s when a 5125-year-long Mayan cycle is completed and a global catastrophe will bring an end to the world as we have always known it.

The Maya is a Mesoamerican civilisation noted for having the only fully developed written language in pre-Christopher Columbus America.

When the Mayan calendar ends on Friday, the Doomsday believers predict it will usher in a number of apocalyptic events. Already some people have splashed a fortune on shelters and apocalypse apartments, going for millions of dollars in secret underground apartment complexes, have not only been built in Kansas, United States, but sold out fast.

There are bunkers that are buried within the Swiss mountains, complete with villas that have king-size beds, back-up power supply and apocalypse-proof roofs, for people who want to escape the hell that will destroy our world when, as the Doomsday believers claim, it ends on Friday.

There is a surge for shelters on France’s Bugarach Mountain and Serbia’s Mount Rtanj, which has the shape of a pyramid, where the Doomsday believers claim they will be provided with refugee from the destruction that will envelope our world.

Mount Rtanj, a 5 100 feet high mountain, possesses special mystical powers, according to the Doomsday cultists, and those who will find shelter there will be safe from Armageddon.

Even British science fiction writer, Arthur C Clarke, felt there was something mystical about Mount Rtanj and described it as “the navel of the world,” which is blessed with some “special energy.” One death, that of Isabel Taylor, a mother who committed suicide in her bedroom on September 24 this year, has been linked directly to stress related to the pending end of our world.

America’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the space agency commonly known as NASA, has been saying the world won’t end next week and have prepared a video, which was supposed to be released next Saturday, dubbed: “Why The World Didn’t End Yesterday.” The video, somehow, was put online on Tuesday, 10 days before schedule and starts with a voice giving assurance that the world wasn’t meant to end the previous day.

“If you are watching this video then that means one thing – the world didn’t end yesterday”.  NASA says astronomical experts have dismissed “any theory claiming that the sun will irradiate the atmosphere or that a planet will smash into the Earth,” and even gone to lengths to give seven reasons why the world won’t end that day.

Ray Villard, writing on the Discovery News website, goes even further and gives us 10 reasons why the world won’t end on Friday, providing a detailed scientific explanation, which touches on changes to the sun’s magnetic fields, before dismissing the existence of a rogue planet called Nibiru.

I’m not part of the Doomsday cult but, at a time when the city I live in has seemingly been blown away by the power and brilliance of the latest musical masterpiece to come from Alick Macheso, and a time when spiritual belief is needed, it’s difficult to ignore the sungura ace’s prophetic words from his hit song Mwari WeNyasha:
“Vamwe vakaudzwa hondo ne murwere wepfungwa
“Vakamusvora, kwahi anorwara uyu
“Usaere mhumhu, terera mashoko
“Iwo mazambuko wani, zvaakasiyana.”

Well, for progress sake, let’s just assume that the Doomsday cultists are correct and all the Doomsday movies like 2012, 20 Years After, 28 Weeks Later and 2012 Doomsday, make sense and are a preview of reality, and the world, as we know it, ends next Friday.

Suppose you wake up, whatever it is, in another world after Earth has been destroyed, what will you remember most about this planet that used to be our home?

Probably, that it gave you life, family, friends and everything that became close to you like your job, your house, your car, your church, your boat, your pastor, your rural home, your dog, your cat, your iPhone 5, your Samsung S3, your Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Mobile, your Sony Bravia KD-84×9005, 84-inch television, stuff like that?

Or wonder what you would have done on Christmas Day, 2012, which was meant to come just four days before disaster struck – things like a service at your church, time with the family or, if you are the party type, downing bottles of 30-year Glenfiddich whisky, which had only been at the market for two years after being released in 2010.

Probably think about the music that spiced your life, timeless classics like the ironic Zuva Rekufa Kwangu, Solo na Mutsai, Badlala Njani, Chitekete, Hatisitose, Simbimbino, Pfumvu Pa Ruzevha, Samatenga, Neria, Hazvireve Rudo Kandina or just go nostalgic and start singing John Chibaruda’s iconic song, Kumusha Kwaambuya, especially the part where he arrives at his rural home to find all the elders are now late:

“Vana ndakavabvunza, vana ndakavabvunza
Kovakuru vedu vakaendepiko vanaimi
Havana kundipindura, havana kundipindura
Vaingochema misodzi, vaingochema misodzi.”

After Doomsday — A Personal Reflection
Just like everyone, I will also go down memory lane to think about the life I had, for a good 42 years, the great family that God blessed me with, the immediate and the extended, the good friends I had, a job I enjoyed, my pastor Richard and the inspiration he brought and my hometown Chakari, and its people, and the special place they had in my heart.

I will try to find comfort in music, especially the greatest song I heard during my time, ‘We Are The World’, by USA for Africa, or in iconic movies like Titanic and the lasting impression that the film left on me. I will certainly think about sport, football, which dominated my life, cricket, which helped me appreciate good organisation, rugby union, whose blend of brute force and artistry made me into an off-shore fanatic of the All-Blacks and golf, because I was a caddy as a schoolboy.

I will think about the Warriors, the team that God united me with, at birth and for life, the journey we traveled together, the tears we shed together, how our hearts kept being broken by those failures at the final hurdle, the fate that we kept cursing, the joy that came with Tunisia and Egypt, stuff like that.

The Dream Team charmed us all, young and old, and converted a number of people who were not primary football fans into regular visitors to the National Sports Stadium, uniting a nation into this proud country that never believed that it could lose.

It didn’t matter that we were playing the Pharaohs of Egypt, who failed to beat us on neutral soil in France after having employed all kinds of dirty tactics in the book, including injuring our ‘keeper Bruce Grobbelaar and our coach Reinhard Fabisch and, even after committing all those football crimes, could only edge us 2-1 in Cairo before Fifa intervened and nullified the result.

Or the Indomitable Lions of Cameroon, who leaked four goals on one of their visits to Harare, in a 1-4 defeat at the giant stadium where Vitalis Takawira scored a hattrick, something he recently said was the proudest moment of his football career.

Some people say the Dream Team didn’t attain greatness, because they never qualified for either the Nations Cup or the World Cup, but even alone, in a post-apocalypse world, I will find it extremely difficult to believe there was a better group of Warriors – including those who qualified for Tunisia and Egypt.

I will certainly find comfort in my old argument that it’s brutally unfair to use qualification for the Nations Cup as the benchmark when comparing the Warriors of the ‘80s, who played at a time the tournament only opened its doors to eight teams, and the Class of 2004 and 2006, who qualified for a tournament that now featured double the number of participating teams – 16.

Yes, I will tell myself, if there were 16 teams at the Nations Cup in ’86, the Warriors that won the Cecafa Senior Challenge Cup in ’85, would have graced the occasion, and if there were 16, and not 12 teams, in ’94, Fabisch and his men would have been in Tunisia.

That the Zambian team that needed a lucky and late draw to squeeze its way to Tunisia, ahead of the Dream Team, went all the way the final of that Nations Cup, even took the lead against Nigeria before losing 1-2, will always provide that testimony to me that Fabisch and his men were great.

So, I will remember them in a nostalgic journey that will bring back a host of memories, too beautiful to be forgotten – Peter Ndlovu slaloming past the bemused Bafana Bafana defence to score one of the greatest goals I have seen, Fabisch rallying us to back the boys, the grand expectations in the packed stands, the belief that it would be well, the delivery, the goal, the explosion.
Hauwengggggggg!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I will remember, it’s something this South African Xhosa commentator used to say on Super Diski after a goal but, looking back at Agent Sawu scoring that last-gasp goal against Cameroon, I will feel it needed something better, bigger and more imaginative than Hauweng. So, the mind will start racing again, and I will remember Evans Mambara.

He was a good man, and a fine commentator too, and I was with him in Accra, for a ’98 Nations Cup qualifier, when the Ghanaian authorities threatened to deport me if I didn’t retract a story I had filed back home about the poor state of a training pitch offered to the Warriors, especially the part where I said even jungle tribesmen, from a forgotten past, would have refused to play football on such a pathetic surface.

Mambara, just like the immortal Charles “CNN” Mabika, would have given me a beautiful soundtrack to that magical moment when Ajira rose, and an entire stadium packed with 60 000 souls froze, when time stopped, for that golden moment, and, as if on cue, the explosion as the ball found its target.

Yes, the Warriors might have been one of the most under-achieving teams in world football history but I will miss them badly because, for all the disappointment we suffered together, they still remained the team of my dreams and, incredibly, every failed campaign appeared to strengthen our bond. They could have done more, I will tell myself, but most of the blows that destroyed our dreams were self-inflicted and, in that new world, I will wonder what curse did we have carry, as a nation, to always be handed national football leaders who didn’t add value to the game.

Maybe we couldn’t get it all, maybe that’s the way the old world worked, even the Zambians needed to suffer that horrible tragedy, with a plane crash off the coast of Gabon wiping out a generation of their finest footballers, before they could touch the heavens of the Promised Land. After all, Botswana only qualified for the Nations Cup, before the world ended, and wasting time, wondering why we were only good enough for two appearances would be tantamount to worrying about having no shoe in a world where there were some people without feet.

A Week After We Saluted The Soccer Star Of The Year
So, it will certainly dawn on me, in the highly unlikely event the Doomsday cultists are correct, that our world ended exactly a week after Denver Mukamba became the 10th Dynamos player to be crowned Soccer Star of the Year.

He joined an exclusive club of Glamour Boys, headlined by the greatest of them all George Shaya, and also featuring Moses Chunga, who were honoured for distinguishing themselves as the outstanding performers on the domestic football scene.

Denver became the youngest of the group of Glamour Boys to be crowned Soccer Star of the Year, and the last before the club turned 50, which was all set to give his team bragging rights on all fronts in the year they were supposed to toast their Golden Jubilee celebrations. After all they were the league champions, winners of the premier knockout tournament, and now they didn’t only have the Soccer Star of the Year but also the Coach of the Year in their stable.

On the day of the awards, I will probably recall, The Herald ran a text message on its sms forum which was highly critical of us, both as a newspaper and as a Sports Desk, for fighting for the cause of Denver to win the award because, as the writer claimed, we battled in DeMbare’s trenches for Dynamos’ cause.

It will certainly dawn on me that the writer of that text message apparently used the word “shameless” to describe our so-called campaign to get Denver crowned Soccer Star of the Year.
I didn’t know that we wielded so much power of influence to drive the agenda of one player to such an extent that we overrode the wishes of scores of other journalists, with varied interests, a number of coaches picked from the Premiership and a host of others who took part in that voting process.

We only had three representatives, as a newspaper, on a panel of forty-plus voters and only Grace Chingoma, Augustine Hwata and Godknows Matarutse, when he was still with us, represented The Herald in that voting process for the Soccer Star and Coach of the Year.

Our representation, as a percentage, was just 6,81 percent, which means there was a good 93,19 percent that could have decided otherwise, in that voting process, and how such a minority group could be accused of influencing and shaping everything that happened that day, remains a mystery to me.

Denver’s artistry on the pitch, something that took us back to the heady days when truly-gifted individuals roamed our football fields and turned them into theatres where they could parade their range of skills, rather than all the noise that The Herald could be accused of having made in his favour, won him the Soccer Star of the Year award.

Yes, this was a tight race between Denver and Masimba Mambare, but it wasn’t a race that would be decided by the influence of newspapers or journalists as some of those who tried to play the regional or hometown card in the voting process know by now.

This was a race that was always going to be decided by who won more, who inspired his team to touch the heavens, who propelled his side to greatness, who fuelled his club to silverware and therein lay the difference between Denver and Masimba.

Denver didn’t just inspire his team to Mickey Mouse silverware but to the league championship and when you beat a team that has only lost once this season you know you have done very well.
For good measure he powered them to the Mbada Diamonds Cup, where he was the leading goal-scorer in the tournament, and in the league championship he finished with the same number of goals as Masimba.

Masimba played in a team that produced the best goalkeeper, Ariel Sibanda, one of the best central defenders, Innocent Mapuranga and one of the best midfielders in the league, Mthulisi Maphosa, who all got the nod from the selectors for the Soccer Star of the Year XI.

In sharp contrast, Denver played in a team where the only other outstanding player, according to the selectors, good enough to be on the Stars’ XI calendar, was central defender, Partson Jaure.
So, if we go by the selectors’ choice, Bosso were the better team, in terms of personnel, as they provide four of the best XI players on the calendar, including the key position of ‘keeper.

DeMbare only had two very good players, and a host of average ones, according to the selectors. For the Glamour Boys to win the League and Cup double, in a season where their biggest rivals are deemed to have had the more balanced and stronger team, it means someone shone very brightly because their leading light needed to do more than the best player from the other team.

That is where the race was decided and, fittingly, it’s the best player this year that won the race and he didn’t need The Herald’s support to do that.

Messi, Chitalu and Fifa Records
Lots of things happened, in the final days of our world, and I will certainly recall the global media going crazy that Argentine genius, Lionel Messi, who had the potential of becoming the greatest footballer ever, had broken Gerd Muller’s record of 85 goals scored in ’72.

But someone forgot about Godfrey “Ucar” Chitalu, the Zambian legend, who scored 107 goals in the same year that Muller got his goals.

Maybe, according to Fifa, only those who play in Europe can have their records ratified and that was running a fine racial line in a game that was already reeling from its problems with racists, including one who struck Rio Ferdinand with a coin in the final Manchester derby of our time.

Brazilian club, Flamengo, had already come forward to say Zico scored 89 goals in ’79 but Fifa appeared only too eager to recognise Muller’s tally. Chitalu got a Lifetime Achievement Award, from Fifa, for his goals and if he could get such a special accolade, why then did the same organisation seemingly turn a blind eye on his record haul of goals when it came to recognising benchmarks?
Fifa couldn’t hide behind the excuse that they only recognised goals scored in official football matches because Chitalu’s goals came in the Zambian Premiership, knockout tournaments and in the old African Cup of Club Champions between January 23 and December 10 in ’72.

Against Majanjtla of Lesotho, Chitalu scored both goals for Kabwe Warriors in the 2-2 draw in Maseru and, incredibly, scored seven of the goals in a 9-0 rout in Zambia. In that contest alone, over 180 minutes, he scored nine goals.

Maybe, we should also have given prominence to our achievements rather than wait for the people in Europe to do it for us.

If we had done that, they would have known that Dynamos scored 117 goals, 67 in the knockout tournaments and 50 in the league, in ’76, and Fifa would probably have recognised them for that, especially given that they beat Chibuku 8-0 in the Nyore Nyore Shield final and Saints 8-1 in the Castle Cup final that same year.

Or that Peter Nyama scored 62 goals in the ’71 season, when he was crowned Soccer Star of the Year. It’s a pity we can’t change anything now, in this post-apocalypse world, and all we can do is just dream about a past that was beautiful, where the Messis and the Chitalus entertained us with their goals, and one that we lost on December 21.

That is, if the Doomsday cultists have their day.
To God Be The Glory!
Come on United!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Chicharitooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

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