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Takesure Chinyama, Lloyd Chi-tembwe, Shingi Kawondera and the late Usman Misi, to name but a few.
For all our familiarity and association with Polish football, stretching over three decades, it’s highly unlikely that most of the fans in this country know about a team called KS Cracovia.
I only got to know about it last year.
Well, KS Cracovia are the oldest Polish football club still in existence in that country, something like our Highlanders, who remain not only alive but are still going strong, just four years before Bosso turns 90.
KS Cracovia turned 100 six years ago, having been formed on June 13, 1906, and have five league championships under their belt, the last one coming in 1948.
Last season, KS Cracovia were playing in the Polish top-flight league, the Ekstraklasa, but finished last in the championship race and were relegated.
In August last year, as KS Cracovia were making the final preparations for their campaign in the Ekstraklasa, their technical staff, settled on bringing in Zimbabwe midfielder Justice Majabvi to their squad.
They had followed Majabvi during his time at Austrian club, LASK Linz, and knew very well the quality of player they wanted — a ripe 27-year-old leader on the pitch who was now familiar with the hostile winter climates of Europe.
Majabvi had trained with KS Cracovia and the Polish club was happy, an agreement had been structured, and all that remained was just for the midfielder to put pen to paper.
But in a hostile world, where one deal signed is one deal lost, where for every player who gets a contract there are scores who would have lost out, where agents are ready to go to extremes just to push their way through and land deals for their players, nothing can be taken for granted.
Those who had lost out the battle were about to find a key weapon, and it’s easy to get one in this global information village, and soon they had their machete and all they needed was a medium to complete the slaughter.
They found a voice in the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, a very influential Polish paper based in the capital Warsaw, which at its peak sold more than half-a-million newspapers before circulation slumped to around  300 000 in recent years.
Soon the stories began to be run in Gazeta Wyborcza and they were depressing ones — Justice Majabvi, the man that KS Cracovia were about to sign, was a match-fixing wizard from Africa.
It didn’t matter to the journalists at Gazeta Wyborca that Majabvi’s name had only been dragged into a mess that he didn’t know about and, in the mayhem of the glut of articles that were published in the onslaught, the Zimbabwe midfielder was butchered left, right and centre.
It was something close to a blitzkrieg, and Gazeta Wyborcza, basing on information filtering from Zimbabwe, charged, prosecuted and nailed Majabvi as a match-fixing wizard who would bring disrepute to the good name of KS Crocovia.
Bluntly, as put by Gazeta Wyborcza, Majabvi was “involved in a match-fixing scandal in his homeland and could be banned”.
KS Cracovia could not manage the onslaught anymore and, with their name being dragged into the mud, they decided the best way out of the mess was not to sign Majabvi.
And, just like that, the deal was dead.
But, the story didn’t end there.
Majabvi had done well to attract the attention of other clubs and when news leaked that KS Cracovia would not be signing him, Lechia Gdnsk, jumped on board and lured him with an offer.
But the media had already smelt blood and it wouldn’t leave this African “match-fixing culprit” alone and launched another blitzkrieg and forced Gdnsk to abandon their pursuit.
In a country that struggles with its racism cancer, which is very surprising given that the Poles themselves are looked down upon and considered second-class Europeans in countries like the UK, Majabvi became a sitting duck for the marksmen to take their turns shooting at the immobile target.
There was no way out for this man from Africa and what had looked like a golden opportunity was lost in that mayhem of conspiracy theories, a media coverage dominated by negativity and a toxic baggage from home that would never go away.
So, Majabvi lost out, all doors slammed shut in his face, and he came to South Africa, tried his luck with Kaizer Chiefs and Bloemfontein Celtic, but now and again, the media coverage of his pursuit for a new home, was usually tainted by what happened in Poland.
Now and again the media spin-doctors would throw in that horrible line, reminding his potential suitors of what had happened in Poland, and painting him as a risky signing who could cost a little fortune to get but, given what was happening back home, could soon be banished from the game.
But the Lord works in a lot of mysterious ways and, for all the challenges he faced in Poland where, by default, he turned into the public face of Asiagate in Europe, and all the devils who stalked him to South Africa, the Lord opened a window for him in Vietnam.
Today that’s where Justice Majabvi, Chief, Captain, Model, whatever you might want to call him, plies his club career and he has been so good, at his club, Khatoco Khanh Itoa, where last season he made 28 appearances, playing in every game since he joined, and scored three goals.

Feels Like You Watching Titanic
It’s been 14 months now since Majabvi suffered his ordeal in Europe and went through all the mental torture as he was slaughtered left, right and centre by the Polish media.
Opportunities, which would have been life-changing for him, came and vanished because of the weight of the burden that he was carrying as a match-fixing wizard.
Khatoco Khan Itoa took a gamble to sign him.
But that it took a Vietnamese team to do that, after the midfielder had been accused of having been part of a match-fixing gang in that country on Warriors’ duty, might not just be a mere coincidence.
Maybe, with the benefit of intelligence gathered in their country’s football family, the Vietnamese club made a decision based on issues that they knew, which our national association probably didn’t know, when they lumped those accusations on Majabvi.
Khatoco Khan Itoa must have probably known, way in advance when they made the decision to sign Majabvi last year, that the man they were employing did not have issues, in terms of match-fixing.
Now, they have been vindicated by the decision by the Zifa Independent Ethics Committee to clear Majabvi, who was one of the seven players cleared, in the latest batch released this week.
For Majabvi, this represents freedom from the chains of serious allegations that have haunted him for a good two years and, crucially, which cost him a contract with a Polish club when he had done everything, in terms of impressing the team, to get one.
Now that Majanvi has been freed, it should be the end of his nightmare but not necessarily the end of his story.
Instead, it should be the beginning.
Questions, inevitably, have to be asked and answers have to be provided.
Who will compensate Majabvi, for the contract he lost in the Polish top-flight league and all the income that it could have brought into his coffers, on the basis of match-fixing allegations that have since been proved to have had no substance?
Who will compensate Majabvi for an image that was battered so much, especially by newspapers like Gazeta Wyborcza, who accused him of being a match-fixer and, in the process ended his dreams of landing a contract at KS Cracovia, now that it has been proven that the allegations had no substance at all?
Is it possible for Majabvi’s image to be rehabilitated around the world, given all the battering that it received in newspapers across the globe, now that a body tasked with looking into his case has proved that he was innocent?
If so, who has to do that because, even in the moment of freedom, there is no doubt that the shadow will follow him and, as so often happens in this world, it’s the bad news that people remember because the good news, like someone being found not guilty, don’t excite a lot of us?
Didn’t the English say the first cut is the deepest?
If strong words like “rat”, “saboteur”, “mercenary” were routinely used to describe Majabvi and all the others who were suspended by Zifa from the Warriors for their alleged part in the Asiagate scam, is it possible to reverse the damage such labels inflicted on a person like Justice now that justice has been served on him and he has been proved innocent?
Given the window that existed, where there was a chance some of these players would be proved not guilty, wouldn’t it have been professional to keep a lid on the names of the players, whom Zifa were accusing of match-fixing, until the due process, which brings out who is guilty and who is not, had been completed?
But these guys’ identities were not only revealed but they were duly suspended from playing for the national team and, for a man like Majabvi, who is now 28, it meant he lost a crucial year in his international career, and chances of him coming back are as remote as expecting to extract milk from a football.
As this drama unfolds, and takes twists and turns, it’s getting a feel of Titanic, after the mega ship had slammed into that iceberg and was beginning to break apart.
That part, where the elderly Rose, a survivor of the disaster, narrates her ordeal in the hit movie “Titanic”, you can substitute her with Majabvi but the words and the circumstances have a chilling similarity.
“Fifteen hundred people went into the sea when Titanic sank from under us,” you can hear Rose, now an old woman who was a pretty girl when the ship sank, saying.
“There were 20 boats floating nearby and only one came back. One! Six (Seven people if you tie it to this latest Asiagate twist) were saved from under the water, myself included           . . . out of 1 500.
“Afterwards, the SEVEN hundred people in the boats had nothing to do but wait. Wait to die, wait to live, wait for an absolution that would never come.”

Redemption Song, Song of Freedom
Bob Marley had already been diagonised with cancer and probably knew he would be dying soon when, in 1979, he penned his last song, “Redemption Song”, which poet and broadcaster, Mutabaruka, called the most influential recording in Jamaican music history.
It was also the last song Marley performed, in his landmark career, on September 23, 1980, while sitting on a stool in Pittsburg, United States.
Bonno of U2 said he used to take Bob Marley’s Redemption Song “to every meeting I had with a politician, Prime Minister, or President. It was for me a prophetic utterance or as Bob would say ‘the small axe that could fell the big tree.’
The song reminded me that freedom always comes at a cost, but for those who would prepare to pay it, maybe ‘emancipation from mental slavery’ would be our reward.”
Maybe, Majabvi is playing this song in his house right now and so is Cuthbert Malajila who told The Herald on Thursday that he never stopped believing that one day he could come out of this mess a free man.
Hopefully, there will be many more players who will be able to play the song of freedom in their house or on their way to a football match, in an era where it is now fashionable for footballers to have those huge headphones which they use to divorce themselves from the world as they zoom their concentration on their next assignment.
That the clearance of the seven players, six of whom were quickly drafted into the Warriors, has been welcome by the football family is an issue that is beyond question because, looking at the feedback I have been getting from readers, there was concern about the lightweight status of the team ahead of their Angolan adventure.
Injuries to key players like skipper Tapiwa Kapini and striker Rodwell Chinyengetere had tested Rahman Gumbo’s depleted reserves to the limit and it became very clear that there was need for reinforcement.
The general impression I have been getting, from readers’ feedback, is that the Warriors will be a stronger unit with the new additions to the team and there is genuine excitement that a player like Kingston Nkhata, who has done well since moving to Kaizer Chiefs, will bring a new dimension to the attack.
Nkhata, just like Edward Sadomba who has also been recalled, had also found themselves being sidelined for a trip they undertook with the Warriors to a Four-Nations Agribank Cup tournament in Vietnam.
If there is one big question that needs answers, regarding the latest batch of players to be cleared, then it has to be the absence of home-based players, within that group, and if that is just a coincidence.
It has given rise to speculation that the home-based players are missing from the list of those cleared because they were not needed for the huge assignment in Luanda and only the foreign-based, who could make the grade, were given the reprieve.
That those cleared play in the areas where we having all sorts of problems in terms of back-up and injuries, goalkeeping, rightback and centreback, and strikeforce, has also fuelled the questions being asked.
But what can’t be questioned is the feel-good wind that is blowing in our national game right now and, as the latest batch of players play their freedom songs, you can feel the love, warmth and you can see, for once, this is a game that is in motion.
It’s a national game that is on the brink of something big, something great, and it could happen in Angola this coming Sunday.
There is no reason to be pessimistic because these Warriors can do it, mhepo dzevana vaye vange vachinyunyuta kuti tirikuponderwei isu tisina chatakapara dzabviswa pavakomana vedu, and you can feel the breadth of fresh air blowing across.
George Manyaya and his Mzansi ’90 team are waving their magic wand and you can see that everything is being put into shape for the final invasion of Angola and, on this one, I have to say well done Cuthbert Dube and your team, zvaonekwa Saimata, manjenjenje ganda revasikana.
Come on Zimbabwe!!!!!!!!!!!!

A Championship Race Made in Heaven
These are good times for our football, no doubt about that, and even the domestic Premiership looks in very good health and the championship race this year is a riveting one between the game’s two biggest brands and its most successful teams.
It’s been 13 years now, since Dynamos and Highlanders went on such a head-to-head battle for the championship in the final home stretch, and, boy oh boy, it has been a thriller and you can’t afford to miss just a minute.
It’s too close to call right now and either team can win.
Bosso’s unbeaten run finally came to an end, when they were humbled by Monomotapa 0-3 at Rufaro last Saturday, on a bad day for anything that was associated with the number 23.
Yes, after 23 games without a loss, Bosso finally fell to a rampant Monoz team that played their game with a rhythm that was so beautiful it was difficult not to fall in love with them that day.
After 23 years of trying, and failing, to beat Manchester United at Old Trafford, Tottenham Hotspur finally found a way to win at the Theatre of Dreams and beat the Red Devils 3-2 on Saturday.
If you turn around Spurs’ winning margin, it will bring the number 23, the time they spent chasing shadows.
Bosso have now lost the chance for Immortality, to be remembered as the team that won the league without losing a game, like the Juventus of last season in Serie A and Arsenal Wenger’s Gunners of Thierry and company.
But winning the championship is more important than finishing the season unbeaten and the good thing for Kevin Kaindu and his team is that, unlike FC Platinum last year, they have faltered with enough games still on the line for them to recover.
As it stands, it’s also true that Bosso will be champions if they win all their remaining six games, irrespective of what happens elsewhere.
But Highlanders are not fighting an ordinary team but the biggest football club in this country and the one club that has perfected the art of winning league championship medals.
It’s also true, isn’t it, that Dynamos would be champions if they win all their remaining six matches, irrespective of what happens elsewhere?
What I find nauseating is this conspiracy theory that DeMbare needed to pay Shabanie to beat them 4-0 at Rufaro in a city where the same miners last beat their opponents 11 years ago.
To begin to see shadows in Luke Masomere, on the basis that he expressed his love for DeMbare ahead of their showdown, and deliberately ignore how he praised Kaindu as the ultimate professional, in the countdown to their match in Bulawayo, would be the depth of sheer madness.
To suggest that Shabanie can only lose 0-4 to DeMbare, in a game that has been fixed, and at the same time embrace Bosso’s seven-goal thrashing of a Quelaton good enough to hold CAPS United and beat Monomotapa in the league and, for good measure, push Dynamos into a penalty shootout in a cup tournament, is utter rubbish.
That Dynamos fans will always target Bosso and CAPS United interests is as normal as the fact that Highlanders and Kepekepe fans will also target DeMbare interests.
That’s rivalry and last Wednesday at the National Sports Stadium we only got to know that Chicken Inn had scored against DeMbare when a huge roar erupted among the CAPS United fans.
CAPS fans would rather have Bosso winning the championship than Dynamos.
That’s the way it has always been and if you are Catholic you know the phrase — sezvakanga zviri pakutanga, nazvino, nakare kose nemisi isingaperi, Amen!
To God Be The Glory!
Come on Warriors!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Khamaldinhoooooooooooooooooooooo!

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