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Sharuko On Sunday

ON April 16, two days before the country celebrates the 44th anniversary of our Independence, Bernard Marriot will mark 10 years in charge of Dynamos.

He was 66, when he took over as board chairman, on April 16, 2014, in what was effectively a boardroom coup.

He will be 76, next month, when he celebrates his decade in power.

That boardroom coup swept away Freddie Mkwesha, one of the finest gentlemen Dynamos has produced, and left him a broken and embarrassed man.

For more than a year, Mkwesha provided exemplary leadership, and direction, using a mixture of diplomacy and a fatherly touch, which made him quite a very good leader.

After Richard Chiminya died, at the beginning of November 2012, Mkwesha was tasked with providing leadership in the final phase of a titanic title race.

Dynamos won that gruelling race, by edging Highlanders on goal difference and, the following year, Mkwesha guided his club to another league title, after three clubs ended with the same number of points.

But, for all his success, Mkwesha didn’t know that some hawks were plotting to topple him and, on April 16, 2014, this mob struck with a combination of both ruthlessness and shamelessness.

The rebels were led by Bernard Marriot, you can add Lusengo if you want, but it just lengthens the name and doesn’t really change anything in terms of his true identity and his character as a wily old fox.

It was such a brutal type of elimination and, to be tossed away as an outcast, must have hurt Mkwesha badly and, just 20 months later, the first footballer from this country to be signed by a European club, was dead.

He was 74.

And, therefore Marriot, who is now 76, cannot argue that Mkwesha was now old and his time to finally rest had come.

At that age, one can only take so much when it comes to the kind of humiliation, and rejection, which Mkwesha suffered in that boardroom coup.

Marriot became board chairman and to show their ruthlessness, Mkwesha was relegated to the non-existent post of advisor to the board, the closest thing, to a Minister Without Portfolio, football has ever created.

Instead, the vice-chairman’s post went to Shakie Matimbe, a guy who if you Google his name, you get just five links related to him, one of them being from the day the rebels staged their rebellion and grabbed power at DeMbare.

He must have broken a world record as the first vice-chairman of a board, and a club as big as Dynamos, who said nothing, heard nothing and saw nothing related to the organisation he was said to be in charge of.

Owen Chandamale, who took over the director in charge of finance, just in name only because he never executed that role, died in December 2017, just three years after the coup.

Chris Kasiyazi, before he became Mthokozisi Nkosi, was the Company Secretary and, on the very day they swept into power, he told reporters this was what was expected of Marriot and his gang:

To turn the Dynamos brand into serious business, turn around the club’s waning fortunes on the continent, uphold the spirit of success at home.

To hold the Golden Jubilee celebrations, which failed to take place in 2013, and to set up a welfare fund to benefit former players at retirement.

To ensure unity prevails and the club flexes its muscles again in the CAF Champions League and returns into the top 10 on the continent.

UNDER MARRIOT, DEMBARE HAVE BECOME VERY ORDINARY

 In football results, just like the league standings, don’t LIE.

And, 10 years into his job as the most powerful man at Dynamos, the reality is that Marriot has miserably failed to achieve even one of those targets and, instead, he has driven the Glamour Boys closer to the mortuary than the glory fields.

Dynamos have failed to win any of the SEVEN championships which they have competed in, with Marriot in charge, from the start of the campaign.

This is the same club which, when Marriot arrived as boss in April 2014, had just started a campaign in which they would win their fourth straight league title.

They finished second in 2015, four points behind Chicken Inn, FIFTH in 2016, 17 points behind champions CAPS United and second in 2017.

In 2018, DeMbare finished 11th, 36 points behind FC Platinum, and in 2019, they finished ninth, 18 points behind the Zvishavane side.

In those two seasons, Dynamos finished an average 10th place and a combined 54 points behind FC Platinum.

There was a 17-point gap between champions FC Platinum and Dynamos in 2022, which means in three seasons, they finished a combined 71 points behind the Zvishavane side.

This is what we can pick from these statistics:

Given Kasiyazi said in 2014 that Marriot and company had been mandated with turning “around the club’s waning fortunes on the continent and upholding the spirit of success at home,” these statistics show that it has been a TOTAL FAILURE for the man they call Magitare.

 Given no other Dynamos board chairman has taken charge of the Glamour Boys, in an era in which they didn’t win a league championship in NINE years, Marriot qualifies to be termed the worst leader of the Glamour Boys Of-All-Time.

When DeMbare’s mission is reduced to trying to win the championship, because they have failed to do so in a decade, rather than fighting for glory on the continent, then as chairman that should send a powerful message that you have failed the people’s project.

If, as board chairman he was tasked, in 2014, to hold the 50th anniversary celebrations and he FAILED and, nine years later, he again FAILED to hold the 60th anniversary celebrations, shouldn’t he start asking himself if this isn’t the ultimate definition of failure?

If he has been part of the Dynamos system for 60 years, and during that period, this club remains in the very poor state it was in the ‘60s and, right now, doesn’t even have a bicycle to list as part of its moveable property, shouldn’t Marriot be realising that he shouldn’t be a factor in this club’s future because, like a dinosaur, he belongs to the past?

Hasn’t the time come for Marriot to go into retirement, bring in young men and women with both energy and vision to run this project, without the daily interference he loves, and watch from a distance as they really turn Dynamos around?

Rather than being seen wandering like a drunk ghost at the DeMbare training sessions, and not seeing the dangers that come with letting such sessions go ahead without a proper medic, shouldn’t Marriot be somewhere on a beach, enjoying the work that some technocrats would be doing, helping this club realise its true potential?

Let’s say, God willing, Marriot is given the chance to live until he gets to, at least 90, what can he sell to the fans, or potential investors, that he can do, in the next 15 years, which he failed to do in the last 61 years?

SOMEHOW, MARRIOT ISN’T SEEING THE OBVIOUS

 Kaizer Motaung is now 79 and has been around the Kaizer Chiefs brand from foundation.

And, isn’t it telling that Chiefs have also become a sick clone of the giant they used to be and they haven’t won the league championship in South Africa in NINE years?

Their last success in the MTN8 was in 2014, 10 years ago, and their last triumph in the Nedbank Cup was in 2013.

In the 28 years of the era of the South African Premiership, Chiefs have won just FOUR league titles, at an average of one league championship every SEVEN years.

But, there is a big difference here.

At least Motaung turned Chiefs into a multi-million dollar project.

And, Motaung also knows that in the event he dies today, or tomorrow or whenever, his children’s ties to the club are secure and probably Bobby will take over as the leader of Chiefs.

Chiefs belong to the Motaung family and that will not change even if Kaizer finally gets to rest after a life in which his genius helped create the most popular football club South Africa has ever had. The same, though, cannot be said about Marriot.

When he finally rests and joins his colleagues like Chiminya, Shaya and Chandamale, it will be the end of his family’s claims to be the owners of the Glamour Boys.

For me, as a father, that is the danger that Marriot appears not to be seeing as he holds on to the fantasy of his power, without really taking time to sort out the mess related to the ownership of this club, while he is still alive.

I can understand his stubbornness, or is it arrogance, on a number of issues but I can’t understand that he appears not to be seeing the obvious that his children will be hounded out of this club the very moment he dies.

That will be the end of the Marriot’s connection to Dynamos and, given that he has been in charge for 10 years, and been connected with this club for 60 years, it will be a very brutal divorce and rejection of his family.

Right now, his boys have grown up in an environment where they are being told this is daddy’s football club and, for goodness sake, they don’t deserve the fate which awaits them, being kicked out like dogs, when their father is no longer around.

What I don’t understand is why a man, who claims to own 51 percent of the shares of the company which owns Dynamos, would not be willing to open the other 49 percent to proper shareholders and not the ghost shareholders we see at DeMbare?

If Strive Masiyiwa is comfortable with holding 38.4 percent of the shares in Econet Wireless Zimbabwe, and it gives him all the influence he wants, why does Marriot keep seeing demons, and threats, when he has a 51 percent stake, as he claims?

If I was Marriot, I would open the club to proper investment, while I still have a semblance of authority, and ensure that I safeguard the future of my children.

For me, that would be more important than anything else and I wonder why Marriot is not seeing the dangers, which lie ahead, and continues to hold on to fantasy, which can disappear as quickly as it came.

I know those who are taking advantage of Marriot to destroy Dynamos, for their selfish interests, will go on the offensive and launch a campaign to demonise my name and attack my writings.

I’m comfortable with that and I am comforted by the reality that I am not the only journalist seeing it this way.

On October 4, 2018, veteran sports journalist, Simba Rushwaya, wrote a story, which was published in the Business Times, under the headline: ‘Marriot: The Cunning Fox Behind DeMbare Fiasco.’

“Since his ascendancy to the position of board chairman at Dynamos Private Limited in 2014, things have gone down. 

“It is unthinkable for a team so decorated and big like Dynamos to find themselves in the relegation zone at this point in time. 

“The blame squarely lies on Marriot.

“Marriot is a cunning character with the audacity sometimes to conclude issues in the most unfashionable way because he is also a former boxer apart from the fact that he donned the famous blue jersey.”

It’s not me, who wrote that, it’s Simba and, six years later, it’s still very true.

To God Be The Glory!

Peace to the GEPA Chief, the Big Fish, George Norton, Daily Service, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and all the Chakariboys still in the struggle.

Come on Chegutu Pirates!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Zaireeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

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Email: robsharuko@gmail,com; [email protected]