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Tadious Manyepo Sports Reporter
IT has taken him 16 years to cast away the fears, and finally find the courage, to speak about the horror accident that plunged domestic football into mourning.

David Maketo Sengu has always been tough — both as a footballer and a person.

And, that it has taken him this long to finally recover, and tell his story, gives a graphic illustration of how the accident badly affected the CAPS United family.

In a country where issues to do with Post Traumatic Disorder Syndrome are not usually given the attention they deserve, some of the Green Machine players have been suffering quietly, all this time.

And one needs to just talk to the club’s former captain, Sengu, to understand they still bear the psychological scars of that day when their lives, to some extent, lost a meaning.

Even now, Sengu broke down as he recounted that day when an accident took the lives of three of their colleagues — Blessing “Yogo Yogo” Makunike, Shingi Arlon and Gary Mashoko — all of them burnt to death in the car they were travelling in.

Two fans, who were in the same car, also died, all of them burnt to death in an inferno after the car exploded into a fireball when it crashed into a rail on the bridge near Norton along the Harare/Bulawayo highway in March 2004.

The Green Machine had defeated Njube Sundowns 2-1 in Bulawayo in a league match when the trio decided to travel back to Harare in a car owned by one of the fans who died that day. “We were literally travelling together with the five, including the three players who were in that car, until the bus briefly stopped in Chegutu for recess,” recalls Sengu.

“It was the first time in the entire journey that we travelled apart.

“But we didn’t take very long. It was around 12-midnight.”

Little did Sengu and his other teammates know what awaited them at the bridge near Norton. The car in which the advance members were travelling on veered off the road, after hitting a pillar on the bridge, before bursting into a ball of fire with all its occupants trapped inside.

The sound of the loud bang and fireball awakened villagers on a nearby farm who rushed early enough to have a full view of the passengers, pour sand to fend off the flames, but their best efforts weren’t good enough to put out the fire. “It was a sorry sight, nerve-wrecking. I personally thought I was having some bad dream but I couldn’t wake up fast enough,” said Sengu.

The longer that dream took, the faster it sank in that it was actually real.

“At first, the whole team thought it was another accident involving some other people not our teammates.

“We had that sense of denial but certainly it also lingered in every mind that the car could be theirs since we were not far from them on the road. The question that must have crossed everyone’s mind was that, if this car was not theirs, so why didn’t they care to stop to offer their hand?

“I looked at Raymond (Undi), Artwell (Mabhiza) and Brian (Badza’s) faces and it was clear they were all terrified, fearing for the worst, just like me, as we disembarked the bus at the scene.”

The panicky CAPS United crew immediately joined the rescuers on the site with Sengu and Limited Chikafa enquiring if those, who had been first at the scene, had managed to recognise what the victims were wearing.

“As those guys told us the trapped occupants were dressed in green, one of them, using a log indeed pulled a green jacket belonging to Mashoko (Gary).

“It was so chilling. Some walked away crying loudly, It was just too much to comprehend . . .’’

Makepekepe, who were under the guidance of coach Charles Mhlauri, would go on to lose just one league game the whole season, a 3-4 defeat to Highlanders at the National Sports Stadium, as they claimed their first league title in eight years.

Defender Cephas Chimedza was voted the Soccer Star of the Year with teammate Ian Bakala coming close in second while Undi also made it onto the calendar.

Golden Boot winner, Leonard Tsipa, would also have made it among the best three but was disqualified by the panel for alleged misconduct after he had appeared to slap Highlanders defender, Gilbert Banda, at Barbourfields.

All those players dedicated their accolades to their fallen comrades. Sengu didn’t see off his contract, which was supposed to expire at the end of 2005, as he stayed behind in the United Kingdom after the club toured there.

Undi, Badza, Mabhiza, Ashley Rambanapasi, Leonard Tsipa and the late Silent Katumba also stayed behind in the UK after a tour match in Bradford against Highlanders.

Two of the players actually checked in for their flight back home at Gatwick but then decided against travelling. Sengu, Rambanapasi and Tsipa eventually returned home but the others didn’t. While the players were berated, in some quarters, for their disappearing act in the UK, Sengu now reveals it was a way of trying to escape from the emotional nightmare they always felt every time they passed the scene where their colleagues died.

He has since studied Journalism and is now a part-time radio football pundit but his aim is to venture into writing about the game, which he played so well, in newspapers.

He wants to start by being a regular columnist with The Herald and then see how far it will carry him.

He will have good company at Zimpapers, if that happens, because Andy Hodges — who was the CAPS United chairman back then — also works at the company at the Zimpapers Television Network.

Maybe, one day, he will also get a chance to write the story about that unforgettable day, in March 2004, when his life was changed forever. That’s why for him, every day he lives today is a blessing, because that night taught him how life is very delicate and things can change quickly.