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Sharuko On Saturday

IN the final moments, he was alone, trapped in an enclave of death, marooned in the shadow of darkness, surrounded by bloodthirsty thugs for whom killing is normal business.

Beasts who looked like men, killers who looked like human beings, animals who looked like people, devils whose veins were exploding with evil.

There wasn’t any witness, this was an island of sadness, a violent area of hopelessness, a group of gangsters who worshipped ruthlessness, murderers allergic to everything represented by the word forgiveness.

The stillness of the dark summer night was ominous, his loneliness made him such an object of vulnerability, their viciousness took away any chances of a reprieve and there was an ugliness to their plot.

After all, they were in one of the most dangerous places in the world, a part of Soweto called Mzimhlope.

And, these killers, who had started by taking control of his car, had chosen their chamber of slaughter perfectly.

In that cage of darkness, he absolutely had no chance at all – no chance to escape the tentacles of death, no chance to save his life, no chance to run away from the ruthless killers.

No chance to try and buy his freedom, and live to see another day, no chance to even plead for mercy, no chance to lift himself from the jaws of death.

So, afterwards, he had nothing to do but wait, wait to die, wait to live, wait for an absolution which would never come.” 

We will never know what he said, or how he said it, in those final moments of his 48 years, in this garden of the living.

What we know, though, is that they shot him, not once, not twice but quite a number of times, as if they were on a practice shooting range.

As if they were slaughtering a turkey, for Christmas.

In this gory theatre of death, made up of the killing and the dying, so far away from home, the life story of Charles Yohane, came to an end.

“He was hijacked, they took his car and shot him in the head,” his brother Lewis told BBC Sport.

And, after they killed him, they dumped his bullet-riddled body in a hostel and then chose to spend the next day driving around in his vehicle.

For a quarter-of-a-century, South Africa had been his adopted home.

Johannesburg was his adopted city and, at Wits University, his football career flourished and he rose to become the club’s leader, the influential skipper who became the heartbeat of the team.

 “The days when I joined Wits, they were dominated by white players and when you saw them coming to greet you then you would know you are a good player,” he told Kick.Off, just a few months ago.

“They even told the coach to play me.”

And, play him they did as Yohane, providing both leadership and penetration down the left channel, went on to make a club record 268 appearances, for the Students.

Just hours after Yohane’s death, news broke out that South African hip-hop artist, DJ Citi Lyts, had also met a similar death in Soweto.

The musician, whose real name was Sandile Mkhize, was also shot and killed, in the Dube neighbourhood of Soweto, during a carjacking incident.

Known for hits like Washa, Vura and Malambane, the musician was shot eight times, in the early hours of Valentine’s Day.

He was only 32.

Soweto has been dealing with violent crime for years, and in this current season of madness, a man from the area was arrested a few months ago, after human body parts were found in a fridge at his home.

His girlfriend, who had visited him for the weekend, is the one who made the shocking discovery, leading to the arrest of the 26-year-old man.

Before community members could effect a citizens’ arrest, the man even attempted to commit suicide by stabbing himself a number of times.

THE CITY OF GOLD AND DANGER

Last month, three people were shot and killed at a tavern in Soweto.

Witnesses said gunmen burst into the tavern and started showering everyone inside with bullets and by the time the madness had died down, eight patrons had been hit.

Two of the patrons died inside the tavern while a third one succumbed to his wounds at a clinic.

A week earlier, the bodies of four security guards had been found, at a dumping site in Kliptown, Soweto.

They had all been shot in the head, in execution style, the kind of which is seen in movies detailing the ruthlessness of drug lords, in such countries like Colombia and Mexico.

Three more guards, who were shot in the same incident, were rushed to hospital with serious gunshot wounds.

In many parts of South Africa, these are just mere statistics.

Violence is the order of the day, and night, and it doesn’t really matter who you are.

After all, these same heartless killers shot and killed Lucky Dube, the legendary musician, who became an international superstar.

That was on October 18, 2007, when armed robbers ambushed him, in pursuit of his Chrysler 300C, and shot him dead.

He had just dropped two of his seven children, at his uncle’s home in the Rosettenville suburb of Johannesburg, when the thugs struck.

Police investigations later claimed the carjackers did not recognise him, as one of their national icons, and actually believed he was Nigerian.

We will never know if they didn’t also recognise that Senzo Meyiwa was one of them and, like Lucky Dube, he was another national icon.

On October 26, 2014, Senzo was shot and killed in a robbery.

It amplified the pain that he was just 30 because, for a goalkeeper, that’s when one starts entering the prime phase of his career.

Through hard work, and a never-say-die attitude, Senzo had risen to become his country’s first-choice goalkeeper and the man Orlando Pirates also trusted to guard their goal.

How can one forget Senzo?

How does the game forget the man who, in a priceless moment of excellence, one afternoon in Lubumbashi, he found a way to save football?

Faced with the beast called TP Mazembe, in their fortress where results were routinely manipulated, using the influence of referees to ensure a certain premeditated outcome, Senzo became the hero and the game’s saviour.

TP Mazembe needed a two-goal victory, after having lost the first leg 1-3 in Johannesburg, for them to go through to the group stages of the 2013 CAF Champions League.

When they led 1-0, it should have looked like a routine result for the Congolese giants to go through, given all they needed was just to score another goal.

Then, the gamesmanship started, Pirates captain and defensive rock, Lucky Legwathi was sent off, the hosts were given a dubious penalty, which Senzo saved.

And, in the very last-minute, Mazembe got another dubious penalty.

“Ninety minutes, and another penalty, I cried,” Senzo recalled. “I cried for all the hard work I had done the whole game.

“Tears were falling down my face.

 “I said a small prayer and looked at the bench, it was quiet. Everybody was sitting down. I urged them to stand up, because I was going to save this penalty again.”

And, save it he did and Pirates, despite losing the game 0-1, went through 3-2 on aggregate.

But, all these heroics counted for nothing for Senzo, one October night, in 2014, when about five gunmen shot and killed him, outside the Johannesburg home of his celebrity girlfriend, Kelly Khumalo.

A notorious hitman, identified as Fisokuhle Ntuli, allegedly worked with four other murderers to carry out the killing of Senzo.

It didn’t matter to them that just 11 days earlier, Senzo had been in goals for Bafana Bafana, at the Peter Mokaba Stadium in Polokwane, leading his team in a 2015 AFCON qualifier.

It turned out to be his final game for his country and, as if the football gods had planned it perfectly, for a swansong, the ‘keeper kept a clean sheet that afternoon.

The goalless draw effectively gave Bafana Bafana a ticket to the 2015 AFCON finals, a process they completed in style the following month, as they topped a group, which also featured the Super Eagles of Nigeria.

However, for the ruthless killers, Senzo’s heroics for his country, didn’t ring a bell to them, didn’t matter to them because, in their world of chaos and blood, the beauty of football doesn’t exist.

The heroism, and patriotism, which comes with representing one’s country, in football battles around the world, doesn’t matter at all.

For them, what matters is taking away lives, in pursuit of their evil agenda, and whether it’s an icon like Lucky Dube or a superhero, like Senzo Meyiwa, who has to die in those missions, then so be it.

After all, their allegiance is to the Devil Himself, to Satan, to Vampires, to Lucifer, to the serpent.

 ONE WEEK WITHOUT CAPTAIN CHARLIE

So, yesterday, the clock marked one week after those thugs took Charlie’s life, in that hail of bullets, I turned to song, to try and lessen the burden, which we have been carrying, in the past seven days.

After all, I was with these boys at the 2004 AFCON finals, when Charlie’s Company made history, as the first group of Warriors to play at the continent’s biggest football festival.

I was their official journalist, the one who attended all their training sessions, the one who attended all their press conferences, the one they told their juiciest stories.

It was a product of trust, which is something which takes years to build and, since the days of the Dream Team, I had been walking with many of these boys, in the jungles of African football.

It wasn’t always a beautiful romance, there had been moments, over the years, when we didn’t agree on some of the things I wrote about, but that was normal, it came with the terrain.

They knew that I wasn’t their public relations officer, the job which my good friend, Xolisani Gwesela plays now, but I was just a journalist, they had to trust, to give their true side of the story.

Unlike them, I had been to the Nations Cup finals before, four years earlier, in Burkina Faso.

This meant that I had some experience of what happens at such tournaments, and it came handy, on the occasions that I helped them deal with some of the media requirements.

It also helped that the captain of these pioneers was Peter Ndlovu.

A man so talented that I still believe that had Coventry City agreed to sell him either to Liverpool or Arsenal, in the middle part of the ‘90s, his true legacy in the game, as one of the finest wingers to play it, would have been secured.

Fittingly, Peter would score our first goal, at the Nations Cup final, in that opening match against the Pharaohs of Egypt, in Sfax, Tunisia, in 2004.

The provider, of course, was Charles Yohane, a hero who loved to serve his country quietly, but effectively, who had perfected the art of creating goals from crosses swung in from the left channel.

We lost that game 1-2 but, for a group of Warriors cutting their milk teeth at this tournament, our courageous performance was celebrated throughout the continent.

Of course, things could have been better, far much better, had Wilfred Mugeyi converted a late chance only for his powerful effort, where placement would have been the better option, to fly over the crossbar.

But, any team can produce a freak result in a football game.

How we would perform, against the Indomitable Lions of Cameroon, in the next game, would be decisive, in showing the world whether we were the genuine article or just a group of fake Warriors.

And, in that game, we didn’t only become the first team to score three goals against the Indomitable Lions, in an AFCON match, in a long time, but also scored probably the goal of the tournament.

Once again, Charles Yohane was involved, providing the final pass to Esrom Nyandoro, to score a beauty, from range, which flew like a laser-guided missile, before dipping at the right time, to crash into the roof of the net.

Charles Yohane was generally a quiet man, maybe too quiet for my liking, and this meant that, in this business, where publicity is everything, he didn’t generate the headlines he deserved.

But, all this cannot take away the fact that he was a great footballer and, more importantly, a very good man.

He grew up in Mbare and used his football talent to take himself out of the ghetto.

But, in the end, the ghetto was where he died last Saturday, at the hands of vampires disguised as human beings, thugs who look like us but are driven by the devil.

It’s hard to, write Charlie’s name in the past tense but that’s what we have to do now and, yesterday, I decided, on behalf of Peter Ndlovu and his pioneer Warriors of 2004, to write a song for Charlie:

It’s inspired by P. Diddy’s Song for BIGGIE:

“Well, it seems like yesterday when we used to rock the show, you crossed the ball, we completed the flow, so far from hanging on the block for dough, Charlie our man, we all learnt to know that life isn’t always what it seems to be.

“Words can’t express what you meant to us, even though you’re gone, we still a team, through your family we will fulfil your dream, in the future, we can’t wait to see, if you will open up the gates for us, reminisce some time, the night they took our friend.

“We try to block it out, but it plays again, when it’s real, it’s hard to conceal, can’t imagine all the pain we feel, how we will give anything to hear half your breath, we know you are still living your life after death.

“It’s kinda hard with you not around, know you’re in heaven smiling down, watching us while we pray for you, until the day we meet again, in our hearts is where we will keep you, our friend, the memories give is the strength we need to proceed, the strength we need to believe.

“Our thoughts Charlie, we just can’t define, how we wish we could turn back the hands of time, us in Tunisia, playing at the AFCON, where our favourite breakfast included bacon, scoring goals against the Pharaohs, the Indomitable Lions and the Desert Foxes, those were the days of our lives.”

Yes, Charlie, Warriors never die.

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.

Comeon United!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ronaldoooooooooooooooooooooo!

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 You can also interact with me on Twitter (@Chakariboy), Facebook, Instagram (sharukor) and Skype (sharuko58) and GamePlan, the authoritative football magazine show on ZTV, where I interact with the legendary Charles Mabika, is back every Wednesday night at 9.30pm