Juju, Ganja and Mafia at Dynamos

A long-serving captain at the country’s most successful football club, Mucherahowa identifies, in the course of his own life story, some of the millstones holding back Zimbabwe’s version of the beautiful game. Even at the high point of its glory days, during the 1998 CAF championship campaign, Dynamos reliably unwound administrative disasters under a management for whom professional basics were Mandarin.

ONAI MUSHAVA

Zimbabwe’s global image has maxed out on grand narratives and pop consumables but largely underestimated the place of memoir as a long night of the soul.

Memory Mucherahowa’s new book, “Soul of Seven Million Dreams”, has no time for self-cleansing as the Dynamos legend puts the health of the national institution up for scrutiny.

A long-serving captain at the country’s most successful football club, Mucherahowa identifies, in the course of his own life story, some of the millstones holding back Zimbabwe’s version of the beautiful game.

Even at the high point of its glory days, during the 1998 CAF championship campaign, Dynamos reliably unwound administrative disasters under a management for whom professional basics were Mandarin.

Mucherahowa gives an inside view of Dynamos’ inordinate obsession with juju (witchcraft for enhancing results), players’ erroneous reliance on ganja (marijuana), mafia administration and factionalism during his tenure.

The book looks beyond DeMbare’s occupational hazards to take on other evils including regionalism, setting players from the north against players from the south in the national team, match-fixing and hostile stratagems by host clubs during CAF away legs.

Born in 1968, five years after the inception of Dynamos, Mucherahowa found his groove while growing up in Mufakose, joined Dynamos FC Juniors in 1983, and secured a place in the first team in 1985.

He got an early call to national duty but would have an on-off tenure with the Warriors. Moses Chunga arranged a stint for him with a Third Division Belgian side, which did not bear fruit either as his papers were not in order.

We get Mucherahowa’s close-up perspectives and unresolved beefs with contemporaries and football administrators including Chunga, Reinhard Fabisch, Ephraim Chawanda, George Shaya and Leslie Gwindi.

He also shares about his interactions with fellow players, musicians, politicians and ghetto criminals – with Warriors legend Peter Ndlovu, Chimurenga maverick Thomas Mapfumo, Dream Team talisman Tauya Murewa, CAPS United Class of 1996 skipper Joe Mugabe and Zanu-PF legislator Joseph Chinotimba, who is particularly cast in endearing light.

It is not all glamour as Mucherahowa privileges the world with a look into the Glamour Boys’ dressing room where Stone Age administration and shocking ineptness muddy one of the biggest pools of the country’s footballing talent.

The autobiography, written with assistance from UK-based sports journalist Albert Marufu and edited by Zimpapers innovation strategist Robert Mukondiwa, is a fascinating addition to Zimbabwean athlete memoirs by Bruce Grobellar, Japhet Mparutsa, Allan Butcher, Henry Olonga, Tatenda Taibu and others.

Marufu extensively interviewed Mucherahowa and transcribed his story in first person. Given the format, I approached the book apprehensive of third party intrusion but was delightfully proven wrong. The reader hears Mucherahohwa’s own voice, as it were, mastering almost imperceptible.

As captain, Mucherahowa, routinely presided over the juju rituals to a point where Dynamos fans erroneously thought of his onfield name, Gwenzi (translated as “bush”), as having come about from his dabbling in the “muti” business.

DeMbare’s on-off gaffer Sunday Chidzambwa was also meticulously invested in the rituals, although the club’s unquestioning belief in juju almost cost him a job as the administration believed that his return would draw bad winds to the club.

Peter Nyama was pushed out when the administration alleged that he had mixed his juju with the club’s, thereby prejudicing DeMbare. Mucherahowa boarded a train to confirm this with a witchdoctor in Bulawayo and Nyama was duly kicked out into the streets.

Belief in juju held sway to a point where it demobilised strategy and impeded on performance, with a witchdoctor, at one point, slitting players’ toes to apply his concoctions so that the onfield 11 braved the pain throughout the game.

Chunga let out this painful secret by limping to the dressing room, boots in hand, blood on toes, under the intrusive gaze of the fans. In Algeria, the hosts caught wind of a mystical ploy and their attempt to intercept it ended in scuffles.

“Just like me, Chidzambwa also believed that juju helps in enhancing the team’s performance. Whether it actually aided us, I do not know. Whether he totally believed it or just as a placebo I may never know,” Mucherahowa recalls.

Originally published in The Herald