‘We were mistreated’
Twenty-two years ago, Robert Nauseb moved from playing for nothing in Namibia to securing a contract which earned him R12,000 per month before bonuses at Kaizer Chiefs. A decade since he last played football, he spoke to KICK OFF’s Lovemore Moyo about the joys and the frustrations in his career – most of which came at Santos where he says he was duped out of R100,000.
As strange as it might sound to the younger generation, it so happened that when Robert Nauseb was signed by Kaizer Chiefs in the winter of 1998 from Namibian club Civics, it was the first time he had a club contract as a way to earn a salary from the game.
This was despite the fact that he had already played for three-and-a-half years in the Namibian Premier League for Orlando Pirates and Civics, after having initially spending time with lower division Black Morogo Chiefs from Otjiwarango, where he was born.
Back then, as now, Namibian footballers in the domestic league were part-timers, who trained late afternoon after their day job and only earned money when they won sponsored cup competitions.
“At Civics I wasn’t earning a cent because Namibian football back then wasn’t professional, and we were just playing for the love of the game,” Nauseb said.
“We would get bonuses if we won a tournament but there were no salaries or win bonuses for league games. What was the motivation then?
“Those years as a footballer you had to play in the national team to get appearances fees, camping money and win bonuses. We used to play hoping to get contracts out of the country and your chances of being scouted was when you were in the national team.
“Before I came to Kaizer Chiefs, I went to a Third Division team in Turkey for trials, but they didn’t want to pay me better than what I was getting in my day job in the dispatch department of a spares company similar to Midas.
“The people in Turkey wanted to pay me R2,500 per month as a professional footballer, which wasn’t much different at all to what I was earning in the day job that I had in Namibia.
“But when I came to Chiefs, I started on a net of R12,000, which was big money in those years. You could do a lot with that kind of money back then, and the plus was that we would also get match bonuses. If you won five games in a month then it meant an extra R5,000.
“I used that money to extend my parents’ home and the house still stands to this day, even though my mom passed on. My old man is still going,” recalls the retired Brave Warrior.
‘It all happened fast’
Nauseb could have landed up at Jomo Cosmos and not Chiefs had Jomo Sono acted on his interest.
Sono spotted Nauseb in January 1998 when Bafana Bafana went down 3-2 to Namibia in a classic COSAFA Cup tie.
At the time Sono also oversaw Bafana Bafana – who arrived in Windhoek for that match with most of their regulars as it part of the preparations for the AFCON finals in Burkina Faso the following month.
Six months later Screamer Tshabalala – then with Chiefs – didn’t waste time when they saw him excel in another international match.
“Jomo saw me earlier but never acted on his initial interest. A friend of mine, who was also with Screamer, came to watch Ricardo Mannetti along with a few other players. I happened to be the lucky one along with Mohammed [Ouseb].
“The Sunday after the game, I had to fly to Johannesburg with him so that I could start training with Chiefs on the Monday, and by the Thursday I had signed my contract, going on to feature in a friendly match against SuperSport United on the Friday.
“It all happened as fast. The club-to-club negotiations were not an issue because the friend of mine who knew Screamer was one of the officials at Civics. That was the best week of my career.
“I was even asking myself how it came
“IF YOU WON FIVE GAMES IN A MONTH THEN IT MEANT AN EXTRA R5,000.”
to be me who got this move when there so many other players in the national team who were better than me. I got to understand that when you are the chosen one, then no-one can stop that,” he details.
Being at Chiefs was a pleasure for Nauseb. He was a regular in all his three years at Naturena, winning the Rothmans Cup within three months of his arrival, before the agony of losing in the BOB Save Super Bowl final to SuperSport United at the end of that 1998/99 season under Paul Dolezar.
‘Winning meant money in the pocket’
In Nauseb’s second year, coach Muhsin Ertugral was brought in and they claimed the BOB Save Super Bowl in June 2000, making up for the disappointment of a year before.
In the meantime, his bank balance was swelling.
“Winning the cups obviously meant it was money in the pocket but with me, when I was playing, I helped my family a lot because we are eight kids.
“I am proud of what I did for them and even now when football is in a pause, I have family members that can come and say, ‘here is something’,” he notes.
“So being at Chiefs my focus suddenly changed because I was now being rewarded for doing something that I loved. There is no better feeling than being paid for doing what you love.
“It changed my attitude towards the game because it meant I now had to better myself since I was competing with top players. If I wanted to survive competing with top players, I needed to be at a different level, so I needed to train harder, be focused and have a different lifestyle.
“In all my first year I wasn’t driving and when I got myself a car, I used to visit [Namibia goalkeeper] Ronnie Kanalelo because he used to pick up Mohammed [Ouseb] and I.
“When I bought a car in 1999 it was a [Golf ] GTi. I wasn’t so much into cars but felt I needed to reward myself with something comfortable for all the sweat and pain on the field,” he points out.
In recent times there have been accusations of how players from Johannesburg’s townships formed cartels to sabotage other players of colour at Chiefs, with David Modise and Marco Mthembu laying bare to this publication how they suffered.
For Nauseb – who played at Chiefs as a right wingback through that era – he was mentally prepared for any bullying tactics, which he believes are normal in football.
“Look here my brother, when I joined Chiefs I had already been in the national team where there were big players. So, when I got to Chiefs, I told myself that I shouldn’t fear anyone. I trained the way I played and never felt like an outsider because I could communicate with everyone.
“My thing was that if you don’t want to talk to me, I don’t care because I came here to do my job. So, I never cared about these issues about this person not liking that person.
“Maybe the trouble is that in South Africa, you will get a Zulu guys, Xhosa guys, Sotho guys and some of them don’t like each other because of that. With me I was open with everybody and I could laugh and enjoy my time with them.
“You obviously would get those guys that would give you an attitude but I was bigger than that so it wasn’t anything for me and I didn’t take that to heart. In every football club there is always some kind of entitlement from some guys, just like in life, but I am always cool with everyone,” he explains.
‘I didn’t want to go to SuperSport’
Yet rather strange was that after 40 appearances and six goals in his third season in 2000/01, he found himself transfer-listed by Ertugral in what eventually led to his departure from Naturena.
“When we came for pre-season the coach came up to me and said I will not be in his plans going forward. It was a football decision and I respected it. I then went to Mohammed Ouseb’s team [SFK Lyn] in Norway for trials at the time when Stuart Baxter was the coach there, but it didn’t work out because of foreign quota issues.
“I NEEDED TO REWARD MYSELF WITH SOMETHING COMFORTABLE FOR ALL THE SWEAT AND PAIN ON THE FIELD.”
“I came back to South Africa and by then I had already made up my mind to leave Chiefs because Muhsin had made his decision. If you are not in the plans, then you must accept it. I had a chat with him which is why I still respect him to this day and talk to him when we meet.
“It was a football decision and there was nothing he had against me, just like I had no issues with him. Steve Komphela, then an assistant coach at Chiefs, tried to organise for me to go to SuperSport United as a way of helping me out but then I got a firm offer from Hellenic.
“I didn’t want to go to SuperSport because I knew that they had top players at the time, so game-time wasn’t guaranteed. I never doubted my abilities, but the issue is that I wanted to be certain about playing. When I weighed up the options, I thought at Hellenic I would be playing, which happened as we saved the team from relegation,” he remembers.
After helping save the Greek Gods from the drop, he moved to Ajax Cape Town after signing a pre-contract in the last six months of his contract at Hellenic.
At Ajax he was influential in his first season, but injury and foreign quota issues then restricted him to a single appearance in his second and final year.
Reaching the twilight of his career
With his permanent residence permit issued, he moved to Bloemfontein Celtic in July 2004 and then joined Santos six months later before ultimately spending the last two years of his playing career in the First Division with Ikapa Sporting.
“Ajax helped me acquire my permanent residence permit and credit to John Comitis for allowing me to then leave for Celtic where I only stayed for six months because there was too much football politics going on,” he says.
Next up was a three and a half year stay at Santos where he faced real frustrations.
“When I joined Santos, everything was OK because I was playing. However, the issue was the kind of contract that I had with the club. I needed to start 20 games in a season for me to get the bonus of R100,000 since they didn’t want to pay me signing on fees when I joined.
“It was a nightmare to reach 20 games. When they realised I needed a few games to get to 20 starts and my R100 000, I was now suddenly playing from the bench. When I wasn’t playing, I went as far as asking the coach [Roger de Sa] why I wasn’t playing.
“I was training hard but the club preferred to play a defender like Musa Otieno or an injured Sebastien Bax as a holding midfielder when I was there.
“When I asked Roger about it, he told me that he didn’t have the money to pay me. It seems [Santos owner] Goolam Allie told Roger that if I am to start 20 games then he [De Sa] will have to pay me that money himself!
“Roger was caught in a difficult position and couldn’t play me. I eventually pleaded with Roger to not consider me for the games if he was going to start me on the bench. Why would I have to put in the effort at training when it is known I will be sitting on the bench?
“Then in my last season at Santos I then got an injury and had to use my own medical aid because the club didn’t want to help. Santos were telling me that they must first contact the league about the insurance, yet I needed to do the operation urgently.
‘Mistreating players’
“When I recovered, they wanted me to play, yet they still didn’t want to give me my money back for the operation. It became another fight and Edries Burton – who was now the CEO after having been a teammate – was mistreating players. The way he was treating us was like he never played football.
“It felt like we didn’t even know him. He became a different person when he got that job. I eventually decided not to fight them about the money but just wait until the last day of my contract so that I could leave.
“Before I went to Santos I used to hear all these negative stories about the club. I never had a direct fight with Goolam but it was just how he was doing things in trying to find a way of not paying when there had been an agreement.
“Why agree to that contract as the club? Other than that, I enjoyed my time with the guys that I played with there,” he says.
Now 46 and a father of five kids, Nauseb is the head coach at Eleven Arrows in the Namibian Premier League, where he has worked in the last two years.
It is a job he got after being sacked by African Stars on the eve of their Champions League game against Orlando Pirates in December 2018 with the club suggesting he was too lightweight for the task ahead.
His coaching journey has taken him from Rygersdal in Cape Town to being an assistant to Major David Bright at FC Cape Town in the First Division, then Wits University juniors and now Eleven Arrows.
“WHEN THEY REALISED I NEEDED A FEW GAMES TO GET TO 20 STARTS AND MY R100 000, I WAS NOW SUDDENLY PLAYING FROM THE BENCH.”