The painful split
A split at Orlando Pirates in the late 1960s would ultimately lead to the formation of Kaizer Chiefs, but the story behind it is a long and complicated one that is not as simple as some players just deciding to go off and form their own team.
Instead, Chiefs was born within the vacuum of political and social instability, the absence of real football structures for a people passionately enamoured with the game and in the context of sportsmen seeking some real remuneration from the sport.
In 1968, football was segregated along racial lines and while the whites had their professional league, with regular guests stars from England, black soccer’s structures had collapsed and clubs were forced to eke out a living by playing an endless succession of challenge matches and mini tournaments to make ends meet.
There was no contact across the racial divide but the promise of inter-racial matches, and in particularly their money spinning potential, was already all too evident.
Swaziland, now Eswatini, invited two important personages to the celebration of the kingdom’s detachment from British rule – the Queen of England and Orlando Pirates.
And while the British monarch could not make it, Pirates readily agreed to a ground-breaking match against Highlands Park, the white South African powerhouse of the day. It would be game to break barriers, perhaps set a new tone for sports politics and, for the players, a chance to make some good cash.
But after weeks of excited build-up, including the prospect of several thousand South Africans crossing the border to watch the game, the Apartheid government stepped in to have the game cancelled.
Such a symbol of racial interaction would have been
contrary to their draconian policies.
But while the government was concerned with the tampering of the Apartheid structures, Pirates players were in conflict over the money they earned in service of the Buccaneers.
The offers they had received for the trip to Swaziland incensed them so that players and officials resolved to split, led by the spirited personality of Ewert ‘ The Lip’ Nene.
Kaizer Motaung was the star player of Pirates in the late 1960s and a visible symbol to which to attach this discontent, even if he was playing in the USA with Atlanta Chiefs at the time.
It was he who was the face of the breakaway that would lead to the formation of Kaizer Chiefs and start a 51-year rivalry with Pirates that is considered among the great derbies in the world.