Fan recruitment: Taking the ‘short’ route…

Chiefs’ support base is said to be in the millions, but the days of card-carrying members are over. That stopped just over a decade ago when there were around 50 000 who had their own personalised club cards. Fans are the lifeblood of any team and the Soweto giants set about very quickly after their formation on a drive to recruit supporters. The drive was led by the late Wilfred ‘China Ngema, who, before his death seven years ago, explained the process thus: “Kaizer (Motaung) asked me to recruit supporters and then I started. We had 59 at the start and I took it from there. I used to go around the taxi ranks of Soweto. At the time, I had a job which didn’t require me to be in the office all the time. I only had to deliver my work, so I had some time to do work for Chiefs too. I collected money from supporters even to pay the players when Kaizer could not pay them. We even used to sell bread to make money so that Ewert could pay them. We used to do anything we could to help in the early, difficult days. One of the things we did to get supporters was to have high school girls with short skirts selling pies at the stadiums. I worked in a confectionery company at the time and got my manager to buy a lot of those pie warmers. We used to have them at the stadium and then I went to several high schools and employed girls to come to the ground and sell the pies. They were always good-looking and the guys always wanted to get their address for dates and because the girls were associated with Chiefs, the male supporters wanted to join Chiefs too. It grew and grew, very quickly.”