Still In Touch With...

(PART 1)

One-club man Mzwakhe Gama’s journey with Tembisa Classic began in 1995, when they were still slugging it out in the third tier. He went through all the ups and downs with his hometown team, and got a career-altering injury in the First Division, following their relegation from the topflight at the end of the 2001/02 season. “When the club came back as ‘Yizo Yizo The Return’, it was to be later sold it and moved to Maritzburg, but I didn’t go there. My injury killed me, as it would rear its ugly head now and again. Plus the money in the First Division was nothing to write home about, and so when you got injured, you were left to your own devices, whereas in the PSL, they would get a doctor to take care of you. Football politics worsened my woes, so I

decided to quit,” he explained.

Hola, Mzwakhe. What’s keeping you busy these days?

Manje ngi (I’m currently) busy ngeentwana (with young boys) here in my township of Tembisa, trying to encourage them. Even now, as I’m speaking to you, I got someone to train them here on the ground while I’m doing this interview. We have U10, U14 and U17 teams. There’s a lot of talent here, it’s just that we need people to identify it.

Loyalty was the thing back in your playing days. To think that you only played for Tembisa Classic! Look, there were always offers, but the management would stand its ground and say I was not going anywhere. They just didn’t want to let me go. I remember Moroka Swallows, under “Bondas” (Viktor Bondarenko), were hot on my heels. There was also Free State Stars. After we played against them in the Bob Save Super Bowl, they expressed an interest in signing me, to no avail. At the time, we were yet to secure promotion to the topflight. When I came back from the trial with Ea Lla Koto, Classic wanted an exorbitant amount for my signature and I ended up staying. That was around 2001/02. I played for the team from the Second Division and we moved up with it. Unfortunately, we lost out in the play-offs twice, but in the end, we got promoted. Eish, we fought a lot for that team! Even when they signed new players like Arthur Zwane and Page Mahlangu, whom we had known, we didn’t feel threatened but continued fighting for the team because this was a team for the community. Whenever we were playing at home, everyone from Tembisa wanted to be at the stadium to see what we were going to dish out. It was a team for the whole of Ekurhuleni kahle kahle (actually). You see now, there’s no team from Ekurhuleni in the PSL. It’s a serious problem. Ekurhuleni is so big for it not to have a team in the elite league. It’s all politics that’s happening. You remember there was that team from Daveyton, the Rabbits (Benoni Premier United). The one of (Dumisani) Ndlovu. They got a status and the club was also later sold. I think here in Ekurhuleni, we’ll have a team in the PSL when we have long died, not while we are still alive, if things continue like this. Now we have to support teams from outside.

Sad. Let’s talk more about those good old days. Everything was going well, to be honest. Obviously, we didn’t have a sponsor, so we relied a lot on the grant from the League. Well, the money wasn’t bad, but it was too small compared to what they’re getting these days. So, we had no consistent sponsor that could make things happen. We used to get paid by cheque and sometimes by the 3rd or 4th of the month, you would still not have had your salary, ha, ha, ha. You would eventually get paid by the 10th. Whenever the players complained about this, we would be told that the club had no money. Thato Maleka used to stay near town, where he was in close proximity to the ATMs, so whenever we were supposed to get paid, we would ask him, “Hey ndoda (man), please check there if it’s not in yet.” The man would have to go and check his balance at the ATM and then come back to us with feedback. Grown men would cry tears, I’m telling you… it was tough. But we persevered because we did it for the love of the game. It’s unlike today, where they give you money, yet you haven’t done anything. It’s a problem. These days, they give someone millions and yet he hasn’t even taken a throw-in, you get my point? In our day, you had to fight to be in the 18man squad so that you could qualify for the win bonus. That’s just how difficult we had it. The spirit in the team was always high and we always told ourselves that three points were never going to go out of our township. If you were not in the team, we would console you and say, “Harde mf’ethu, sisonke (Hard luck, brother, we’re all in this together).”

We spoke to your former teammate Maxson Moremi recently. He was telling us about stuff that used to happen in the Makhulong Stadium tunnel, which seemed to cripple the opposition so that the three points stay in Tembisa, ha, ha. Well, it was like that, ha, ha, ha. The opposition teams were really scared of our tunnel. I remember one time we were playing Orlando Pirates and there was a big fight.

Suddenly, it started raining and we didn’t know where the rain was coming from because the skies were clear that day. The Pirates guys were adamant that they were not going to go onto the field via the tunnel. The start of the game had to be delayed by about 15-20 minutes. We were wondering how they were going to do it because every team had to go to the dressing room and then, from there, to the tunnel where they would have their cards checked by the match officials, before going onto the pitch. There was another gate that had to be opened, and even there, a fight broke out. It was chaos, ha, ha, ha. We always knew that once you got into the tunnel, hayi (no)…

What happened in the tunnel? In the tunnel, there was some ‘magic’ that happened, ha, ha, ha. ‘Magic’ in the form of what? There were ‘people’ who were dealing with the ‘magic’. Sometimes there was nothing happening, but the opponents were always worked up about it. It was just mind games. We beat them even before we beat them. Umtata Bucks always used to have those mind games as well, where you would find their muti man sprinkling water outside the dressing room and you had to be careful not to step on it. But we always had that mindset that we were going to beat them even with those ‘intimidation tactics’ of theirs.

Tell us about the characters in your team of that time.

As for the funny guys, I was the kingpin. They all knew. Everyone was scared of me. If we were in the bus, no one could compete with me. Bezibuya (It was hectic) every day. They could only talk about me in my absence, but once I showed up and asked, “Who was speaking about me here?”, they would all point fingers at each other, saying, “It’s this one, that one.” Ha, ha, ha. They knew that they could not stand up to me face-to-face. Like I told you, the spirit was very high in the team because most of us, we grew up together here ekasi. That’s why things were very simple, as we knew each other from amateur level and had played for the club from the lower ranks. We were a close-knit family.