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KATLEHO LOKE (PART 3)

Mr Loke, let’s now dive deep into your time at Benoni Premier United. What a team. We’re sure you really enjoyed yourself over there.

You know, let me tell you about Benoni Premier United. You see, if Benoni Premier United had somebody like Patrice Motsepe, Jesus Christ! We would have been far, far, far. Unfortunately, although the chairman of the club (Dumisani Ndlovu) loved football with all his heart, there was no money. That’s the sad part. The years that we spent there, you realised when you got older that you were playing for mahala mos. You understand? You realise that other people were earning so much more than you and you were just playing for fun. That’s when it hit you that these chairmen robbed you, whereas if you sat and thought about it, you would see that we were not being robbed. It’s just that we were not doing things the right way as players. As much as the chairmen have to acknowledge that there is a lot that they did wrong, we also have to take our share of the blame because we were not sign ing the right contracts, we were not dealing with things in a correct way. We were just happy to play football, and then, later on, when you were older, you started thinking that you had been robbed. But you were not robbed! We made mistakes in football, and then Lunga interviews me and then I say, ‘So-and-so robbed me.’

Sure.

Mr Ndlovu was one of the best chairmen that I’ve ever worked with. In terms of us playing football, he was one of the best, but when it comes to money, that was the sad part. But in terms of football, yho, yho, yho! La baba lowa (That old man) had passion that I never knew where he got it from. He would tell us that ibhola alilahlwa (the ball cannot be given away cheaply) and say, “Madoda, masidlaleni ibhola. Ungalilahli (Gents, let’s play football. Don’t lose it).” That old man loved us and I guess that’s why we never dwelled too much on financial issues because we were playing and our chairman loved us. He used to sit us down and tell us that imali izoza (the money is going to come). One time, he bought cars for most of the

senior players. Of course, as a youngster, when the chairman buys you a car and then he tells you that imali iyeza (the money is coming), you relax and tell yourwill self that everything turn out well. Only to find out that the years are also moving and that’s why, at a later stage, you ask yourself, ‘What’s happening here? I’m 32 years and I have nothing. I only have debts and my career is coming to an end.’ That thing that you are young and playing football is no longer there, and people are judging you out there. They are talking things that they don’t know about. Ja! We Black people, bro yam, sintswempu kabi (we’re very good) when it comes to talking about things we know nothing about. That’s when you realise that the chairman was robbing you, and then you start talking about it that this guy was robbing us, he was doing this and that. But we also have to blame ourselves, I don’t want to lie, for also not doing things right.

Well, you say Mr Ndlovu bought you cars. It seems like he didn’t even care whether you had a driver’s licence or not, as long as he gifted his proteges with cars. Ha, ha, ha. MaLungas, you see, when it comes to this car issue, it was, like, shocking. Remember, at Benoni we were playing football and were young boys. Thoughts about one day owning a car had not even crossed my mind because one thing that I wished for in my life was to buy my mother a house. That was the first priority for me. But then when I could see that the house thing was not happening and then I’m being bought a car, which I don’t have a debt for it, I accepted it with both hands. But the tricky part was that I didn’t even have a driver’s licence. Well, the good thing was that I was at least known all over the place. So, the police and even metro police knew me. What I would do is that I would take a copy of Soccer Laduma and put it on the front passenger seat whenever I took a drive, ha, ha, ha. I would just make sure that the page that had my interview was open so that my picture would be visible. Sometimes after we played against, say, Orlando Pirates over the weekend and I had scored, you guys would feature me in the paper, and then when the traffic cops stopped me, they would start asking me questions and I would realise that that I was in a tight corner here. When they asked me to produce a driver’s licence, I would say, “Eish, grootman, yazi, nge weekend, besidlala ne Pirates, angazi ukuthi ilicence yam ikuphi (big man, you know, over the weekend, we were playing against Pirates, I just don’t know where I put my licence).” I would then suddenly start fiddling with the Soccer Laduma copy so that they could see my picture.

Ha, ha, ha, that’s plain crazy!

So, most of my driving time when I was at Benoni, I would drive with a copy of Soccer Laduma, ha, ha, ha. So, Lungas, you made my life easier back in the years by putting my pictures there, my brother, because I managed to escape, ha, ha, ha.

Now we know why you’ve never declined a Soccer Laduma interview all these years.

I will never decline your interview because you guys made my life so easy, I’m not gonna lie to you. I escaped a lot back then because of Soccer Laduma.

Brilliant. Hopefully they don’t come after you now because you know what they say, the arm of the law is long. Let’s let sleeping dogs lie. Moving on, who are some of the crazy characters you’ve met via the Beautiful Game? You know, I met so many players in my career, even from the opponents’ side. I met so many interesting people. Let me start at Benoni. There were the likes of Tsepo Masilela and July Mahlangu, who were very, very quiet guys. But they were very dangerous those two. They would finish you off even though they were quiet. You would just hear one of the guys saying, “Scooter, Tsepo and July say this and that about you”, and then the rest of the boys would erupt in laughter. That’s why I’m saying there, we were a family because there were some naughty ones like (Masixole) “Mara” May, myself, abo (the likes of) … I forgot this boy’s name, I’ll remember it as we are talking. You had abo Thabo Mabaso, who was another quiet one. When he addressed you, he spoke in a forthright manner and never beat about the bush. Do you remember Noel Yobou, the goalkeeper from Cameroon? That guy was crazy. He was naughty as ever, but the problem is that he did not have a good command of English, so whatever he wanted to say, he would struggle a bit. But you would hear that this guy wanted to say something naughty, ha, ha, ha. So, we had different characters and if I could describe all these characters, you would see that we were a family, you know.

After that, came Thanda Royal Zulu… The team was sold. I didn’t leave Benoni because I wanted to leave. Probably we would have starved there up until we retired, ha, ha, ha. The team was sold to these people from Sweden and it changed name to Thanda Royal Zulu, so that’s how I left. You see, there we were swimming in money, ha, ha, ha! Everything was different to what we had experienced at Benoni. Everything changed and that’s where you could see that you know what, you were robbed. But you didn’t have an understanding of how these things worked. The Benoni boss didn’t have money, but these people had money and they were giving us money. Mr Ndlovu didn’t have money, but we were playing. Everything was fine there ko (at) Thanda. As for characters, Thanda was crazy, crazy, crazy.

Stop right there. We’ll get to that next week… Sure, MaLungas.