LEONARD XABA
Welcome back to the fourth instalment. So, who was your roommate in camp at Bidvest Wits?
I used to be good friends with goalkeepers and my roommate was Jacob Mokhasi. Even where we stayed in Linden, we were neighbours. He was staying at No.1 and I was staying at No.2. A jolly guy, who enjoyed a good laugh, but when it was time to work, he would get down to it. He was a friendly guy, an easy-going guy. He always liked people to laugh whenever he was around… more like a comedian. When we were relaxing in the flat, he would hire out movies and we would watch them. But istoko bekasithanda (he loved women), I’m telling you. He liked to call me “Celebrity” and even to this day he calls me that. You know his full name is Jacob Motete Mokhasi, so I would say, “Hey Motete!” and he would respond by saying, “Hey Celebrity!”, ha, ha, ha. You knew when he said, “Ngiyamngena lo mntana (I’m going to approach this lady)”, he meant business. I remember this one time we were going to play in Durban. Back then at Wits, you had to drive yourself to the airport if you had a car whenever we were going to play away. My father’s younger brother used to stay in Berea, so I would ask him to catch a ride with us and then drive back in my car. So this one time, we were coming back from a game, and my father’s younger brother came to fetch us – it was me and Mokhasi in the car. We dropped him in Berea, and then when we got back to the flat, we found a cousin of mine from Bekkersdal inside. Mokhasi could not keep his eye off her and said to me, “Celebrity, mphe ngwano. Mphe di number tsa ngwana (play a through ball for me. Give me her contact number).” I said, “He monna, uyahlanya wena yini? Uthanda ama cherry kanje? Ufuna le cherry yakho izoshaya umntana wase dladleni. Lo, angifuni niks (Are you out of your mind? How could I play such a through pass to you, with such a wandering eye? You want your woman to hit my cousin. No, I won’t do that).” But he was a good guy, I don’t want to lie. He’s the first person I befriended when I arrived at Wits. Even now, we still talk.
Ha, ha, ha, good guy indeed. When we did a Still In Touch with him a while back, he perhaps forgot to tell us about this side of him. Okay, so you then moved to Bush Bucks… the two of us became Popeye & Spinach – that’s what the guys were calling us because of the way we were so close. Even these days, that’s what we call each other. I would say, “Hey Popeye!” and he would reply, “Hey Spinach mngani wami, kunjani (my friend, how are you)?” I was one of the senior guys at Bush Bucks, together with the likes of Dumisani Mpofu, Tampungu Dikete and Mzunani Mgwigwi. I had a lovely time. I got there the same season as Thabo September, but he was not playing. He was an understudy to Mpofu and I, but I could tell ukuthi la kunomuntu la (that we have a player here). I remember one time Mpofu was injured and I told the assistant coach, William Mugeyi, “Play me with Thabo. This boy is going to do well.” Eish, uWidzo waloko abhayiza-bhayiza (hesitated to use him), and maybe he didn’t have trust in the boy. Then Felix Emordi from Nigeria came to join us and Thabo started playing because the coach believed in him.
Let’s now talk muti, ha, ha, ha. You see, any player who says he didn’t use muti during his playing days must have only played for the so-called white team , the likes of Wits, SuperSport United, Hellenic.
But abo darkie, we go in, ha, ha, ha. I remember in our last game at Carara Kicks, before we got relegated, we were playing Jomo Cosmos. Trust me when I say we did things before that match. The one rule was that you never put on your cologne or took your normal bath after you had undergone those pre-match rituals because that would be ‘erasing the luck’, so to speak. So, we were made to form a queue and we were halfnaked, each player holding a stick that looked like a fire cracker. You know this dance called ingwazi, where you move your hand over your head as you’re dancing? So, they lit up these sticks as we held them by hand and you had to perform ingwazi, albeit not using your hand but the stick, after which you had to say something in Sesotho that translates to: “There’s no two bulls here, I’m the only bull here.” Thereafter you had to jump this little fire that came from what looked like a candle, and after jumping the fire you were not allowed to look back. They would extinguish the fire from your stick as you went out the door, and immediately you arrived in your hotel room, you had to get dressed to get ready to go to the stadium.
That sounds hectic, man.
That’s why I’m saying any former player who says he never used those things only played for Wits and them. I played for Wits, there was no such. Golden Arrows, Free State Stars… at (Orlando) Pirates, even the likes of Screamer (Tshabalala) have openly admitted it, even at (Kaizer) Chiefs. At Carara Kicks, I was the one who was fetching our muti from Venda, ha, ha, ha, especially during that stage when I was not playing.
Ha, ha, ha, really?
Yeah, I was driving from Qwa-Qwa to Venda to fetch isgalagala. They believed in that and they said it worked, but my thing was always that why can’t we just stay at home, not train, and then come matchday, go to the stadium and play? Because the other time, still at Carara Kicks, we were playing in Cape Town and we didn’t fly with our muti man. He just gave the club the stuff and gave instructions to the captain. The captain was Piet Mokoena, “Ace”. They had smeared some stuff under our boots and at the back of the boots, and then just before the game, something was placed on the palm of our hands and we had to swallow it. I performed a one-man toyi-toyi and said I wouldn’t be doing that. I told them I had allowed them to smear muti on my body even against my belief, but now there was no way I would be swallowing that stuff. It was a big deal, yho, yho, yho. They had a meeting when we came back from Cape Town. Fortunately, we didn’t lose that game. We came back to Welkom and we were told in that meeting, “You have to know that Free State Stars and Carara Kicks are the same team and what they do there, we are doing it this side. We heard that some players didn’t want to use what we are using here.” The coach was David Vilakazi. I raised my hand and said, “Coach, that player was me. It was not all the players, it was me. Yes, you can smear muti on me, even though ekhaya (at home) they have never done that, but to eat muti, no.” So, after the meeting, David called me aside and said, “But Leonard, you are one of the senior players in this team, so some things you shouldn’t do like you are canvassing. You should have come to me…” I said, “No, there was no time for that because wena you were already on the field and mina I was in the change room with the guys there. Everything happened in the change room.” I apologized for that and then he said, “If you don’t understand something here, come to us and let’s talk.”
Very interesting and fascinating. This is stuff people don’t believe used to happen… and by the way, we’re told it still happens at some teams.
Don’t be surprised!