SA have nothing to fear

Those who played with or against him say Bafana are in good hands with Mashaba ‘the serial winner’

BAFANA Bafana this week boarded a plane headed north for the African Nations Cup (Afcon) for the first time in seven years, with Shakes Mashaba piloting the nation’s aspirations.

The coach’s ascent to the most talked about football man of the moment began in 1970 — a year that shaped the outlook of South African football today.

The turn of that decade was abuzz with activity that left an indelible mark on the history of the sport.

The biggest club in the country, Orlando Pirates, was split down the middle as Kaizer Motaung took players and team manager Ewert “The Lip” Nene to form a breakaway team called Kaizer XI.

That team was later renamed Kaizer Chiefs — which we now know to have finished the first part of this Premiership season unbeaten after 18 matches — and a hot derby was born.

Amid the turmoil, acrimony, Afros and bell-bottom trousers, a young footballer named Ephraim Mashaba was found playing for Preston Brothers in the youth amateur games that raised the curtain for the main fixtures at Orlando Stadium.

Pirates recruited the feisty 20year-old from Orlando East, who was a commanding defender, but they could never have predicted that 45 years later he would be fulfilling his dream of leading the senior national team in a major continental tournament.

Those who watched him play, and played with or against him, called him a serial winner, a man physical to the handshake, who was neither afraid to give his teammates a bollocking when they messed up nor to congratulate them earnestly when they did well.

Pretty much all the things we’ve seen on the touchline during the eight-match unbeaten run in the lead-up to the showpiece in Equatorial Guinea that starts on Friday.

“All Shakes wanted to do was to win,” said Jomo Sono, a former Bucs teammate turned rival. “Especially after he moved to Moroka Swallows and played against me.”

“He was one of the hardest defenders I played against. He was physically strong and fit. If he tackled you it felt as if a wall of bricks had tumbled on you. His thighs were as big as tree trunks.”

Mashaba was given his shot at a young age. He has extended the same hand to defender Rivaldo Coetzee, 18, as he did for Sydney Olympics fledglings Benni McCarthy, Matthew Booth and Delron Buckley as coach of the under-23s.

Swallows diehard and shareholder Godfrey Gxowa said Mashaba was such a commanding figure that he was the obvious choice for player/coach when then coach Jorge Santoro left the club in 1979.

“We were heading to the 1978/79 BP Top 16 semifinals against a polished Benoni United without a coach, but then Shakes took over as player/coach and we went all the way to win the trophy, beating Pirates over two legs in the final,” Gxowa said.

Mashaba is belligerent, but never irascible.

If he never changed, as former Pirates teammate Johannes “Yster” Khomane said, then the association that he serves must have.

Mashaba and the South African Football Association parted on bitter terms in 2004, his dream snatched 10 days before Afcon in Tunisia.

“I know for sure he was hurt when the decision was taken to remove him,” said Trott Moloto, his centre-back partner at Swallows. “It was not the correct way of doing things.”

Mashaba failed at Black Leop- ards and with the Swaziland national team but he wasn’t too proud to restart his coaching career with the under-20s.

“He went back, rebuilt the under-17 and under-20 teams that have now qualified [for their respective African cham- pionships] just like he did before.

“No one else has taken South Africa to the Olympics. Is it luck? No. He must be given due credit,” Moloto said.

Booth said Mashaba was adept at coaching international sides because he didn’t overload players with technical information and that emotion and passion came as part of the deal.

“He is a fatherly figure and players want to play for him, which is half the job done,” said Booth.

He was physically strong and fit. If he tackled you it felt as if a wall of bricks had tumbled on you