Veteran sports guru Kubaga mourned
I LEARNT with great sadness that Mzee Raphael Augustino Kubaga, former president of the Tanzania Olympic Committee and, before that, president of Athletics Tanzania, had passed on. He is fondly remembered for his mentorship of young administrators, level headedness and pleasantness. He loved to tell stories, and laughed a lot.
Many years ago Ndugu Kubaga worked for many years as chief immigration officer of Tanzania, the equivalent of director of Immigration. I came to know him in the 1970s when a nasty senior immigration officer found out I was travelling on a British passport, as indeed most Zimbabwean refugees did at the time.
He promptly served me with a deportation order from Tanzania. To go where, I didn’t know. I had come to know his wife who was matron at Jangwani Girls High, a favourite hang-around place for young people pretending to come and watch netball.
A friend encouraged me to approach her with my problem. After summoning enough courage, I did. Mrs Kubaga made an appointment for me to see her husband who promptly cancelled the deportation notice.
This refugee became so attached to the Kubaga family… for life. But I also created an enemy for him for life in the officer whose notice he had cancelled.
In 1997, 17 years into Zimbabwe Independence, 16 years after I shed the British passport, 15 years after I became president of the Zimbabwe Olympic Committee, I met up with Mzee Kubaga at the general assembly of the Association of National Olympic Committees of Africa (ANOCA) in Libreville. I was standing for position of secretary general against an incumbent and Mzee appointed himself as my campaign manager. Boy did he work his butt off. The night before the elections, he called me to his room. He asked me to kneel with my eyes closed. “Let me pray for you,” he said as he placed his hand on my head and spoke to his Lord. It was an amazing lift-off. I felt really good and, with a renewed spring in my step, went from table to table at dinner and room to room thereafter.
We won. He won. He was so happy. Ndugu Kubaga mentored the likes of world beating athletes like Filbert Bayi who later took over as SG of Athletics Tanzania, Henry Tandau, a most respected sports educationist, marketer and administrator and, to some extent, the current president Gulam Rashid. And many more.
Kubaga’s fingerprints are everywhere in local, regional and international sport. A former athlete himself, this man understood what it took to manage sportspersons all the way back to the time there was NO money in sport. He was the Centre of Wisdom, a pleasant advice dishing wise man around whom we coalesced at all our conspiracy-laced AGMs. The Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) will miss him too, having been a long serving vice president for Africa. We shall always remember him.
Condolences to his family. His funeral is will be on Monday at Kinondoni Cemetery, Dar es Salaam.
“Bwana alitoa, Bwana alitwaa jina la Bwana lihimidiwe.” Amina.
◆
Tommy Sithole is the former president of the Zimbabwe Olympic Committee and an ex-secretary-general of the Association of National Olympic Committees of Africa (ANOCA). He is also a journalist, business executive, pilot, flight instructor and sport s administrator. He is the current chairman of the Zimpapers board.