Goodwill Zunidza
As temperatures fell to freezing levels last Tuesday, the underworld kingpin of Zimbabwe football suddenly dropped dead at his Borrowdale Brooke mansion.
Thus, at 63 years of age, ended the trail-blazing career of a learned, charismatic, ingenious and talented man who had applied his gifts to establishing the longest-reigning underground syndicate in local sport.
He did not go by his given name Charles, except on official business, but amiably dribbled away a luxurious lifestyle from the game that he loved under the enduring alias ‘Eddie’.
I knew Eddie “Mboma” Nyatanga quite well. It was difficult not to know him. Only a few were ever able to ignore his domineering personality.
He had the country’s most favourite game under his thump for close on 15 years, directing who should sit on the next Zifa board or who must become PSL chairman, deploying manpower to fledgling clubs in different cities in the form of his acolytes and influencing far-reaching boardroom resolutions across the entire football spectrum.
I tried to dig into his persona when I flew with him to and fro Johannesburg sometime in 2015/16 in a small company of four that comprised one of his close associates Fortune Bgoni and businessman Mike Chimombe.
But after expending 48 hours with him away from the madding crowd in Harare I still came up none the wiser. With his high-pitched voice and fast-paced tone I was mostly at the receiving end of the conversation and as many who interacted with him can testify, you often found you had gained little information on him by the time you parted.
Nicknamed Mboma, Nyatanga obtained his undergraduate business degree in Nigeria around about 1985, alongside the late flamboyant Harare businessman Peter Pamire, that much I managed to gather.
On return from what must have been a character-building experience in Lagos, Charles Nyatanga walked up the steps of the then Ministry of Industry and Commerce head office to start his first job as a trade expert in the Imports and Exports division.
Blessed with glib of speech he befriended several captains of industry of the day from his desk so much that by the early ’90s, the now self-christened ‘Eddie’ Nyatanga felt ready to chart his own path among the early cast of indigenous businessmen with financial clout.
He then opened an office apartment along Lanark Avenue in Harare’s diplomatic suburb of Belgravia, the venue that later would function for a long time as the defacto Zifa headquarters, or at least its caucus room.
On the surface Nyatanga’s new line incorporated several trading enterprises and consultancy services – a vehicle rental company included – but he had already set his sights on a future in football politics.
The first steps of this new commercial venture were taken 1997 with the formation of the Zimbabwe National Soccer Supporters Association (ZNSSA) alongside Coleman Majaya, a similarly football-crazy business executive and affable war veteran from Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle who became the first ZNSSA president.
Mboma allocated himself the bold title ‘Life Vice-President’.
A decade later he would become the full President at the passing of Majaya, interchanging the prefix between Life and Honorary – whichever he felt to be politically correct at a given time – but with his total grasp of ZNSSA never in question.
The local game would never be the same again. It underwent several seismic shifts all at his bidding and prodding behind-the-scenes.
His uncle Wellington Nyatanga’s election as Zifa President in 2006 was widely believed to have been masterminded by ZNSSA, as led by Mboma.
For the four years of “Shumba’s tenure till 2010, Mboma was generally considered to be the power behind the throne.
The period was blighted by the infamous Asiagate expedition, which needs no retelling except that several of those implicated operated from his Lanark Avenue premises.
It was to his beguiling acumen and ingenuity that Mboma himself remained completely untainted by the scandal to its very end, and despite free air tickets thrown around like lots by shady Far East crooks it was proved he had never in person made the trip to any part of Asia.
Cuthbert Dube, who took over as Zifa President in 2010, was one of the rare people who managed to resist him.
But Dube belaboured a stormy four years bombarded by Mboma’s acerbic tongue and a bad press that he ultimately exited office through a vote of no confidence engineered by ZNSSA in 2014.
In his vacated seat, the kingmakers sprung up Phillip Chiyangwa as a candidate and Mboma was back in business as the chief Zifa tactician.
This is also seen as the time that Mboma finally arrived into affluence. In any event he moved into his new spacious Borrowdale Brooke penthouse without parting with his elegant Mt Pleasant home.
Even after Chiyangwa unceremoniously bowed out of the game in 2018 and in came Felton Kamambo, the new administration knew they had to pay homage to Mboma if they wished for peace.
There is no way Mboma could ever wash his hands off whatever development – good or bad – has occurred in the game during the period he strode the local football landscape like a behemoth.
With his passing, the game will now unavoidably take a different route. Hardy characters like Mboma do not come with clones.
There is already talk of uniting all the factions of ZNSSA that had splintered under his polarising watch.
Adomsi Mukwasi, the most recognisable face among the surviving coterie of Mboma’s close aides, hinted at the association holding its first ever plebiscite to be contested for by all genuine, committed and interested football fans.
Mukwasi wants ZNSSA to return to its core business of cheer-leading national teams and playing a watchdog role in national football administration.
He paid tribute to his late boss, pledging to follow in Mboma’s footsteps in attracting crowds back to the stadium.
“Like or dislike him, Mboma had a unique way of marketing Zimbabwe football which in the end benefitted everyone. The carnival support he organised for the Warriors will be remembered for a long time. I appeal to all supporters to unite in his honour and build from where our icon left off,” mourned Mukwasi.
Mboma, was buried at Glen Forest cemetery.
He was the football mafia that everyone liked.
