Dynamos Football Club reportedly paid US$1,000 to a traditional healer (sangoma) ahead of their Castle Lager Premier Soccer League match against bitter rivals Highlanders at Rufaro Stadium on Sunday.
According to a source quoted by H-Metro, some within Dynamos’ leadership believed the sangoma’s rituals could tilt the result in their favour.
The match, often referred to as the “Battle of Zimbabwe,” is considered the biggest fixture on the local football calendar. Said the source:
Given the issues that were happening with the boys (the players), who were boycotting training, there was a feeling that such a payment was not the right thing to do for the club at the moment.
However, the owners of the club said that this was a tradition at Dynamos and it was not going to be changed simply because the players were boycotting training.
They said these player boycotts have been happening as long as they can remember and they come and go and this cannot be used as an excuse to stop payments to the sangoma.
It was like they were saying that paying the sangoma was more important, in terms of getting the result which we wanted from the game against Highlanders, than the training itself.
The message was that as long as we satisfied the sangoma then we did not need to worry about the issues that had happened at training because the club would still be in a position to compete against Highlanders.
Of course, it didn’t happen like that because we lost that game 2-0 and the performance of the boys showed that they had been affected by the issues which had happened on the training field.
We don’t know what the sangoma said about the result because we never get to meet him given he is only known to a few people at the club.
The source criticized the club’s leadership for their decision to consult the sangoma, saying with this kind of leadership and their ancient beliefs, the club probably deserved to lose the game against Highlanders. Said the source:
The sangoma got his dues and, maybe, if you were going to ask him how we ended up losing he would say that without his intervention, we were going to lose maybe 5-0, I don’t know.
But what we cannot hide is the fact that we are concentrating on things which don’t matter in this age and era when other clubs, of our magnitude, are investing in sports science.
We are still stuck in the old ways of doing business instead of asking ourselves why we have not won the league in 10 years if the so-called powers of these sangomas really work.
It’s a reflection of where we are today as a club and maybe we deserve the result that we got on Sunday.
If the sangoma had been paid US$ 1,000 for each of Dynamos’ matches this season, he would have pocketed a total of US$18,000 – more than half the monthly salary of the club’s highest-paid player, who earns US$1,800 per month.
The sangoma is now demanding an additional US$2,000 to “cleanse the team of bad luck.”
In 2017, former Dynamos captain Memory Mucherahowa told the BBC the club encouraged the use of juju, adding that as captain of the club, it was his duty to make sure the juju rituals were followed. He said:
I’m not saying juju works but it was part of football when I was playing and I’m sure it’s part of football even today.
More: Pindula News