Many moons ago as a youngster, I looked forward to a trip to town with my late grandfather, Batho. The taxi from our Chesterville township would drop us off in the Durban CBD. We would pound along the pavement, me doing my best to keep up with his pacey long strides.
For the man dressed snazzily in his shiny Crockett & Jones shoes, turn-up Lanvin trousers with a crease that could cut a fly into two, and a Pringle long sleeve golfer, the journey included three priorities.
The first port of call was the Ajmeri Arcade, specifically to collect his laundry. The second, along the same arcade, was a stop at a record shop, to add a new vinyl to his collection — which varied from The O’Jays’ Ship Ahoy, The Sermon! by Jimmy Smith, to Hank Crawford’s Tico Rico.
One memory lingers in my mind as we headed to the final destination, the butchery at the English Market. At the exit point of Ajmeri always stood a thin-like-a-rake gentleman coaxing passersby to purchase his wares. With different-sized bottles filled with a brown-looking liquid lined at his feet and holding others in his hands, he bellowed “Umuth’wenhlanhla, umuth’wenhlanhla, umuth’wenhlanhla.”
He was beguiling potential customers to buy his potion to attract luck. “Just look at this chancer, if anyone needs luck it is him,” my Gramps would retort, dismissing the seller as a merchant of grandiose delusions.
Dabbling in dark arts
A similar dismissive demeanour must be adopted by those who, week in and week out, watch “muthi men” conducting their “chemical engineering” before football matches in fields across the country.
Dabbling in dark arts or practising superstitious acts to supposedly influence the outcome of a football match is an old practice. It is not exclusive to Africa.
Some South African players who plied their trade in Türkiye back in the day will tell you tales about how some teams there used to make them dip their fingers in goat’s blood before they trotted onto the field.
These rituals, which happened behind the scenes, are commonplace when players do a pre-match walkabout on the pitch. It is widely practised by clubs across the league.
But the most popular sighting that usually sets tongues wagging is that of the heavily built Orlando Pirates “chemical engineer” sprinkling stuff on the field as players congregate inside the net between posts.
His variation includes stepping on raw eggs which one assumes is a trick meant to unscramble the tactics of the opposing team, and assist his team to dish up an omelette performance.
Mental sparing match
The psychological warfare adds spice to the game, a mental sparring match ahead of battle. If it had the efficacy to weaken opponents, it would be Pirates and not Sundowns who would have clinched eight consecutive titles.
Oh, hold on, are you telling me the Downs “chemical engineer” honed his sorcery skills at Harvard, while his counterpart was sent to Oxford only to be hoodwinked by the ladies of the night on the road of the same name in Rosebank?
Is this mumbo jumbo? Exactly. Football matches are won on fields between the four white lines by the teams that convert their chances without the help of some an invisible hand or some unknown force inspired by a man who sells “umuth’wenhlanhla”.
What? Are you telling me that Bafana Bafana have returned to winning ways not because of the brilliance of Hugo Broos but because the South African Football Association has finally settled the outstanding bill of the muthi man who cast a spell on them by locking all their goals inside a bottle? Jeepers creepers!
How often do you hear coaches saying God will be on our side as if Heaven’s No 1 Citizen abandons the adversaries for 90 minutes, and do away with 1 John 3:1.
Not only does the holy book inform us that He loves all His children, it tells us that He helps those who help themselves — by training hard, staying consistent and healthy, and ride their luck on the day of the match.
The magic is performance, not umuthi.
X - @bbkunplugged99
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