BY TINO MOMBESHORA
HARARE – It is a great relief to hear that Nqobile Magwizi has entered the race for the position of Zimbabwe Football Association (Zifa) president, with an elective AGM due soon.
I know the man well, being a sports fan and trained journalist – also having worked under him at a very reputable strategic and communications agency that he co-founded, Tatu Multimedia.
I must accept though that outside the corporate world, not a lot of people will bear witness to Nqobile’s sporting background.
Some of us, however, know the history.
I will start from the beginning.
No one who went through Prince Edward Boys High School in its heyday, with the legendary headmaster Clive Barnes at the helm, would have escaped sport.
At Prince Edward, the now 45-year-old Magwizi became an all-rounder of sorts. His connection to sport was nurtured at this great school – the iconic pair of Barnes and sports director Patrick Gumunyu taking the wide-eyed young man under their wings.
By his own admission, Nqo wasn’t the best talent on the lush sports fields of Prince Edward.
His classmates and stream-mates were the sporting stars. And he has maintained a great bond over the years with them: Shaun De Souza, David Mutendera, Alan Johnson, Spencer Banda, Tonderai Ndiraya – to mention just a few.
Nqobile’s buddies have all pursued successful careers in sport, post-school, technically or otherwise.
De Souza is a legendary ex-Zimbabwe rugby player, and a serial-winning coach of the country’s Under-20 side. Mutendera was the first Zimbabwe international cricketer from the country’s black townships, and currently the national board’s head of selectors. Johnson represented Zimbabwe in football, and now runs one of the nation’s biggest academies. Banda is a renowned football broadcaster. Ndiraya has just won his first title as a coach in Zimbabwe’s top-flight football league.
Realising he couldn’t bowl as fast as Mutendera, score amazing tries like De Souza, tackle as hard as Ndiraya and Johnson, or equipped with the ability to break down a football game on-air like Banda – Magwizi figured out exactly what his role in sport should be.
The business side of it.
Magwizi holds an MPhil in Development Finance from Stellenbosch University, and MSc in International Banking and Finance from Salford University, and a BCom in Marketing from Unisa. In addition, he earned a Property Development Certificate from the University of Cape Town, and has been involved with the World Economic Forum.
All these honours and expertise have been standing Magwizi in good stead over the past two decades, and today he is one of Zimbabwe’s foremost business leaders.
But sport remains a favourite pastime of his, and he wants football in Zimbabwe to turn over a new leaf.
During his busy schedule – launching and managing companies – Magwizi has been keeping a sharp eye on the goings-on in football.
It’s a sport close to his heart. Born in Harare, spending his formative years in Gokwe, coming back to the capital city to live in Highfield and attending Mhofu Primary School – Magwizi grew up around football even as the all-round sporting environment of Prince Edward offered much more.
For the past seven years, Nqo has been a director of Banket Football Club, a team he loves dearly. He is also deeply involved with another club in his rural Gokwe area.
Through his consultant work for Sakunda Holdings, Magwizi has played a major role in securing sponsorship deals for Zimbabwe’s biggest football clubs – Highlanders and Dynamos – on top of honouring some of the country’s legendary figures in the sport.
NC & Banat – a flourishing firm where Magwizi is Executive Director and founder – is refurbishing Zimbabwe’s premier football venue, the National Sports Stadium. The ground was suspended by world football governing body Fifa nearly five years ago, rendering Zimbabwe’s national teams homeless. Magwizi is keen on overseeing an immediate facelift of the NSS to enable Zimbabwe’s teams to play in front of their passionate home fans again.
But for now, Nqo understands the bigger picture, and he wants to go further beyond stadia.
He knows that the football cake in Zimbabwe is very small. Covid-19 and Zimbabwe’s suspension by Fifa in 2022 were the last stroke. It left our sport in a limbo. Reinstatement by Fifa after 17 months gave a glimmer of hope.
Zifa is broke, what it needs right now is strong partnerships. There is need to have clear strategies of mobilising resources, for Zifa to have its own money. So that your referees, your coaches, get trained. So that there can be more educational programmes for players and technical people. So that football in Zimbabwe can be profitable and deliver the desired product for the paying public. It requires networking – working with government and various stakeholders.
Nqobile brings that all-rounded approach of societal dynamics, at a personal and professional level. He has very good relations with various corporates, various government institutions and NGOs.
I do not have the privilege to vote for this new dawn in Zimbabwean football. But I’ll put my head on the block and persuade those with the vote to trust Nqobile Magwizi to change Zimbabwean football forever.
*Tino Mombeshora is a writer, sports fan and former graphics designer/ copy writer for Tatu Multimedia.
