The remarkable story of Elvis ‘Chuchu’ Chiweshe

Sport
GROWING up in the midst of Zimbabwe’s war of independence in Muzarabani, Elvis Ishmael “Chuchu” Chiweshe, who was blessed with immense natural football talent, had to spend seven years in a Protected Village (PV), popularly known back then as “Keeps” from when he was only 10 in 1972.

GROWING up in the midst of Zimbabwe’s war of independence in Muzarabani, Elvis Ishmael “Chuchu” Chiweshe, who was blessed with immense natural football talent, had to spend seven years in a Protected Village (PV), popularly known back then as “Keeps” from when he was only 10 in 1972.

yesteryear profile with MUNYARADZI MADZOKERE

elvis-chiweshe

The uncertainty of a bright future in the thicket of a protracted war snuffed out the dream of ever making it big for the young unpolished football gem.

It was an unfavourable twist to life for a boy who was born in the bright lights of Bulawayo, who had risen to childhood prominence, although only in the dusty streets of Mzilikazi.

His parents — Gilbert Chiweshe and Hilda Madida divorced and the repercussions of the split were that he had to relocate from Bulawayo to rural Muzarabani.

“I grew up in the midst of war and had to spend seven good years in a “Keep” in Muzarabani. I was born a footballer; I was naturally gifted even from when I started playing in the streets of Mzilikazi, but then I did not know what was going to happen to me during the war,” the former Dynamos and Eagles star man told Standardsport in an exclusive interview.

“I was a very keen scholar, but sadly I had only been to school up to grade six so when we were released from the Keep at 17, I had to go back and complete my grade seven at Chiweshe Primary School before moving back to Bulawayo the following year to live with my mother. That’s when my football career began,” he said.

Chiweshe is now a club legend for Dynamos football club, having won several league titles as player and missing by a whisker as coach. But it is taking the team to the Confederation of African Football (CAF) Champions League mini-league as coach that easily stands out on his curriculum vitae.

He is also regarded as one of the best players to emerge from local football and to don the national team jersey.

Currently, he is director of a highly successful Harare City football club academy project which takes care of hundreds of junior players, but it has certainly not been an easy road for him.

Chuchu’s career began at Zimbabwe Omnibus Company (ZOC) where his elder brother Evans was already playing.

Back then, however, football was the least of his worries as he was pursuing secondary education. The harrowing experiences of the liberation war had virtually extinguished his love for football — until British reggae band UB 40 intervened.

“One day in 1982, I went to watch my brothers play for ZOC at Callies and the previous night the whole team had gone for a UB 40 show. A number of players then failed to turn up for the match so the coach asked me to play. I scored a hatrick that day, and that’s how it came back,” Chiweshe recollected.

The following year a match with Eagles playing in Division One would open a new chapter in Chuchu’s budding football career.

Coached by Highlanders legend Majuta Mpofu, Eagles had a star in Bhoyi Ndhlovu, arguably one of the finest dribblers over in local football — and Chiweshe was tasked to mark Ndhlovu at left back.

Chiweshe kept Ndhlovu completely out of the match, much to the ire of the Eagles fans. A group of fans even confronted the young versatile player and one of them went as far as to stab him on the shoulder.

“I was waiting for my brothers who were in a beerhall and some people confronted me. Back then I did not back down from a fight so a fight ensued and I was stabbed on the shoulder luckily because the person was aiming for my chest,” Chuchu said, showing this reporter the scar from that particular melee.

Eagles then began pursuing Chiweshe and he agreed, against his mother’s pleas for him to join Highlanders.

He chose Eagles because they had agreed to the condition of paying his tuition fees as he enrolled for Advanced Level at Speciss College.

The team was promoted into the Super league in 1984 and Chiweshe’s stock immediately rocketed as he single-handedly carried the team on his shoulders.

During one of the league matches against Dynamos, Chuchu scored a goal from the centre circle, which was bizarrely disallowed by the referee, but a few moments later he scored again from an identical position.

Chiweshe soon became a Warriors’ player with the likes of Japhet Mparutsa, Gift Mpariwa, Maronga Nyangela, Ephert Lungu, but would only join Dynamos in 1988 and immediately after made it onto the soccer star calendar.

During his playing career, Chiweshe played in central defence, as a full back, defensive midfielder or even an attacking midfielder as he excelled in almost every position to which he was deployed.

“There are six types of football fitness and I was one player who possessed all of them. I had intellectual fitness, physiological fitness, psychological fitness, medical fitness, technical fitness and tactical fitness and this is what made me very unique,” Chiweshe said.

The Harare City FC Academy director retired from playing in 1995, but had already been an assistant player coach for DeMbare along with Lloyd Chigova in 1993.

Since then he has been into coaching, mostly working with juniors.

“I am an expert when it comes to grooming youngsters, but at the same time when I am given a top team, I can coach. In my coaching career one thing I have done well is producing players. Even in coaching clubs, I think I did well because I took Dynamos to the mini-league phase in the CAF Champions league in 2010.

“I finished second in the league in 2010, lost the title on goal difference, won the BancABC Cup, Uhuru Cup and Zaoga Cup. I enjoy the tiki-taka type of football and I think I have managed to introduce that kind of flair wherever I have been,” he said.

Chiweshe has also coached Gaborone United in Botswana and Manzini in Swaziland, but his current task is to ensure that the Harare City FC junior football project continues to churn out future stars.

Away from football, Chiweshe worked for Zimnat Life Insurance Company as a broker for 12 years until he quit in the late 1990s to concentrate on football on a fulltime basis.

Chiweshe — a holder of a CAF B licence — was born on October 10, 1963 in a family of five, three boys and two girls, and that is the family that christened him Chuchu.

His brother’s attempt to call him Ishmael, his second name, would come out as “Chuchumael” and the name has stuck on him since.

“Chuchu” has since become a household name in local football.