However, when the who is who in Zimbabwe sport is written, Kwashi’s name will feature prominently as he received two Championship medals and led his country to two consecutive Under-17 Africa championships.
Many soccer fans will remember how he turned around the fortunes of CAPS United to land their first Championship in 1996 as well as the Charity Shield, BP Cup and the Independence Trophy.
For upstarts, Kwashi’s success at CAPS United in 1996 could have come as a surprise, but for those who had been in the game for long, they had witnessed him leading Black Aces “Shaisa Mufaro” to the Championship in 1992 in their first season coming from Division One.
However a decade has now passed since Kwashi was involved in a horrific accident that saw him going into a comma for close to seven months and experiencing memory loss.
Kwashi was injured on March 26 2001 when the truck he was travelling in veered off the road and struck a tree along the Bulawayo-Harare road while returning from a Premiership match against Hwange at the colliery.
Though the 56-year-old father of seven still struggles with his speech and walks with an aide, he still has that sense of humour that made him popular with his players and is still nostalgic of the good days when he had influence on “the world’s most beautiful game” locally.
“I thank God that I am alive today. I was born a sportsman and football has always been my life. It lives within me and I know no other job outside football,” he said.
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KWASHI ATTRIBUTED SUCCESS TO TEAMWORK
Asked about the secret behind his all conquering CAPS United side of 1996, Kwashi attributed it to team work. “In football, you must work as a team. Football is not a one man game and that is what I always told my players. You also have to respect your players and I also do that with my family. We share jokes even though I am the father,” he said.
Talking of the 1996 squad brought him memories of his son Tostao’s premiership debut in CAPS United colours. “We were playing against Black Aces at Gwanzura and things were not going well and suddenly Alois (Bunjira) got injured. I beat myself in the chest as I was thinking about the players to throw in the game. I was not sure of using “Tosi” because the fans would always think that he was being favoured.
“I threw him into the game and he created two goals which saw us winning the match. Chimufana chakandifadza ichi,” he said. He added that a coach also needs to understand his players in order to get the best out of them.
“As a coach, you must be able to identify talent and know how to use it. I identified Percy Mwase while he was playing in the area zone and he went on to become a good player.
“At Aces the Mugeyi twins (Wilfred and William), Peter Chamboko and Emmanuel Nyahuma were a marvel to work with. While at CAPS I remember Brenna Msiska was a very clever player who had a bag of tricks on how to elicit money from the team’s executive. There was also “Dalala” (Albert Mabika).
Where are all these guys? Ini ndinokara bhora ini,” (crave soccer) he said. When reminded that Lloyd Chitembwe one of his players in the 1996 team is now the team’s coach, Kwashi looked surprised.
