Tim Modise speaks with Kaizer Chiefs’ Captain Tefu Mashamaite

There are many lessons from the world of sport for wider society. Was blown away by record breaking Springbok coach Nick Mallett’s keynote to the PSG Konsult conference yesterday. Here’s more of the same from our Biznews partner Tim Modise’s awesome interview with Tefu Mashamaite, captain of Kaizer Chiefs and SA Player of the Year. Have a listen or read the transcript. It’s magic. – Alec Hogg

Tefu Mashamaite is the captain of Kaizer Chiefs, who have just won the PSA League Championship.  Tefu, welcome.

Thanks for welcoming me.

What are your reflections on the season?  Chiefs have done very well in the past season.  What do you attribute your success to?

A great season.  It was just based on a reflection of what happened last season with Sundowns coming from nowhere to snatch the League from us in the last minute.  We led the log at some point with 11 points and they gained some energy (I don’t know from where), and they came through and won the League.  It became a very disappointing season for us as players in the Chiefs organisation where the group decision reflected on the mistakes we made last season and I felt like from the start until the finish, we really gave it our best.  I’m just happy that everything turned out positively for us this season.

What about the responsibility that your coach, Stewart Baxter, gave you – the armband to be captain of the team?

At first, it was a bit unnerving because you have experienced players who have played in the World Cup, players who’ve played for Bafana Bafana, who have been to wars, and to get a nod ahead of them was a humbling experience.  However, he explained that I’ve captained a team to a championship before.  I captained Wits in 2010 when we won Nedbank Cup and he said, “I believe that you can grow/draw strength from this”.  I actually got the armband on the day of the final MTN 8 against Pirates.  You’re playing at 8:00 and at 1:00, you’re told you’re going to be captain, and so there are emotional factors that you have to deal with.  You have to overcome that and deal with the issue of being given an armband.  It’s such a huge responsibility.  At the end of the day, come game time, you go on the field, you represent your team, you score a winning goal, and you lift the trophy.  For me, it was a very proud, spiritual moment.  It was a revelation.

This has been a long road for you.  How did it all start, up to where you are now?

I can tell my story through different lenses, from my grandmother’s perspective (how she raised me) to my mother’s single parenthood to my brother’s wish to play football.  I thought they were better me.  It was just my community – being from a rural background.  Everything just comes down to me, and my having a dream.  I remember one moment that really shaped my dream and it remains right there in the fabric of my consciousness.  When my late uncle took me to FNB Stadium in 1992, I was eight years old.  Coming from Limpopo and going to the FNB Stadium was a dream in itself.  I went to watch him playing Cosmos in the final of the Bob Save Super Bowl Final and for me, seeing the likes of Dr Khumalo, Fetsi Molathedi, and Lucas Radebe back in the days was just a humbling experience and a transformation for me.  That’s when the dream was born and everything that I did from then until now was just waiting, ignoring every negative thought that came into my mind and saying, “I want to live that dream.  I want to be on that stage”.

Coming from rural Limpopo, there are many hurdles for you to overcome.  Share with me your personal experiences – the kinds of challenges you had to deal with.  FNB, for example.

It’s a long road and sometimes it’s a frustrating experience.  It’s painful, but it’s a necessary pain if you’re willing to engage it.  I remember my grandmother walked for something like 15kms very day.  She owned a little plot.  She was a great farmer.  She used to wake up at 4:00am and walk that distance, to go to a little farm and just produce.  You walk to school.  You walk a distance.  You walk a distance to go and draw water and to get wood to make fire, so those are some of the ingredients that go a long way into building a character, that make you persevere, and just to stand up against all the odds.

You were never demoralised at any point.

I was never…  I believed that it was going to work out at the end of the day.  I was just positive.  I don’t know what drove me.  Maybe it was my grandmother’s spirit after she passed away.  Maybe it was just my community – the inspiration I had – and maybe, it was the proverbial ‘five loaves and two fish’ that I had to provide for my community, and the hope that I had to provide for them.

Obviously, education would be affected if you are focusing on sport and becoming a top athlete.  How did you find balance – overcoming the challenges on one hand and having to focus on your studies?

I was very lucky because during the years when I was studying at varsity (and I think that’s the most challenging period in one’s educational journey), it was at a time when I was playing for the reserve team.  I was still playing in the development so I didn’t have to be going to school at the same time as being a professional.  I had to finish school first and then focus on my profession, which is football right now, and I think that gave me an advantage over all the other guys who have dropped out of school in pursuit of a footballing dream.

What made you decide – as you did – that you should finish your studies first (you’re a graduate from Wits as we speak) and rather focus on your studies before moving on to professional football?

Firstly, it was my mother, really sitting me down and saying, “Look at our family situation.  There’s nothing much to look at in the current generation.  You’re one of the hopes we can really take out of this situation”.  One of the situations was to get a degree and go to school but in the back of my mind I thought, “I have a footballing dream”.  At the end of the day, I had to reconcile two dreams and say, “If I can get an education, just give my mother what she wants and ultimately, to follow my dream”, which was football, I think I would have killed two birds with one stone.

Were you not impatient somewhere in thinking to yourself, “This whole business of going to varsity first is going to delay my dream”?

The varsity journey was fun in itself so it didn’t cause frustration.  It was a discovery for me.  I’m a complete human.  For me, it’s not just about one aspect of life.  It’s about discovering every aspect from spirituality to politics, to sports, to everything that you can just lay your experience and your mind on.  There’s always something to discover.  Personally, I was never frustrated when I was in school.  I discovered many things.  For example, the black discourse and just many factors that contribute to life.  It shaped me into becoming what I am today.  I moved from that, to football.  I discovered a lot about football – the ‘behind the scenes’ things that happen in football.  They just inspire me to keep working hard.

You mentioned the word ‘transformation’ early on and we’ve just spoken about development.  I can imagine…I’m familiar with rural South Africa.  There are many people who live in abject poverty and that leads to despair in many instances.  When you come across somebody who does not despair and who did not allow the impoverished background to hold you back…  I want to hear your thoughts on personal development as well as the broader transformation in our society.  What are your thoughts?

Personally, (and I’m being honest here) I only came to some kind of consciousness about poverty when I came to Johannesburg.  In rural Limpopo, there’s livestock.  There are farms.  In autumn, you’re eating corn, nuts, and many things that you produce yourself.  It just takes that hard labour, which is something that no one is forcing on you.  Your own the land and you work on that land.  You have livestock.  My grandmother had a huge plot of land that we worked on and my grandmother owned livestock.  It was somewhere we could always go into – the kraal – and get a goat or get a sheep, and make something out of it.  We hunted.  My brothers were good hunters.  We had a dog, called Themba and he was very talented when it came to hunting.  I used to go fishing even though my grandmother didn’t approve of it because boys used to drown there.  The method that we used was a bit dangerous.  You come to Johannesburg from that kind of lifestyle and you see shacks, people begging on the road, and it’s a culture shock.  “What’s happening here?”  The perception out there is that rural places are poor, but I think urban places are poor because of the greediness that sometimes comes into play in those areas.  There’s so much humanity that we can learn from in the rural areas.  People are willing to share.

I want to talk about transformation in sport.  That’s a very hot, political potato in South Africa.  What are your own views on transformation?

You can look at it from different angles.  With individuals, the perception out there is that footballers are not educated.  If footballers were given a chance to pursue both sports and education, it would go a long way into transforming the sporting market and the South African sporting market as a whole.  If the Government is doing anything about it, it’s a bit slow and I don’t think it’s at a pace where it’s supposed to be going.  I’ve seen varsity sport coming into play, but I think it’s something that should have been in place back in the nineties.  It’s only coming into play now.  As a country, we have a long way to go in order to transform both our mindset (how we look at life) and in other areas as well.  Not to put too much blame on apartheid, but I feel as though it’s done significant damage in terms of how (mostly) black people look at themselves and soccer is mostly a black sport.

Sure.  Sports celebrities/athletes across the world, including footballers of course, are notorious for not looking after their money and not planning for their futures.

Sometimes circumstances create an individual and in our society today, we tend to blame an individual rather than the rule that circumstance or society has played in an individual turning out the way they do.  We live in an age where footballers/sports personalities/athletes are glamourised.  You’re expected to live a certain life and if you don’t have a foundation or maybe, an education to ground you or to remind you of who you are supposed to be, you end up being silly/lost in the maze.  I think it’s a challenge.  Old wisdom says, “It takes a village to raise a child”.  I think it’s a society’s responsibility to take care of its footballers and to make sure that long after the footballing thing is gone, they’re still relevant because they can play a role in transforming our society further.

Around the globe, many athletes are celebrities.  We saw Floyd Mayweather for instance, running his own thing and making huge amounts of money.  Footballers like Ronaldo of Real Madrid…we’re told he makes $80m/$100m.  Do you think they deserve this money?

It’s a very tricky question.  For example, in the case of Floyd, you find this training behind the scenes but the fight lasts for 12 rounds and you get that amount of money.  However, you need to look at the bigger picture as to who benefits in that bigger scheme of things.  Maybe there are people who are out there smiling and saying, “We are making money out of that”.  For me, if Floyd as an athlete, coming from where he comes from, being able to transform himself, and make that kind of money…maybe he deserves it.  Based on his background and what he has put in to get where he is, I think he deserves it.  Obviously, there’s a bigger play than just Floyd.  There are people who are reaping more out of that and I’m not going to judge that.  For me, the focus is just on Floyd.  Floyd works hard and if he negotiates his way to whatever money he’s making, he deserves it because he has worked hard.

We spoke about this season – Chiefs winning the League.  You are now nominated in five categories.  You are likely to emerge as an award winner.  These recognitions are very important and it’s very rare that defender is nominated for footballer of the year as well as the four other categories.  How do you feel about that?

For me, it’s long-awaited recognition.  Not just for me, but also for defenders out there because we put our heads on the black.  We put our noses where we can’t really put our legs.  It’s hard work and at the end of the day, we’re only looked at when we make mistakes and the other team scores.  People say, “Defenders are bad” but for me and for Mulomowandau Matoho to get this kind of recognition (being nominated for major awards) is really, humbling.  To say that for the past three seasons, winning the League in the 2012/2013, losing it out last season and coming to win it this year…we’ve really been good at defence.  We’ve considered the least number of goals.  Our defence has been one of the best in our peers.  To finally get that recognition is humbling and it will go a long way into motivating us into working hard, further.

You’ve mentioned your background often in rural Limpopo and the transformational role that athletes can play.  How do you feel?  Doesn’t it intimidate you that you are also viewed as a role model of sorts and that you carry the hopes and the aspirations of not only the village you come from and of the people in Limpopo, but across the nation?

For me, it’s not a negative pressure.  It’s a positive pressure.  I have so much responsibility and I have to do a lot.  God has put me where I am right now, to do a lot and I feel that if I just apply myself more, I can get a lot of people out of their comfort zone, their trappings and their negativity.  I can set a new trend.  Somehow, our society is still based on a very negative mindset.  We don’t believe in our dreams and if someone believes in their dream, we put so much effort into crushing them and putting them down.  If I can just portray that message of positivity to say, “If you believe in your dream, you can go all the way and make it”, there are no limits in this world.  Whether it’s national or international, you can go all the way”, I think I would have achieved my dream because I believe that there’s a need for a generational step towards progress.  We’re not just going to do it amongst ourselves in this generation.  We have to set a tone for the next generation to inherit from.

What are your future plans, beyond football?  What do you intend doing?

I have so much passion for sport and my dream (if I can just put it out there to the universe) is to one day have a high performance centre in Limpopo, and just go into developing.  Not just footballers but also a whole array of sportspeople.  From athletics to basketball, to cricket, to rugby – just in Limpopo.  I think that maybe in that way, we can reach for some sort of transformation and revelation in our lives.

That’s the captain of PSL League Champions Kaizer Chiefs.  The captain – up for five nominations.  Tefu Mashamaite talking to us here.  It was a pleasure.  Much appreciated.