Mike Ntombela: Not Just A Leaf But Forest Of Knowledge
By Hosea Ramphekwa
In a quest to challenge the status quo in South African football, Mike Ntombela has decided to put pen to paper.
“I wrote to try to improve the game. The game must improve. If the game doesn’t improve, we won’t have money. We will have players finishing their careers with no money,”
Ntombela says about his latest book – After The Fans Have Stopped Cheering: Moving From The Pitch To A Balanced Life.
“We owe it to ourselves to improve the standard of our football. It’s not like when someone says the standard is low, he doesn’t like the league. They think you are criticizing. I don’ want to criticize and do nothing. I must find a mistake and say how do we solve it.”
Ntombela, the erstwhile Mamelodi Sundowns captain, has seen and done it all as a footballer, coach, player-manager and administrator. His football journey, spanning decades, is well detailed in the book, which was prompted by a father-son chat.
“I thought my son doesn’t know me much. When my son played for Wits’ under 17s, they said to him, we hope you are as good as your father. He then asked me, how were you? I thought it is important for my family and my legacy that I must write. When I started at Senaoane Gunners in 1998, I realized that the players didn’t know me. The people in the community used to tell them, do you know this guy. This guy was the one who did this and that at Senaoane. I thought writing a book will let people know more about me and the game,”
said Ntombela.
In a well thought out and well-written book, Ntombela hits the right notes as he regales with stories riddled with a rich history. The depth of his love for his community of Senaoane, home also to Sundowns coach Pitso Mosimane in Soweto, can be clearly in the pages. Amazingly the community of Senaoane, decades ago, once raised R84 to pay for Ntombela’s airfare from Durban, where he was studying, to Johannesburg because they wanted him to help Senaoane Gunners to win a tournament.
“My first time on a plane was because of the community of Senaoane. It’s unbelievable. It was worth it because we ended up winning the match 5-2 and I was so key in that game. I scored two goals. The community taught me life,”
said the former University of Zululand student.
During the vicious days of Apartheid, difficulties were the order of the day for black people. Ntombela, who played for Wits University, a predominantly white team in the ’80s, had his fair share of wrestling with the beast of racism. Together with Mike Mangena, they were the only two black players in the team. They also battled with their own, who saw them as sellouts for playing for a so-called ‘white team’.
“Although we had both gained instant fame, attracting positive newspaper headlines across the print media spectrum and getting a fair share of airtime on TV and radio, we always came under heavy torrents of abuse from fans of rival black-dominated teams every time we took to the field against their idols. They were clearly not happy seeing black players turning up for so-called white teams. We were called all sorts of unsavoury names such as sellouts, house niggers and kitchen boys,”
writes Ntombela.
On his glittering CV, ornamented by accolades such as titles won with Wits and Sundowns, Ntombela is credited with the meteoric rise of Bafana Bafana stars Thulani Serero and Thulani Hlatshwayo.
“When I identified Thulani Serero at 13, it took me five minutes to see that this is a different player. I was watching from afar. I didn’t know him. He was playing for Gunners. I asked the coach, who is this boy? I phoned Cavin Johnson at Ajax Cape Town and said there’s a special player and I don’t think we would do justice to this boy. He has to be at a better place, where he can be developed early,”
said Ntombela.
Ironically Ntombela, as Adidas football manager, was at Afcon in Tunisia in 2004 looking after Bafana Bafana when he facilitated Serero’s move to Ajax Cape Town. Next month Ntombela will watch with glee as Serero and Hlatshwayo strut their stuff at the Africa Cup of Nations stage in Egypt. Hlatshwayo, the national team captain, will lead from the back while Serero will be looked upon to make things happen for South Africa.
Serero and Hlatswayo have benefitted immensely from the pearls of wisdom dished out by Ntombela. Now many a player, football administrators, coaches, and football followers stand to benefit as the Ntombela has poured out all his knowledge of the game in his book.
Ntombela’s last employ in professional football was as Sundowns team manager but he is still involved in the game at grassroots, where he is working with Gauteng government to revive soccer at schools’ level.
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