The resilient face of Gobuiwang
Mqondisi Dube | Tuesday April 25, 2017 16:10
This was at the height of a spectacular fall-out between Rollers fans’ newly found love, Jagdish Shah and the increasingly alienated Sommerset Gobuiwang.
Gobuiwang was seen as a stumbling block to the success of the story, at a time Shah was viewed as the new ‘financial’ doctor the club had ordered. He emerged with a number of enemies as a result of his resilient fight to regain control of the club, which he had ceded to Shah.
Before Shah flashed into the picture, Gobuiwang was, for long, the undisputed Rollers god.
He was credited with everything good happening at the Mma Masire-based side. They won a double in 2005, straight from a gruelling and a status-lowering campaign in the First Division, with Gobuiwang, among the crew behind the rare feat.
Years later, amid the emergence of teams such as Gaborone United, ECCO City Greens and Mochudi Centre Chiefs as genuine threats to Rollers’ long standing dominance, Gobuiwang partnered with Shah, in an envisaged football masterstroke. But the union capsised spectacularly, with Rollers engulfed in damaging internal strife after the two allies turned bitter adversaries.
Shah, seen as awash with the required magnet, cash, gained more sympathisers in his fight against Gobuiwang, who preferred to remain silent amid the bubbling conflict.
He quietly slid out of Rollers and left Shah in complete control of Rollers. Those close to Gobuiwang said naturally he was bitter at the turn of events after seeing a club he had laboured hard for, haplessly slipping out of his grasp.
Gobuiwang recollected himself and quietly joined the First Division side, Sharps Shooting Stars.
On Saturday, as the team cantered to their finest moment in their history, Gobuiwang was captured sharing in the euphoria. As Sharps gained automatic promotion to the BTC Premiership, photographers snapped a smiling Gobuiwang in a lump of joy with the players and the technical team.
He was part of the club’s success and has already been credited with Sharps’ meteoric rise.
The Saturday moment is expected to go a long way in banishing Gobuiwang’s bitter memories of his well documented fall-out with Shah, and to an extent, Rollers.