When we were at secondary school, we would religiously listen to the match commentaries from the small portable radios. These were a treasure not everybody owned. Those that had the means e ne le barena. We would grovel after them as they had what we needed most. Television was out of our reach and those who had would come back when schools re-opened to tell us about what they saw on television, more especially about games between Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates, two of the famous South African teams. I remember when we were at Moeng College there was an established spot at the top of the hill where we would regularly go to listen to radio soccer commentaries. The place famously came to be known as Ellis Park. As for the local game, radio was the thing for us. We would hear the names of people we had never seen with our eyes.
These were the great players of yesteryear. Amongst those was the legendary Saxton Tshidi Kowa, a goalkeeper of note who plied his trade at Mochudi Centre Chiefs at the time. Last weekend, the sport fraternity was shattered by the news of the passing on of Kowa. ‘Bra Tshidi’, as he was affectionately known to many in football circles, had not been well for some time. Death visits us all the time but every time it happens, it hits us at the core of our hearts. It has not been different with the passing away of ‘Bra Tshidi’. My interactions with ‘Bra Tshidi’ came about in the early 1990s whilst a student at the University of Botswana and playing for Gaborone Kicks, a First Division team at the time. Kicks and Uniao Flamengo Desportos trained on adjacent grounds at Naledi Senior Secondary School. ‘Bra Tshidi’ was very particular about the name of his team. As most people are used to flamingos, they took it for granted that the name of his team was Flamingo. He was always quick to explain that the name is Flamengo, thus he would shorten it to ‘Mengo’. Thus, we saw ‘Bra Tshidi’ every day during training sessions. ‘Bra Tshidi’ had this loud voice and you could not miss it when he was grilling his boys let alone during match days. He had instilled a certain brand of football in his team and you would marvel at watching them play. The team’s play resembled the Barcelona tika-tika style. It was no surprise that because of his affinity for Argentina’s fair play, he adopted the colours of the Argentinian national team.
