My attention is drawn to Hassan Badru Zziwa’s column titled “The grey areas between witchcraft and supremacy” in The Observer of April 24-30, 2024.
I would like to differ with this article on the circumstances surrounding the league game between Kitara FC and Vipers SC in Masindi on April 19, 2024 and in particular the subject of witchcraft on the part of Kitara FC.
I do not dispute the notion that superstition still plays a role in this beautiful game of soccer but I take exception to Zziwa’s association of incidents of the Kitara/Vipers match with witchcraft as stated in his column. Zziwa identified two incidents of that nature. I don’t know if he was in the stadium but I was there. This is what I was able to witness.
One incident that stood out is when the Kitara team captain Maxwell Owachigiu was accosted by a Vipers player accusing him of carrying a charm in his pants. The Vipers player demanded that Maxwell be undressed right there! Maxwell was standing before an injured Vipers goal keeper Alfred Mudekereza whom he was castigating for time wasting with Vipers leading 1-0.
Do people wear fetishes? Yes. Was Maxwell wearing one? Not sure from my vantage point. Was Maxwell’s charm a Kitara lucky charm? I highly doubt. Did the referee’s intervention help? Yes, he defused the tension. Did the Vipers player achieve his objective? Yes, he wasted more time.
Second incident quoted in the article is where a Vipers official seized a fetish from a ball boy. The ballboy in question was a girl of about 13 years of age who had just received something from a stadium official and she had slid it in her pants just below her umbilical cord. She was manning the rear including the Vipers goalpost area.
The Vipers bench went up in arms and one of their staff sprinted towards the girl, thereby breaching the pitch rules as the game was on going. As a matter of fact, Vipers’ 85th minute goal by Abubakar Lawal was scored when the said Vipers official was on the pitch!
It is also not true that the suspect object was retrieved from the goal point. The fact is, the Vipers official forcefully pushed his hand in the girl’s pubic region and removed what seemed like a paper wrap.
He tossed it by the pitch side after close examination; it is not true that he displayed it to the crowd. Even his colleagues on the bench didn’t get close to the object. Third incident relates to a game also played in Masindi a week earlier where Kitara eliminated Vipers in the quarterfinals of the Stanbic Cup.
In the article, it is alleged that Vipers players, against plans by stadium management, gained access to the Masindi stadium using a gate reserved for Kitara. Now, how is this incident superstitiously useful? Why did Vipers SC then lose the match yet they avoided the visitors gate?
Is Hassan Badru Zziwa correct to suspect witchcraft under all the above circumstances? Yes, because that is what Vipers wanted to put out there and Zziwa fell for it. Unfortunately, Zziwa’s article risks portraying Kitara FC as a superstitious club whose season success to-date will be attributed to witchcraft.
I want to believe that Vipers employed the witchcraft card as a mind game to bully the opponent. By the way, they did not stop at witchcraft, and I will come to that later.
Vipers SC is the defending champion of both the Uganda Premier League and the Uganda Cup. Having been kicked out of Uganda Cup by Kitara as well as trailing Kitara on the league table, Vipers had to win this game by hook or crook. The first league game in Kitende ended 2-1 in favor of Vipers but not without an incident.
The games assistant referee Juma Osire disallowed Kitara’s equalizer in the first minute of added time. He is serving a six-month Fufa suspension and pending further investigations.
However, the person who set the tone of the return league game in question was the Vipers goalkeeper Alfred Mudekereza. At the start of the game, Mudekereza appeared to cast white substances on the pitch as he made entry.
He repeated the act at the start of the second half but this time he had substances in a mineral water bottle. Vipers’ players were the last to exit the dressing room and Mudekereza led the team spattering the pathway towards the pitch. Before the game, Vipers had threatened to boycott, claiming their security was threatened. They wanted guarantees. But there was no history of violence on or off pitch between Kitara and Vipers.
Lastly, credit to Richard Wasswa, Vipers interim coach, his game plan worked. He crammed his midfield and waited for Kitara to attack hoping they would expose their backline in the process. It worked, Kitara conceded an own goal and a second one against a runoff play.
The author is a fan of Kitara FC
Source: The Observer
Share this content: