Former Dynamos captain Memory Mucherahowa who led the club to the 1998 African Champions League final, has revealed the club’s use of juju in his autobiography, Soul of Seven Million Dreams.
Mucherahowa writes:
Every week before a game the team would consult a traditional healer. I, as the team captain, would be the one to execute whatever the sangoma (juju-man) had said. Whether it actually aided us, I do not know. The team believed more in juju than players’ ability. We believed in collective use of the juju and consulted one traditional healer as a team. In most cases we had the team’s traditional healers who were on the team’s payroll. The belief was so high at the club that coach [Peter] Nyama lost his job in 1990 after being fingered by a traditional healer as being guilty of jinxing the team.
Mucherahowa also describes an incident whereby a sangoma slit the players’ toes in order to administer his “medicine” and asked them to play despite the pain during their 1-1 draw against Canon Yaounde of Cameroon which saw them crashing out of the 1987 Africa Cup of Champions.
More: BBC