Arsenal scouts came for me, says Mutasa

By In Conversation With Trevor | Aug. 11, 2024

Zifa normalisation committee chairman Lincoln Mutasa In Conversation With Trevor Ncube

Zifa normalisation committee chairman Lincoln Mutasa says he was once a target of Arsenal Football Club during his early days as a footballer.

Mutasa (LM) talked about his history in the sport on the platform In Conversation with Trevor hosted by Alpha Media Holdings chairman Trevor Ncube (TN).

Below are excerpts from the interview.

TN: Mukoma Lincoln Chendisaita Mutasa welcome to In Conversation with Trevor.

LM: Thank you very much for inviting me to this prestigious programme of yours.

TN: Thank you so much. I looked at that name Chendisaita. Talk to me about that. Why did your father give you that name?

LM: It wasn't my father who gave it to me, it was actually my grandfather. Chendisaita was his own father's name.

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His own father was the eldest son of King Tendai Chifambausiku Mutasa, who was the last sort of paramount chief before the whites came.

I mean of the people in Mutasa area, right? So how he became king is actually a story in itself.

His own father had been murdered by his brother so that he could assume the chieftainship or the kingship.

So, Tendai growing up, remembered this and his first son, he called him Chendisaita because he had not achieved what he wanted to achieve which was to avenge the killing of his own father.

TN: Wow, so he eventually did that and the rest is history. He then took you, your father then took you to the UK where you were educated. Talk to me about that period of your life.

LM: Yeah, I think that was the formative part of our growing up but I think it started in Zimbabwe here while it was still Rhodesia.

TN: Then did you go to school here?

LM:Yeah I went to school here.

TM: Which school did you go to here?

LM: I started off at Nyanyadzi Primary School. If you remember Nyanyadzi was a hotbed of politics in the 50s. Then after that I went to Mutaambara Mission and then ended up at Hartzel Primary School soon after.

That's when we left for the UK, but at Nyanyadzi that's where the interesting part starts in the sense that my father joined politics. He was the representative of the NDP (National Democratic Party).

So as a kid my father took me and sat me in between as he and Ndabaningi Sithole would address people in the communities there and any meetings that they had.

I would always go with him as a kid and we would play with the other kids while our parents were having meetings.

TN: You are the first born?

LM:Yes, I'm the first born.

TN: Okay, it's yourself, Chipo, Shingai and Chomunoda?

LM: Then what happened while we were in Nyanyadzi, he was arrested I think this was in 1958 to 1959 because of some uprising and this is when all the nationalists were rounded up.

It was still Rhodesia and Nyasaland. So, he was gone for three months, but I remember the day they came to pick him up in a Land Rover. All those things sort of impacted me growing up.

When he came out he came out a different person.

TN: How long was he in there?

LM: For three months; I think three months but he feels he got educated there meeting people like (Kamuzu) Banda.

All sorts of people from within the nationalist movement. Yeah, he came out and in Nyanyadzi, he was a teacher, but he had also started a business.

He had a shop but he realised the shop was not going to bring him enough money.

To achieve his dream, to further his education, so he decided on promoting music and he took Dorothy Masuka and Chekai Mwenje.

Chekai Mwenje was a traditional dancer.

TN: He took them around the country, right?

LM: Yeah, the whole of Rhodesia, South (and) Northern Rhodesia, Malawi it was Nyasaland by then and Elizabethville in the DRC.

So, he raised enough money to buy his ticket and off to London he went and that was in 1961.

While there, we continued schooling here with my mom.

He couldn't get a scholarship because he didn't have O levels.

The only thing that he could do was to be a chauffeur and lucky for him he got a job driving Sir Davis, a lord, and this gave him a chance to earn some money as well as correspond.

So, he would do those Rapid Results correspondent books to try and get his O Levels and then get his O Levels and then his A Levels.

Once he had these, he now was able to get a scholarship. I think in those days there were Commonwealth scholarships and things like that.

And another luck came along, well God's will really, in that they would give you a scholarship for the whole year.

And he got this scholarship, a lot of money for the first year and with his entrepreneurial abilities he decided, no, he was not going to put this in the bank.

He decided to buy a house in London and having bought this house he put in tenants, other Zimbabweans and that's how he lived.

TN: To make more money, right?

LM: That was the first year, the second year he used that bulk money to bring my mother over to join him in London. Then the third year is when we were sent over to the UK.

TN: Wow, wow! That's very interesting background.

That is so important to who you have become because it's while you are in London, you then continued with your education in London.

Talk to me about that part of your education in London?

LM: Yeah, it was an interesting educative experience.

First of all, I think going back a little, when my father went to the UK in 1964, he came back here.

As he came back here, he came back for the formation of Zanu, was it Kwekwe or Gweru?

He was then elected or nominated as the students’ representative in Europe or the European representative for Zanu.

So, as you can imagine when we got into London, our house was, you know, an activity place with every most of these nationalists coming through.

A lot of, even the students, most students who eventually played a major role at the independence had actually come through our house people like Mukoma Davie (Karimanzira), he is late.

A lot of them, we would actually sleep with them because when they came, they didn't have a scholarship or a place.

So they would come and the boys would be with us and the girls would be with my sisters.

So, it kept us very, very much in touch with what was happening back within Zimbabwe

TN: As far as the liberation struggle was concerned?

LM: Correct, correct! And also I think it gave to us, it was not just about educating children for the sake of I want you to do well. We were doing something with a purpose.

It was education with purpose and that purpose was, we want to go back one day and free our country. You know or serve our country, whichever came first.

TN: But you then got contracted, you started playing football? (Yes!) Talk to me about that part of your of your life?

LM: I started when I was here, I always loved football.

TN: Where did that interest come from did anybody else within the family play football before you started?

LM: My uncles from Mutambara one, I think, Sekuru Feresu was a goalkeeper but every holiday they used to be a team.

They would play and we would always go with my uncle and watch these games and he fell in love with being a goalkeeper and he played, I think for some team in Bulawayo.

There I was always interested in, you know, in the fields.

People motivated me and at one school tournament at Mutambara, I think there was Old Umtali playing Mutambara Mission and a shot was hit and I wanted to show that I could play so I put up my leg and I got blisters from the ball.

But at least the ball had stopped and going back in and I don't know it took me some two, three, what you call it, weeks before I fully recovered but at that time I had already fallen in love with it.

TN: But you didn't play formerly. Then you just had an interest, it was just the street in the dust, the paper ball or something of that plastic paper balls. It's true but you get to London, you start playing talk to me about that bit.

LM: I get to London, the shock is that I leave here when I'm doing Standard 5, that is in June of 1966 and then I'm put into the primary school but within two months, I'm now doing Form 1 because of my age and the year starts in September.

So, they had actually just enrolled me into Form 1! And this is at Highbury Grove.

Initially, it was Barnsbury, but Bounce Bridge merged with Highbury Grammar, okay, to create Highbury Grove.

So, effectively I went to Highbury Grove from Barnsbury for Form 2 onwards but then in the UK all these age group teams, you had the school team, you know.

For the Form Ones, for the Form Twos and I straight away got into the Form 1 team, Form 2 team and we also had house teams, you know, your house colour yes, yes, colours.

So, I played in the house team and then eventually in the school team.

TN: And somebody tells me that Arsenal had an interest in you? This, I'm an Arsenal supporter, so when I saw the Arsenal thing, on how Arsenal came scouting for you, talk to me about that.

LM: We grew up in Highbury. Yes, so all the schools that I went to were within the catchment area for Highbury, we also played, I also played for Islington which is the district, yeah!

And so, naturally most of the kids who were in Islington would always be taken by Arsenal, either, for training or joining them as apprentices.

A lot of the top players from the Islington team did join the Arsenal with people like Charlie George although he went to Hallway within Islington.

We are playing in the same teams, he went to Highbury and became a star.

I, other classmates I think, or age mates my classmate was actually Dave Donalson. He also went and joined Arsenal.

When the scouts from Arsenal came they actually approached my parents first, to say ‘look we feel your kid, we could improve his game and we would like him to join us as an apprentice’.

My father did not say yes or no, he sort of said okay, I will discuss with Lincoln when he comes back and when I came back he told me the news.

He says, ‘Look, we had scouts here looking for you from Arsenal, are you interested?

‘You want to play?" I was so excited and I said, yes, of course I would love to play, yes.

‘I'm glad to hear that you said yes at least, yeah.’ I mean although I was a (Tottenham) Spurs supporter, I still wanted to play professional football.

So, he says, ‘Look if you are that interested, I have no problem with that what I will do is I will provide you your ticket back to Salisbury and if Arsenal want you that bad, they can pick your bill (Really?) as long as you are here on my ticket, you got to finish your degree at least or get your first degree then after that you can play as much football as you want."

So I thought.

TN: How did you take that?

LM: Yeah I went and thought hard about it then I thought, hey, what are the chances of these guys coming for me in Salisbury.

Yeah, so I said no, okay, now I will do my studies and I will play football afterwards. We shook hands on that and for sure afterwards I finished, I graduated and that calling kept coming.

TN: So you graduated from Imperial College, am I right with a BSC in Electrical Engineering, you then did a Masters at Leeds University, talk to me about that period of your education?

You have basically, the Arsenal door shut, until you finished. Talk to me about that season of your education?

LM: Yeah I was gifted, maybe, in Maths. so I wanted to do something that had a lot of Maths in it and so engineering was the nearest thing that was practical.

You know those days were education with a purpose yes and we felt, no, if one does engineering at least one can always be useful in helping the reconstruction of our country or freedom of our country.

So, I chose engineering and from Imperial, I actually didn't go to Leeds, initially I went to Cranfield, okay, Aeronautical College, right, Cranfield

There I did flight control systems which was more how you control an aircraft.

It's not the actual driving of it, it's the controls that go to the moving of the flaps the, you know, the tail whatever to control the aircraft and to me this was all relevant in the sense that we wanted to know about the flight of projecters and things like that.