ONE of the eminent persons who in the initial stages helped shape my career as a professional sports reporter after joining the Times of Zambia as a young journalism graduate in 1969, is former Football Association of Zambia (FAZ) president Tom Mtine who always had his facts and figures at his finger tips.
Each time my Sports Editor Joe Taylor (late) gave me an assignment on any issue related to football in the country, he would insist I either cross-check facts with or get all the details from ‘Tom’ because he ‘is always cooperative and – in nine cases out of 10 – will have all his facts right’.
In fact, Mtine was every budding reporter’s favourite ‘contact’ because where some ordinary officials would probably demand a questionnaire, or simply procrastinate, ‘Good old Tom’ would quickly open his briefcase or relevant folders to give you all the details you needed for a comprehensive news report. In other words, he simplified most media practitioners’ reportorial tasks.
So, when I left the Times in 1992, I found myself with him on the same Zambia Airways flight to Lusaka. But my final destination was not Lusaka but Gaborone where I had secured employment as an expatriate editor of the Botswana Gazette, a development which I did not tell him when he asked me rather casually what exactly I would be doing in Lusaka this time around.
I do not know if he still recalls that brief chat we had aboard the now defunct national airliner as my two sons, Kelvin (late) and Makumbi, and I were in transit to join thousands of fellow Zambians who trekked to south of the Zambezi River – and elsewhere across the globe – in search of greener pastures.

. MTINE

You can probably guess why I did not disclose my final destination to my former Ndola City mayor and FAZ president. I figured at the time that as chairperson of Lonrho Zambia (a transnational corporation which owned both the Times of Zambia and its sister paper, the Sunday Times before it was ‘annexed’ by the then ruling United National Independence Party (UNIP) in the early 1980s) Mr Mtine would feel offended or disapprove of my decision to leave a newspaper that had groomed me.
So it recently happened that after almost a quarter of a century without meeting with my former trusted news source, and after Zambia had lost so many of its founding fathers including three State presidents, I was excited to see him outside St Andrew’s Congregation of the United Church of Zambia in Ndola.
He was among hundreds of relatives and friends who had gathered at the church to be with Dr Julius Sakala at the memorial service for his late wife Betty Sakala, who died in Ndola Central Hospital (NCH) in January last year.
(Dr Sakala is also a former mayor of Ndola and chairperson of the city’s previously formidable Ndola United FC).
After empathising with Dr Sakala (who was standing by the door at the end of the service, greeting congregants as they walked out of the sanctuary), I saw the former FAZ veteran administrator smiling and shaking hands with other well-wishers waiting to proceed to New Mitengo Cemetery for the unveiling of Mrs Sakala’s tombstone.
As our eyes met the ‘old man’ and I instantly found ourselves locked in a bear’s hug, rocking from side-to-side and saying, ‘How nice it is to meet after such a long, long time’.
We did not have much time to reminisce, given the circumstances under which we met.
However, I did indicate that I would, God willing, find time to pay him a visit at his up-market home in Northrise.
Though our meeting was brief, it evoked fond memories of yester years, including the dramatic arrival at the Ndola Railway Station of President Mobutu Sese Seko’s famous ‘Zaire Leopards’ from Lubumbashi, the provincial capital of mineral-rich Katanga (Shaba) province.
The Leopards, as part of their strategy, did not announce in advance what means of transport they  would use to travel to Zambia, thus keeping their FAZ hosts worried because they were required to  make adequate preparations to receive the visitors and ensure they were comfortable ahead of their scheduled Africa Cup of Nations clash with the ‘KK XI’ at Dag Hammarskjoeld Stadium.
Suddenly, news broke out that the Leopards, who had been planning an ambush, had secretly arrived in the country by train from Lubumbashi and were camped at the border town of Sakania, some 30km north of Ndola.
Upon learning of this development a Times of Zambia driver drove me and a photographer, I can’t remember whether it was David Tonga or Rainson Kapeso, to Sakania, for what was to become my first and only visit to the Zairean (now Democratic Republic of the Congo) outpost that eats into Zambian territory.
However, the anticipated exclusive interview with Zairean team officials, using a Zambia Railways (ZR)  station manager based at Sakania – a Mr Tom Sayer (who spoke French) – did not materialise because  the ever suspicious Leopards would not ‘entertain spies’.
I remember that when they finally arrived Mr Mtine was among the huge crowd of people who turned up at the Ndola Railway Station to welcome the much-touted Leopards from Elizabethville (as  Lubumbashi was called before independence from Belgium in 1960) via Sakania.
Dressed in all-white, the Leopards were so spotlessly clean that one could have mistaken them for American sailors disembarking from a sea-going vessel after a long voyage. They caused quite a stir.
We were later made to understand that the smartly-dressed Leopards and their entourage refused to be accommodated at the Savoy Hotel, allegedly because it did not meet FIFA and CAF recommended standards for a visiting team, yet they had accommodated the Zambian team in a third-rate hotel in Kinshasa, the capital.
As a result, the Zaireans were at first apprehensive that Zambia would avenge the ill-treatment they meted out on the Zambian National Team when it travelled to Kinshasa for an international engagement between the two countries in 1969.
As part of their surreptitious tactics to win the match the following day, the Zaireans waged a psychological war against the ‘enemy’ by accommodating the Zambian contingent – players and their  officials – in the same hotel built next to a nightclub that also played loud music throughout the night.
The hotel, according to embittered Zambian officials, also had fewer beds, forcing some of the travel-weary players to sleep on the hard chairs, some in the foyer. Unsurprisingly, Zaire won the match easily,  trouncing Zambia by a record 10-l scoreline.
The Kinshasa debacle sparked a huge controversy both at home and abroad.
Our meeting also brought back memories of the controversy that erupted following government’s decision in 1975 to abolish the National Football League (NFL) and introduced a One-Soccer Body to run football affairs in the country. Despite protests from stakeholders, the move to ‘kill off’ the NFL was taken in tandem with the creation of the one-party participatory democracy two years previously.
To facilitate the creation of the one soccer body, government, through the ministry of Youth and Sport, announced that it had nominated candidates it deemed ‘suitable’ to contest the post of FAZ president and Mr Mtine was not one of them. They were Wilfred Wonani, a former NFL vice-chairperson, Lusaka lawyer (later High Court judge) David Lewanika, then City of Lusaka chairperson; Joseph Chileshe, former FIFA referee and top ZCCM executive officer; and Fanwell Lumpa, from Roan United Football Club in Luanshya.
Three days after the ‘shock’ government announcement, ex-FAZ secretary Ernest Mate quit his post.
Mr Mtine then dropped what amounted – in soccer circles – to a bombshell, declaring he had decided to leave after 25 years at the helm of football administration in the country.
He made his announcement to a group of stunned reporters whom he had summoned to his old offices on Ndola’s President Avenue.
From my point of view, Mr Mtine thereafter remained in obscurity until 2012 when Zambia won the Africa Cup of Nations for the first time.
Consequently, I was delighted to see him on Botswana Television (BTV) in a group that the late President Michael Sata sent to West Africa to represent him at the Gabon-Equatorial-Guinea co-hosted finals.
The team, led by then Vice-President Guy Scott, included first Republican President Kenneth Kaunda, and the late soccer commentator, Dennis Liwewe, which is something I found quite fitting because these are among the national path-finders who helped build a solid foundation on which the present ‘Chipolopolo’  – led by 1988 African Footballer of the Year and FAZ president Kalushya Bwalya – rests.
It is for this reason that I felt extremely elated to see, for the first time in 25 years, Mr Mtine and Dr Sakala, both men who have influenced my life and my career, still looking fit and on their feet.
With the nation’s and their collective prayers, the ‘Chipolopolo’ boys, I believe, could spring yet another surprise (as the old Zambian National Team did against the ‘vaunted’ Zaire Leopards) at the African Nations Championship finals that kick off in Rwanda today. Mark my word.
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