Kaizer Chiefs is a football club that plays in South Africa’s Premier Soccer League. The Chiefs, league champions who sit atop the standings, came to Pietermaritzburg on Tuesday to take on Maritzburg United.
Thanks to friends Rachel, Sipho and Sandile, I had the thrill of being among the roughly 12,000 fans who packed the bleachers to watch Maritzburg host the Glamour Boys, as the Chiefs are known. Most fans who filled the stands seemed to be decked out in the black and gold colors of the Chiefs, who happen to be the most famous team in this football-crazed country. Chiefs are the South African equivalent of Manchester United or the New York Yankees.
Now I know why Chiefs fans invoke the mantra Amakhosi4Life, which uses the Zulu word for chief to make a point about loyalty.
Along with the action on the pitch, I loved being surrounded by the Chiefs family, which includes Sipho, who blew his vuvuzela in unison with other horn-toting fans. Rachel and Sandile cheered for Maritzburg, which scored within the first minute and battled the Chiefs to a 2-2 draw. The contest “was perhaps the stadium’s finest football match in recent years,” columnist Lloyd Burnard wrote in The Witness, the local daily.
As for me, I feel lucky to have been part of the crowd on a 80-degree summer night under a waxing moon in a lavender sky here in the Midlands.