One of the first things I did after becoming a former sports reporter with the Nation Media Group was to found, write for and edit a magazine called Majeshi Yetu.
It is the official magazine of the Kenya Defences Forces and for those not familiar with Kiswahili, the words mean Our Soldiers. In those capacities, I attended every significant sports event involving the forces. I remember one of them very well.
It was a KDF versus Kenya Police boxing match at the CID Training School at Nairobi South “C”. I had not attended a boxing contest of any level for a long while and I was a bit out of touch with the realities on the ground. To my mind, KDF was going to make mincemeat of Chafua Chafua, as the Kenya Police boxing team is universally called.
You can understand where I was coming from, of course. With my newsroom life behind me, I was freed from any obligations of objectivity and all I wanted was the people who put a generous layer of butter on my daily bread to win. I planned to feature the big victory in the next issue of the magazine.
But shock awaited me. I almost disputed the evidence of my own eyes as the police boys ran rings around our soldiers. They were astonishingly fleet footed.
They weaved and ducked, and left no mistake unpunished. My shock turned first to embarrassment and then to dread when the opening four bouts went to Chafua Chafua.
The highest ranking officer in the pavilion was Maj Gen (Rtd) Peter Waweru who, as the general officer in charge of the docket that published Majeshi Yetu, was the man I reported to. He was also the chairman of the Armed Forces Amateur Boxing Association in addition to being an avid golfer. I was seated next to him.
“Sir,” I told him, “looks like we’re in big trouble.”
Normally an affable man with a nice smile and clear in what he had to say, the general had trouble stringing one complete sentence. “Useless,” he burst out to nobody in particular while staring hard at the ring below. “No training” he thundered. “No fitness!”
That was evidently true. In the losing featherweight bout, his boxer had moved as if there was glue on the soles of his shoes, making freeing them from the surface of the ring difficult. I hadn’t expected to associate unfitness with the KDF boxers and Waweru was raging as he pounded his fist on his lap.
He kept swearing - and I began wondering about the fate that would befall the coach and entire management of the KDF boxing team. It seemed to me that this was going to be their last evening as KDF’s cornermen.
But mercifully, Chafua Chafua’s victory was narrower than we had feared when it was all over. Things tidied up in the heavier categories but there was no doubting that evening’s superiority of the blue corner over the red one.
I was now up to date with the situation on the ground. Before the next issue of Majeshi Yetu was out, I found enough stories that could put a smile on the faces of the generals who paid me. I didn’t use the story about the South “C” debacle for lack of space.
This week, I read in Nation Sport that Boxing Association of Kenya had stripped Kenya Police of their 2017 title and handed it to KDF after the policemen were found to have won unfairly. A Chafua Chafua fighter, Maurice Ochieng, declared to have won his bout against Kaloleni’s Dennis Mudhama in a flyweight contest last year, was no winner after all, the tribunal concluded.
He actually lost and by reversing his win, KDF posted one point more than Police to win the title.
This story, coming just before Stephen Muchoki was inducted into the Hall of Fame during the Sports Personality of the Year Awards, took me back in time as I notice a resurgence of the sport that once made us kings. Boxing seems to be on the right track after years in the doldrums and the current leadership needs encouragement.
KDF and Kenya Police are the big boys of this sport in Kenya and their rivalry is almost as old as our country. I revel in their competition and the more intense it gets, the more I enjoy it. For me, the reversal of Police’s victory, significant as it is to the boys in blue, is a small matter in the bigger scheme of things. What is really important is that the rivalry between KDF and Kenya Police intensifies. Nothing could be better for our boxing.
Part of the reason for the low standard of Kenya football is the near collapse of the rivalry between AFC Leopards and Gor Mahia. Few things went wrong for our game than when Leopards lost their claws. We live in the era of one power, Gor Mahia, and the situation is bad for the country and even worse for the unchallenged champions.
KDF needs Kenya Police and vice versa and what has happened in our football must never happen in boxing. Right now I am hoping that since BAK made its order, all Chafua Chafua are doing is eating, sleeping and breathing revenge. I am sure the next collision of these two rivals will be great fun and I will be on the look-out for it.
Because of stable employment and the promise of career growth, KDF and Kenya Police are the aspirational destinations of many young men and women.
The third force in this troika was Kenya Prisons but for whatever reasons, it hasn’t kept pace with the other two.
Gone are the days when Prisons gave us Kamau “Pipino” Wanyoike, who won three consecutive gold medals in the then prestigious King’s Cup of Thailand in the 1980s. He is perhaps the most accomplished southpaw in the history of our boxing. But there were other stars as well, such as Modesty Napunyi, James Oduori and Patrice Lumumba. Kenya Prisons, where did you go?
I am hopeful about the fortunes of Kenya boxing under the current president, John Kameta who clearly has his heart in the right place. What I don’t know is whether even he can make us write the stories that we wrote 40 years ago. This week, as I celebrated Stephen Muchoki’s good fortune and chuckled at the twists and turns of KDF versus Kenya Police, I reached for my archives as I am always do.
This was my review of the 1979 boxing season for my paper then, The Nairobi Times in its December 30, 1979 issue: “Compared with 1978, 1979 was not a particularly auspicious year for Kenya boxing. The blows the sport absorbed were heavier than those it delivered. In 1978, Kenya’s all-conquering boxers won the All-Africa Games and Commonwealth crowns and established themselves firmly as one of the world’s premier ring craftsmen…A list of Kenya’s national boxers puts to three the number of national teams Kenya can raise at any given time. These teams are endowed with the capacity to take on the best opposition the world can offer.”
That was the year Muchoki left Kenya to turn professional in Denmark. Many Kenyans were upset that he had gone, the same way they complain today when some of our athletes become Qatari or Bahraini citizens. Muchoki pleaded for understanding and gave me a long exclusive interview before heading for Copenhagen.
I asked the then Africa, Commonwealth and World light flyweight champion if he saw any boxer on the horizon who could match his accomplishments. With the humility and self-effacing demeanour that belied his uncompromising competitiveness in the ring, he told me quietly: “There is no doubt about that. There are good boxers and there will be better ones in future. For now, maybe there will be a gap. But that will only be for a short time. There will always be good boxers.”
Looking into his eyes, I thought that statement was a prediction, a hope and a prayer all rolled into one. Sadly, he was never to be replaced. He remained one of a kind, all by himself in his class and Kenya’s hopes of finding another one like him kept receding with each passing year. And so it felt especially good that in 2018, 40 years later, he was acknowledged by the current generation of sports journalists as one of our all-time best.
His co-inductee into the Hall of Fame was a richly-deserving Allan Thigo, the attacking midfielder of the 1970s who made Shirt Number 13 famous and who some called “the owner of the field.”
One last quote from my 1979 review: “The events of 1979 make it an obligation to rate Kenya as a very tough threat to the world’s top three boxing nations – Cuba, the USSR (today’s Russia) and the US.” That is where we were. What a challenge to Kameta and his administration!
Back to KDF versus Kenya Police. I covered the 1979 Kenya Open championship at Nairobi City Hall. The welterweight contest featured KDF’s Philip Mathenge and Kenya Police’s Morgan Oduori.
I reported for The Nairobi Times: “It was a classic illustration of what over-confidence can do to an accomplished boxer. Mathenge hurled himself into the ring making an expressive salute to the crowd. The cool reception he received seemed to portend that something nasty would happen to him. And it did. As the second and third rounds wore on, there was a bright prospect Mathenge was a candidate for the deck. But his spirit and drive kept him on his feet. The result – a split decision against him – was welcomed as fair by the spectators.”
For as long as I have been a journalist, the rivalry between KDF and Chafua Chafua has always given me something to take home and to remember. Long may it continue.
