The White Wizards

When I first went out to the country which, in my lifetime, has had three names - Southern Rhodesia, as it was on my first visit in 1963, Rhodesia, as it was on my second, in 1967-70, and now Zimbabwe - it was, aged 18 and fresh from public school, to teach at Bernard Mizeki College, which aspired to become an African Eton. I was only there for a couple of terms and so I was worked hard: as well as teaching I was loaded with other responsibilities, which included training the school football teams.

As players, these boys were brilliant, but they were individualists, so they disliked passing the ball. Once we had sorted that out, taught them how to use a formation, and bought them a new all-white strip and some decent boots, they started winning games, and became so successful that they were known on the school circuit as the White Wizards.

The other day, leafing through an old album, I discovered that I had printed their names on the back of the photograph. Having their names suddenly brought back all sorts of memories, not least of the pride we had as a team, and how hard we worked to earn it - like getting up half-an-hour early in the morning to go on a training run.

I felt very humbled by their determination to succeed. They only lost one match.

I also trained the second eleven, and there was huge competition to move up into the firsts. Most fixtures involved both teams so, on away matches, the twenty-two players would pile into the back of the school's one-and-a-half ton Bedford truck and Crispin, the school's driver, would take us all over the country, sometimes to very remote schools.

Again, I have....

....their names on the back of the photograph and, with them, another flood of memories.

Bernard Mizeki College was a small school, just two forms of entry and, at that time, three year groups, so a total of around 180 students. Most of these boys would have gone on to take Cambridge 'O' level in a years' time. The school didn't plan to offer 'A' level, not yet, so these boys would have had to compete for places in one of the few schools which did, and which would take black students.

As is fairly evident from the photographs, many of these 'boys' were grown men, some probably older than I was. It had taken them that long to work their way up the African, poorly-funded part of the country's education system.

By the time Mrs MW and I went out in 1967 the bush war between Rhodesian 'security' forces and black guerrillas crossing from Mozambique and Zambia was beginning. I often wonder how many of the students I knew out there joined the fight, and how many died in that terrible war; and I wonder what happened to those who survived into the new Zimbabwe.