Why There Are No Tribal Clubs In Zambia

By Punch Chama
An East African colleague recently asked me why he didn’t see any clubs in Zambia linked towards tribes or regions as is commonly seen across many African leagues.
It’s true that across African leagues these type of clubs are found everywhere with a few exceptions. Zambia being one of them.
For the purpose of this post a tribal club is one which was formed on the basis of giving a certain tribe or region an Identity in football.
The early history of such clubs in Africa is that they first recruited players and officials from the tribe or region and many of the club’s still have the tribes colors, slogans, totems and even symbols on thier logos.
Tribal clubs across Africa are known by different tags but a few are terms used are Community or Traditional clubs depending on which part of Africa it is.
In Zambia though such terms have a totally different meaning.
Some African clubs that began or have thier history linked to a certain tribe or region are AFC Leopards in Kenya, Bulawayo Highlanders in Zimbabwe, JSK Kabylie of Algeria, Asante Kotoko in Ghana and Amazulu in South Africa to name a few clubs.
At times some of the club’s hav be used for political purposes for some of the officials to get popular in thier regions.
In Zambia on the other hand such clubs with such history don’t exist. Why?
The answer lies in where football began in Zambia which is the Copperbelt.
The Copperbelt remains the stronghold of Zambian football even today and the earliest organised football there began in the 1920s.
The Copperbelt being a mining province had a huge population of migrants from all across Zambia but chiefly from the Northern region.
Blacks were not allowed to participate in organised football so they began having social games every weekend.
The Social games started becoming fierce and selection of players per team was purely based on tribal lines.
The two most fierce teams were from Kitwe.
One was called Chonta Malinga and the other was called Shaka Zulu.
Chonta Malinga represented the Miners from the North while Shaka Zulu represented the miners from the East who traced thier roots to South Africa.
The matches initially were competitive but soon turned out to be platforms for tribal wars and bloodbaths.
The matches continued for a while but the situation became alarming when the miners would take thier fights to the work and the day after matches there would be problems in the mines.
Productivity reduced and the European township managers pulled a plug on these matches and the teams were disbanded.
The black miners were then incorporated and mixed in already existing mine teams such as Rokhana United ( Now Nkana).
But the blacks would instead play in the blacks only league until 1962 when a mixed race league was introduced.
Another effect of the ban on such tribal teams was that the officials of the black teams were all white so that there would be no recruiting of players from the same tribe or region.
So from the 1930s upto the 1962 this was how most of the biggest Zambian clubs came about.
This is why in Zambia it’s so Normal today to see clubs like Nakambala Leopards and Real Nakonde having less players in the team from that region.
In Zambia it’s perfectly normal but in some African countries that can’t happen.
The way Zambian clubs are set up is down to the historical roots and helped forge National Unity and no wonder Zambia reached the AFCON final at its first try as the country’s football avoided the initial tribal problems many national teams had faced shortly after independence.
This is something that Zambian football is well known for in terms of the forging national unity all over and my African brother admires that about the countries football.