Tracing Early Kenyan Football’s Roots in Mombasa and Beyond.
An early football club in Mombasa in the 1930s, James A. C. Burke (gentleman in suit & tie on the right) is the only one identified. Source: Coastweek magazine.
I stumbled on the above photo on Coastweek magazine a few months ago and I’ve been trying to research on early football in Kenya ever since, with a focus on how the Coast influenced it, or pioneered it if you prefer. I was impressed by how well-organised and managed they looked for a football team in Kenya in the 1930s. Also, if they had trophies on display then there must have been rival football clubs to them at the time, most likely just as competitive and well-organised. Sadly, there has been little or no information on them and their then rivals available, so far. We will hopefully change that by welcoming a concerted research effort of writer and readers, with any possible corrections from readers just as key to the process. A certain Captain Musa M. Ittiso had sent the photo to Coastweek magazine on behalf of the Burke family to rectify an error and seek assistance, the photo had first appeared on the cover of a 2013 edition of the Old Africa magazine but had wrongfully labelled Mr. James A. C. Burke as the gentleman on the left. An understandable error because the gentleman on the left is white and would match the English name. Luckily, the real Mr. Burke had his descendants alive, with one of his granddaughters living in Mombasa, thus prompting the correction. James A. C. Burke hailed from Trinidad and Tobago and was educated in Britain, most probably where the seeds of what we assume to be a football managerial career were planted. He came to Kenya in the 1920s to practise law (on one occasion he was remembered and honoured posthumously for his contribution to the legal practice in Mombasa, with his grandson presented a token and a photo of his grandfather at the Mombasa High Court) and was known to be a proficient swimmer, swimming across the channel from Mombasa Club to English Point. He died in Kenya in 1947. However, the identification process ends there, with the Burke family themselves seeking any possible information on the 1930s Mombasa team Mr. Burke was involved with.
My first thought on where more information on early football in Mombasa could be found was Mombasa Sports Club, having been founded in 1896 surely there must have been some form of early football records despite the club being cricket-predominant at the time. I found more than I had hoped for. On Mombasa Sports Club’s history page, there is record of a football match on October 8th, 1904 between Europeans and CMS Boys, the freed slaves from the Church Mission Society Settlement in Frere Town, a match which CMS Boys won. “It was a bit hot for Europeans and on the Sahara Desert sports ground the advantage went to those not wearing shoes”, describes the official match report. Remarkable.
“This is a grant in perpetuity, free of cost, by Salim bin Khalfan, Liwali of Mombasa, to Sir Arthur Henry Hardinge (Her Majesty’s Commissioner and Consul General of East Africa Protectorate) and to Ralph Bertie Peter Cator (HM Judge) and others, as Trustees of Mombasa Sports Club”, reads the original title deed of Mombasa Sports Club as highlighted on their history page.
As previously highlighted in my poem ‘It tolls for thee; The Frere people and the historic Kengeleni bell’ in this blog last week, the freed slaves in Frere Town had roots in Nyasaland (Malawi), Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe. And it’s in Mozambique where I feel could be the origin of the football knowledge and I assume style that the CMS Boys had to outsmart the British in that particular match, resilience to the sweltering heat of Mombasa notwithstanding. This based on me being a lifelong student of the game of football and its history. It must have taken a unique effort to beat the founders of the game, when the game was still in its infancy in the country. I attribute this to the fact that Africa’s greatest football export, Eusébio da Silva Ferreira, fondly referred to as Panthera Negras (Black Panther), came from Maputo, Mozambique. He went on to play for Portugal and would score a whooping 733 goals in 745 matches in his professional career. Notably, 473 goals in 440 matches for his beloved Benfica and 41 goals in 64 matches for his adopted nation. He won the Ballon d’Or in 1965, and was runner-up in 1962 and 1966. If you have watched footage of Eusébio you will notice that he combined flair with great athleticism, raw power and a trademark ferocious right-footed shot. It’s the flair bit that I feel could give further credence to my thinking that the football played in Kenya’s Coast has Mozambican roots.
Coastal football in Kenya, Mombasa notably, has a distinctive style from that played in other parts of the country. Leisurely played on the sandy beaches, it prioritises flair and flamboyance over an ‘ends justify the means’ result-driven approach. Given an opportunity, the average football fan in Mombasa would sign a mercurial Neymar over a work-horse N’golo Kante for their team any given day, and twice on Sunday. Nutmegs (chobo) are received with great excitement by the crowd, kanzu even more so. I think it’s Mombasa’s famous son in football coaching circles, Twahir Muhiddin, who once commented post-match, “Japo wametufunga, vyenga tuliwala” (They might have won, but we constantly dribbled past them/played the more sleek football). The tag line is Mombasa Raha after all, no time for unpalatable dull football. It’s no wonder that during every FIFA World Cup, outside the favelas of Rio de Janeiro and the country boundaries of Brazil itself, you’d find the next loyal supporters of the Brazilian national team in Old Town Mombasa and Kisauni. Their flowery style resonates with what the locals here consider football in its purest form. Therein lies a common link from my Eusébio and Mozambique inference, the Brazilian Ginga.
The British may rightfully claim to be the originators of football with its present set of rules globally, and the game was indeed introduced to Brazil by a Scotsman (Thomas Donohoe) but it’s the Brazilians who took the game to another supernatural dimension through Ginga. The British founding the game in Kenya is also not in doubt, Mombasa Sports Club as a platform for the growth of the game as we’ve seen, came to be from the wily British way of having natives of lands they colonised ‘hospitably’ offering their land to them. But there’s a mystery or a missing link somewhere, the British style is too workman-like and rigid for them to have been the proponents of the brand of football played in Mombasa and its environs. My sentimental self prefers the freed slaves from Mozambique link. The CMS boys might not have beaten the British with a refined Ginga style, but they certainly could have with athleticism and natural flair born from their upbringing around Capoeira/Engolo practice.
I know some fanatics of Gor Mahia F.C (who I support) and AFC Leopards would probably ask, if Coastal football has such a rich heritage why is it that it is they who went on to dominate Kenyan football and not teams from the Coast? My answer would be that Coastal dominance was definitely witnessed on the national football scene even though short-lived. The now defunct Feisal F.C (founded in 1940) won the Kenyan Premier League in 1965, on the 3rd year of the league’s formation. They shared a great rivalry with Liverpool F.C Mombasa (which was later renamed Mwenge), with Liverpool F.C Mombasa finishing second to Feisal F.C when they won the Kenyan Premier League in 1965.
While Feisal were predominantly Swahili, Liverpool had an Indian and Goan influence (Goa itself was ruled by the Portuguese for four and a half centuries, giving another possible angle of shared cultures between the Portuguese colonies, through trade both in goods and humans). Setting the tone for the kind of community rivalry that propels the growth of football in a country, think Liverpool and Everton in England or Celtic and Rangers in Scotland. Gor Mahia and AFC Leopards would follow suit. Feisal F.C and Liverpool F.C Mombasa’s influence transcended the club scene, they provided key players to Kenya’s national side. Liverpool F.C Mombasa’s great Goan goalkeeper and captain Albert Castanha, nicknamed ‘The Cat’, represented Kenya in both football and athletics. He is widely regarded as the greatest all-round Kenyan athlete of Goan ancestry. Feisal F.C gave to the nation the dynamic duo of Ali Sungura and Ali Kajo. Ali Kajo notably scored the last goal for Kenya Colony and the first goal for the new Republic of Kenya. They are just a few examples of the players from the two clubs that went on to represent the nation, I will hopefully highlight more.
“Then there was Ali Kajo who played at the centre…everyone knew he was lazy and hated to run. The rest of the team just fed him the ball as he grudgingly ran to the edge of the penalty area, where if it was given to him on the plate, two to three feet from his right leg, he could kick it so sweetly it would fly five feet off the ground and even burst through the older fraying parts of the net. The crowd would go wild even as the ground staff rushed to darn the net.” Ali Kajo as described by Hartman de Souza (a Goan who lived in Kenya as a boy in the 1950s and 1960s) in his memoirs featured in Cyprian Fernandes’ ‘Stars Next Door’.
The reason why the Coastal dominance of the football scene was short-lived is up for debate but I suspect that the hands-on British influence on the game locally, that came a few decades after Mr. James A. C. Burke and his Mombasa Football Club of the 1930s, could have played a part. Ray Bachelor, an Englishman, became Kenya’s first manager in 1961 and would later manage Nakuru AllStars, leading them to winning the inaugural Kenyan Premier League in 1963. This was a time British football was thriving, with England winning the World Cup in 1966, Celtic from Scotland winning the European Cup (now the Champions League) in 1967 and England’s Manchester United winning it the year after. With the pragmatic British style of efficiency over exuberance reaping rewards, it could be that Ray Bachelor laid the ground for dismissing the flamboyance of Coastal football as an effective way of winning. It could also be that those who were picked for the national side from the Coast were asked to drop their mesmerizing Ginga lest their places went to someone else, and would probably slowly rub the loss in identity to their teammates back at club level when they went back. Even at club level British influence gradually increased with Feisal F.C even having a Scotsman among their ranks leading up to the 1960s, Jimmy Linden, an expatriate who worked as a technical manager at the cement factory in Bamburi and went on to be capped by the Kenya national team. Linden is remembered by Hartman de Souza as a hit with the crowd adept at playing the ball further forward and jumping over tackles to get to it, the crowd nicknamed him Beberu, in a fond way. Feisal F.C’s solitary league title win in 1965 was sadly Coastal football in its dying embers. It remains the one and only league win by a team from the Coast, to date.
The flamboyant football and talent in Mombasa remains in abundance but I feel it’s the belief that the style can indeed conquer all on the national scene once again that is gone. If I never get to see a league title won by a Coastal team in my lifetime, at least I am certain of one thing, I will always be presented with the chance to use Twahir Muhiddin’s words, “Japo wametufunga, vyenga tuliwala”.
The article was made possible in no small part thanks to:
- Coastweek Magazine and Cyprian Fernandes writing on the Goan influence in Liverpool F.C Mombasa.
- Mombasa Sports Club’s detailed history.
- Ginga and Capoeira history detailed here by Amrisha Parashar: https://www.redbull.com/in-en/ginga-%E2%80%93-the-brazilian-lifestyle#:~:text=The%20origins%20of%20this%20football,came%20from%20Angola%20and%20Mozambique.
- Historian Dr. Desch-Obi detailing Capoeira and its origins.
- Hartman de Souza memoirs in Cyprian Fernandes’ ‘Stars Next Door’: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.scroll.in/article/883054/as-a-goan-child-growing-up-in-kenya-in-the-1950s-i-saw-football-change-and-history-being-made
Thank you !!!
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