Stanley ‘Screamer’ Tshabalala was a complex man of many elements

As a schoolboy, Tshabalala, who died on Thursday night after succumbing to injuries he sustained during a home invasion in March, fancied himself as a pugilist. He trained under then Transvaal champion Jerry Moloi until remonstrations by his parents put an end to his prizefighter ambitions.

“I wasn’t a great boxer. Sometimes I got a good hiding from my colleagues. At home, my parents complained about this ‘panel beating’ [bruises]. I did not last long, and I decided to give up the sport,” he is quoted as saying on the Stanley Screamer Tshabalala website.

Boxing’s loss was football’s gain. Tshabalala, born in Orlando East 75 years ago, went on to make a name for himself in the game of billions. His newfound love saw him grow in stature in playing, coaching and managing, and in later years he dived into radio and TV broadcasting as well.

Tshabalala cut his teeth at Orlando Preston Brothers aged 19. He also featured for Vaal Professionals, African Wanderers and Orlando Pirates, for whom he was technical director at the time of his death. A broken leg during a Pirates match against Alexandra Blackpool in 1977 cut his career short.

Molefi Oliphant remembers first seeing Tshabalala playing for Kaizer XI in the late 1960s, and the former South African Football Association (Safa) president recalls the day the “Screamer” moniker was coined. “It was during a Kaizer XI versus Vanderbijlpark Invitation XI made up of players from the Bophelong and Boipatong football associations. He was playing left wing and kept shouting, ‘Faka! Faka! Faka!’ [pass me the ball]. That is where the name ‘Screamer’ came from, and it stuck.”

So did his association with Kaizer Chiefs, of which he was a founding member, leading to a life in the football fast lane in different roles spanning more than five decades.

An affable man of no half-measures, the larger-than-life Tshabalala, who had a taste for fine threads, was a passionate and combustible figure whose life was a catalogue of colourful, successful and controversial chapters. With him, what you saw was what you got, say those who knew him well.

“One, he was an assertive character who made his presence felt, especially with regard to football matters. Two, Stan was a very jovial person who transferred that spirit of liveliness to those around him. Three, he was knowledgeable in his own right as far as the game is concerned,” said Oliphant.

All three qualities came to the fore when the late Zola Mahobe used his ill-gotten riches to purchase Mamelodi Sundowns and tasked Tshabalala with propelling the club to the top and knocking Chiefs off their perch. Mahobe saw Chiefs as the standard-bearers, asserting that “when Chiefs sneeze, everybody catches a cold”. It made sense to him that, to copy Chiefs’ success and rebrand his newly acquired outfit, he had to bring Tshabalala on board.

Tshabalala — whose coaching roll call included African Wanderers, Orlando Pirates, Moroka Swallows and AmaZulu — took to Mahobe’s mandate like a duck to water. He converted the pitch to a canvas for his creative coaching, birthing a unique style of play he christened “shoeshine and piano”, a dainty method that demanded of his team that they attack and defend in sync. From the dugout, animated and energetic as ever, he screamed Mahobe’s galaxy of stars to an impressive collection of silverware over two spells. “He introduced that style of his that was very innovative and made you fall in love with football all over again,” says Oliphant.

Tshabalala’s presence was felt as an even bigger responsibility beckoned, albeit by default, when he found himself in the role of midwife to Bafana’s formation upon their return to international football in the wake of apartheid-induced isolation. Safa had appointed Jeff Butler — a Briton brought to Chiefs by Kaizer Motaung, who galvanised the Glamour Boys to glory in their 1980s and 1990s golden era — as the first national team coach, only for Butler’s reign to end before it had even begun, when discrepancies over his credentials were exposed.

One, he was an assertive character who made his presence felt, especially with regard to football matters. Two, Stan was a very jovial person who transferred that spirit of liveliness to those around him

—  Molefi Oliphant

Tshabalala showed no fear in venturing into the unknown and “bravely accepted the job”, said Oliphant, when “the late former president of Safa Solomon “Stix” Morewa asked him to take [it up] after we discovered Jeff Butler’s credentials were not what he [had presented] them to be”. Oliphant adds, “Stan went in at that level with no international coaching background to speak of.”

He led Bafana to an inaugural victory in 1992 against Cameroon in Durban, when Doctor Khumalo converted a penalty to give the greenhorns a maiden international victory against a Roger Milla-led Indomitable Lions, who had become the first African team to reach the Fifa World Cup quarterfinals at Italia ’90.

Tshabalala’s courageous willingness to enter uncharted waters with little if any knowledge of international football showed he was able to adapt. But his inexperience was brutally exposed when the new terrain became treacherous. Tshabalala’s Bafana got a rude introduction to qualification competition when they were drubbed 4-0 by a high-flying Super Eagles of Nigeria and then walloped 4-0 by Zimbabwe’s Warriors in quick succession. The score lines reduced the newbies to the ridicule of being referred to as “4x4s”.

He courted controversy when he found stinging criticism of the poor results unbearable and succumbed to rage and slapped Sunday Times soccer correspondent and veteran scribe Sy Lerman.

Safa suspended and subsequently fired Tshabalala for a self-sabotaging and immature act that resulted in his premature departure — by six months — from his job, his copybook blotted. “Rightfully or wrongfully, he reacted in the way he reacted. We are all human beings. Our emotions can sometimes override our thinking. At that point, he felt he was unfairly judged by a journalist. Our behaviour as human beings is situational and reactional. I’m not condoning his action,” said Oliphant. “Yes, it was a blot, because he lost that position and Augusto Palacios came in. [But] many years down the line he came back to the football association as technical director. That incident was a black mark against his name.”

Tshabalala returned to Bafana in another incarnation as team manager, a position he later occupied at Chiefs. “You don’t keep a good man down. As much as he faltered, all of us want to be given a second chance in life,” said Oliphant.

Tshabalala infamously made a comical mistake when he dispatched a national team call-up letter for Benni McCarthy addressed to “dear Mr Celta Vigo” to Ajax Amsterdam, when the striker had switched from the Dutch club to the Spanish outfit.

The duo had an altercation in a camp ahead of an Afcon qualifier against Ivory Coast in Abidjan in 2002 when McCarthy, reportedly unhappy with the terms of the contract Tshabalala had handed to the players, flew back to Spain.

Tshabalala was also a member of Jomo Sono’s technical team when Bafana participated in the 2002 World Cup in South Korea and Japan. Apart from being a rare breed that did duty for Chiefs, Sundowns and Pirates, Tshabalala also proved himself an affable storyteller who could have audiences in stitches. He became a regular feature on Chomane Chomane’s popular breakfast show on Lesedi FM.

As host of the Sitting with Stan TV show, he hosted legends and used his inimitable humour to relate tales from the various chapters of his storied career.

Perhaps other than Clive Barker, or outside the current crop of South African coaches, few had such an impact on football as Tshabalala.

To emphasise those elements, Oliphant borrows a line said by Mark Antony in Julius Caesar: “His life was gentle, and the elements / So mixed in him that Nature might stand up / And say to all the world, ‘This was a man.’”

“All of us could stand up say this was a great man. Again, in the contemporary set-up of South African football, we saw him [thrown] in the deep end as Bafana coach, only to become the manager of the senior men’s team. He was thrown in the deep end, but he swam. What more could you expect of a man? He became a player, coach, manager and technical director. Those qualities were not certificated, as is the case today. Those were natural skills. We must appreciate that no-one has gone through those stages at the national level in South African football. He is the only one I want to emphasise who had those natural skills. It reminds me of the old days, when you would have a teacher who had not gone to university but was teaching matriculants. That was Stanley ‘Screamer’ Tshabalala.”

Tshabalala was pained when goalkeeper Senzo Meyiwa, then the Pirates and Bafana captain, died after being shot at the home of his musician girlfriend Kelly Khumalo in October 2014.

Almost a decade later, his own life ended after complications from a gunshot wound inflicted on him by an intruder to his home. “This crime is depriving us of jewels in our society, of their wisdom. For people just to come into other people’s homes and cause harm — we as a country really must stand up to this crime,” Oliphant said.

In August 2022, Tshabalala buried his son Tokollo “Magesh” Tshabalala, a member of the famous TKZee music group. He is survived by his wife Popo.