Makwengwe: Life apart from football

At a time when everybody was slowly dismissing him as a noise maker in the football fraternity, accusing him of failing to practise what he often preaches, the Botswana Football Association (BFA) technical officer Phillmon Makwengwe shut everybody up when he won Coke Cup for Gaborone United (GU).

He even went on to walk away with an award of the coach of the Coca cola cup tournament in the last ever edition of the cup last year. However, it’s not only in football where he makes news. At one point, Makwengwe was accused of neglecting his child’s maintenance. But his assertion is that women at times like to use children to score points against men on personal issues that they had with fathers of their children.

But again lately it is the issue about his life, and when he is getting married that has become a centre of attraction from his family and he agrees it also gives him a headache. Makwengwe adds that whenever he visits home when football issues exhaust the next topic is when is he getting married. It is people in the limelight like Makwengwe and veteran musician Sidney Baitsile or DJ Sid that at their age, people will start to be curious to know about their lives and probably when they are getting married. This may at times be influenced by the notion of the kind the gentlemen people think they are. They simply possess mysterious personalities, irritating to some people probably for their unpopular comments in their respective areas of expertise.

In that way people will start to pay attention to each and everything about their lives. They start to question everything about them. Makwengwe admits that age might be slowly catching him off guard. DJ Sid has even affirmed in one of the local magazines that one of his cousins started to question him about his sexual orientation. So if it is not the sexual orientation it is the sexual behaviour.

Makwengwe was born way back in Mahalapye in 1967 to a family originally of nine; now six. A typical village boy proud to be born into a happy poverty stricken family of a Kalanga father from Borolong near Francistown,a mother from Mokgware village near Radisele in a Serowe South constituency. When asked about his educational background, Makwengwe prefers to label himself an “illiterate intellectual.” Having gone through formal education like any other average person, he holds many sports coaching credentials of high magnitude.He has also been trained in the Botswana Police Service.

Before he came to BFA, he worked for Botswana Police at Criminal Investigation Department (CID) South, then Barclays Bank (Gaborone and Mahalapye). He then moved to England and came back to work for Botswana Railways Sports and Recreation as a manager in Mahalapye.

Makwengwe has always contended that people should take care of other people`s progress in a workplace if they expect other people to take care of their children elsewhere. “Everyday I see people smile when they do not mean it. I dislike being underestimated and underrated”, he says. On business and personal note he says he has been allocated a 75 hectare land in Mokgware to operate sport facilities and a snake and animal park. He is in the process of getting the project into full swing.

Makwengwe mentions some of his role models as DR.VESELIN JELUSIC (VESKO) and JESUS CHRIST. His favourite music include a variety of GOSPEL, HOUSE and FUSION.