Zama wants more recognition for making the grass greener

The age-old saying, ‘grass is always greener on the other side’, might be just be a phrase for some people, but for Zama Aphane, this statement has been his reality since he left a marketing job to pursue a career as a groundsman.

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Aphane is the groundsman at that Atteridgeville sports hub, the Lucas Moripe Stadium, named after a son of that soil.

Zama, as he insists being called, instead of the formal usage of a surname, never imagined that grass-cutting would be something that puts food on the table for him and his family, let alone take him across the African continent.

It is not often that the president of a football federation would be keen on the complexities of how to maintain a football pitch, but to his surprise, he has been approached a couple of times by presidents or chairman of teams playing Mamelodi Sundowns in the Caf Champions League.

“When the presidents from other federations come, they ask for my number and they call me. Sometimes people come to me and they and ask the team officials about the pitch, then they bring them to me. This is something  I am not used to from bosses in our local game,” Aphane says.

“I remember there were teams from DR Congo and Mozambique that came to play here and were impressed with the pitch,” Aphane recalls, but his memory lets him down as to exactly when he received theese compliments.

While compliments can cushion an ego, Aphane is not too pleased about visiting teams raving about his work. Instead, he would love to get applause from the Premier Soccer League. 

In 2009, Aphane was named the Groundsman of the Year and he recalls a time where he found himself in a room with the league’s top brass. That was the only time that the award was handed out and Aphane wants to understand why the award was canned. To a large extent, he feels groundsmen are not appreciated.

“Bosses of the teams and the powers that be in the PSL have to appreciate us more because we are the people who make the ball roll. They must give us recognition because we are important to football. I got a Groundsman of the Year when Teko Modise took PSL Footballer of the Year, it’s so long ago that I even forgot the prize money (amount),” he says.

Aphane continued: “The players get the awards at the end of the season but where do they play? They display their magic on the pitches that we maintain. Ace Ncobo (former referee) is the one who pushed for that award but now it is no longer there. If it comes back, it will force groundsmen to work harder and that will improve the quality. I can lead all of these groundsmen because stadiums are failing over small things like poor or no drainage systems.

“All the groundsmen in South Africa must make sure that they treat their pitches like their own children because I see some other pitches on the television and they are terrible. Tthe maintenance of the fields is required because they are owned by the municipality and some of them don’t have enough budget, or don’t budget at all for the field maintenance – it is then up to us to cover those patches and make it look gorgeous.”