Harare giants Dynamos reportedly splashed US$1000 on a traditional healer ahead of last Sunday’s showdown against old foes Highlanders but still lost the clash.

DeMbare, whose financial challenges culminated in players boycotting training for most of last week, saw it fitting to pay a sangoma to ‘cleanse’ the club ahead of the Bosso clash.

Lifestyle tabloid H-Metro reports that the Dynamos leadership prioritized the sangoma at the expense of preparing players for the ‘Battle of Zimbabwe’, which they went on to lose 0-2 courtesy of goals on either side of the half time break from McKinnon Mushore and Godfrey Makaruse.

“Given the issues that were happening with the boys (the players), who were boycotting training, there was a feeling that such a payment was not the right thing to do for the club at the moment,” sources told H-Metro. 

“However, the owners of the club said that this was a tradition at Dynamos and it was not going to be changed simply because the players were boycotting training.

“They said these player boycotts have been happening as long as they can remember and they come and go and this cannot be used as an excuse to stop payments to the sangoma.

“It was like they were saying that paying the sangoma was more important, in terms of getting the result which we wanted from the game against Highlanders, than the training itself.

“The message was like as long as we satisfied the sangoma then we did not need to worry about the issues that had happened at training because the club would still be in a position to compete against Highlanders.

“Of course, it didn’t happen like that because we lost that game 2-0 and the performance of the boys showed that they had been affected by the issues which had happened on the training field.

“We don’t know what the sangoma said about the result because we never get to meet him given he is only known to a few people at the club.”

“The sangoma got his dues and, maybe, if you were going to ask him how did we end up losing he will say that without his intervention, we were going to lose maybe 5-0, I don’t know.

“But what we cannot hide is the fact that we are concentrating on things which don’t matter in this age and era when other clubs, of our magnitude, are investing in sports science.

“We are still stuck in the old ways of doing business instead of asking ourselves why we have not won the league in 10 years if the so-called powers of these sangomas really work.

“It’s a reflection of where we are today as a club and maybe we deserve the result that we got on Sunday.”