Bennett Mnguni has not forgotten the day he was mistaken for a Sherriff in Europe.
‘Bobby’, as he is affectionately known, is deeply religious. He is a member of the Zion Christian Church (ZCC) and is proud to be so.
In 2002, the then Mamelodi Sundowns midfielder caught the interest of Russian outfit Lokomotiv on the back of impressive runs in the Caf Champions League and Africa Cup of Nations.
In a matter of weeks, the hairless former Downs midfielder was in Moscow, temperatures freezing at -40 degrees.
“I didn’t realise I was going to -40 degrees. When we landed, I could see white covering houses, and it was snow. It was freezing,” Mnguni tells FARPost.
Grateful to his God, Mnguni went to Russia wearing his ZCC hat. Being the only black, he stood there waiting for his new club’s representative for hours in a sea of white people.
“I landed with my bags, and I’m the only black at the airport. There was no one to ask for two to three hours. They looked for someone who could speak English. This was after hours,” he explains.
Interestingly, the person sent to pick him up at the airport was seeing him, mistaking him for a black Sheriff because of his ZCC hat.
“They thought I was a Sheriff because I was wearing my ZCC hat. It was freezing; I started panicking, thinking I was in the wrong country.”
Finally, his talent that started in the dusty fields of Cullinan, east of Pretoria, had landed him in far-flung Moscow, the capital of the world’s largest country Russia.
He, however, had to learn the language as quickly as he could and adjust to life in the country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia.
“If it were someone else, they would have come back home after two weeks. Each time I went out of the field, I couldn’t feel my toes because it was freezing. I’d wrap my feet in a towel and wait for them to warm up.
“One of my teammates then gave me this thing that warmed my feet and told me not to tell anyone. This was after two months. So, all along, my teammates were sabotaging me. I felt relieved. I could now enjoy sessions.”
After two years at Lokomotiv – with the Russian language mastered, the weather no longer a problem, he moved to Rostov.
“I spent two seasons at Lokomotiv, the guy I was competing with was captain of Russia, and they couldn’t bench him. I moved to Rostov. I was with Matthew Booth and Esau Kanyenda,” he says.
