Picture the scene – it is Monday evening in Zanzibar, and Selemani Mwalimu has just finished training with Simba SC. He sits down for dinner with his teammates at the club’s hotel before eventually heading to bed, with nothing seemingly out of the ordinary.
Mwalimu is in Simba’s camp and, from the outside, appears firmly in Steve Barker’s plans for the upcoming Kariakoo Derby. He is training with the team and preparing for another season in the red and white. At least, that is how it looks.
Then the night takes an extraordinary turn. By Tuesday morning, Mwalimu is no longer a Simba player. He is a Young Africans player.
Suddenly, everyone is asking the same question: How did that happen?
How does a player go to bed at Simba’s hotel in Zanzibar and wake up having signed for the club’s biggest rivals in Dar es Salaam? It sounds like the kind of transfer that would take weeks to negotiate and days to execute, yet the public version of events unfolded in a matter of hours.
Mwalimu reportedly left Simba’s camp during the night on Monday, leaving his luggage behind, before taking the 15-minute flight to Dar es Salaam. By Tuesday morning, Yanga had announced him. Later that afternoon, Mwalimu was back in Zanzibar, arriving at Zanzibar International Airport alongside Yanga vice-president Arafat Ali Haji and club media officer Ali Kamwe.
Only this time, he was fully kitted out in Yanga colours. The man who had gone to bed with Simba was back on the island as a Yanga player. You could not write it. Or perhaps you could.
HERSI ALLY SAID ON MWALIMU: ‘HE DESERVES TO BE HERE’
Because behind this extraordinary switch was a man who had been watching Mwalimu for some time and who clearly believed the striker should never have ended up at Simba in the first place. That man is Hersi Ally Said. And when I spoke to him about the deal, his account offered a fascinating glimpse into how Yanga pulled off one of the most audacious transfer moves in recent Tanzanian football.
Hersi does not speak about Mwalimu as though Yanga simply stumbled across an opportunity when it presented itself. There is history here.
“I’ve known him for a long time,” Hersi tells FARPost. He recalls travelling to the United States for the FIFA Club World Cup, where he went to watch Mwalimu, while also revealing that he had been following the striker since last season as he made his mark with Simba and scored nine goals. So when Mwalimu appeared to be heading back to Simba for another season on loan, Hersi was paying attention. “When I saw his move going to the other team, I thought he doesn’t deserve to be there. He deserves to be here.”
That sentence probably tells you more about Yanga’s determination to get the deal done than anything else.
For Hersi, this was not simply about beating Simba to a player. He genuinely believed Mwalimu belonged at Yanga. “It’s part of building a strong team. Mwalimu is a very strong central striker. He’s the only player from Tanzania who has played the FIFA Club World Cup. For me, he’s a top talent. He needs to play for the biggest club in Tanzania.” So when the opportunity presented itself, Yanga were ready.
THE MWALIMU DRAMA ON MONDAY
This is where the story gets really interesting. Mwalimu was with Simba in Zanzibar. He had trained with the team, eaten dinner with his teammates and gone to bed at the club hotel. Then, somehow, everything changed. According to reports, Mwalimu left Simba’s camp during the night, leaving his luggage behind, and travelled to Dar es Salaam.
While Simba remained in Zanzibar, their striker was completing his move to Yanga. By Tuesday morning, the announcement was out. Mwalimu was officially a Yanga player. The speed of it all is what makes the story so remarkable. There was barely enough time for the football public to process what was happening before Yanga had already got their man.
And then he returned to Zanzibar.
This time, he was accompanied by Yanga officials and dressed in the club’s colours. It was almost as if the entire operation had taken place under cover of darkness, only for the final reveal to come in broad daylight. But there is an important distinction here. The transfer may have happened overnight. The interest did not. Hersi’s comments suggest Yanga’s pursuit of Mwalimu goes much further back. He had known the player for a while, watched him and visited him at the Club World Cup. So when Mwalimu’s future suddenly became uncertain, Yanga were already in position to act.
There was another piece to the puzzle, too: Yanga’s relationship with Wydad Casablanca. Hersi recalls how Wydad president Hicham Ait Mena wanted Aziz Ki released early so the midfielder could join the Moroccan side for the Club World Cup. Yanga agreed. But it came at a cost. They allowed one of their most important players to leave early and subsequently played five matches, including a cup final, without him.
THE WYDAD CONNECTION
“I sacrificed,” says Hersi, who also serves as chairman of the African Clubs Association [ACA]. It was a sacrifice, but one that helped strengthen the relationship between the two clubs. It also strengthened his relationship with Hicham, who is himself a member of the ACA.
And in football, relationships matter. Sometimes, they matter a lot. There is something almost poetic about where this entire drama unfolded.
Simba and Yanga were both in Zanzibar, the place where Mwalimu’s career took off. Before joining Fountain Gate two years ago in the Tanzania Premier League, the 20-year-old striker scored 23 goals in the Zanzibar League. Hersi points out that Simba were training at the Amani Complex, just next to a facility Yanga were using ahead of Wednesday’s showdown.
“Simba is training there; he was there yesterday, and today he’s here.” That line captures the bizarre nature of the entire episode.
Mwalimu was with Simba one day and Yanga the next, despite both clubs being on the same island preparing for one of the biggest fixtures on the Tanzanian football calendar.
Reports indicate that Simba had not fully concluded the signing, with an outstanding loan fee still to be settled. If that is the case, it becomes another important piece of the puzzle. From the outside, Mwalimu may have looked like a Simba player. Behind the scenes, however, the situation may not have been quite as settled. And Yanga saw the opening. They moved quickly.
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