On a bright afternoon late in the 1982 season, Abdallah Shebe, in Feisal colours, spread such extensive mayhem in the Gor Mahia defence that scouts off the pitch had little difficulty deciding what to do with him: sign him. The next season, Shebe lined up in the olive green of Gor and happily raised his arms, accepting the cheers of crowds chanting his name. The party was on.
But towards the end of 1986, Shebe was a man living in fear. People were demanding to know why he was not playing for them. One of his unfortunate neighbours had his house stoned after thugs mistook it for Shebe’s. When I found Shebe, after a bit of trying, he told me that there were people who had sworn to lynch him the moment they got hold of him. The party was over.
Shebe was a handsome and flamboyant player whose appetite for blending skill with dirt ensured him continuous tenancy in the sport pages. When sports journalists were reporting the goals he had scored or helped score, we were talking about his yellow or red cards. Mostly, we dealt with both.
As his career matured, so did fresh chapters open. Shebe started attracting suspensions. At the time, I traced him while he was in hiding. He was serving a one-year suspension. Unsurprisingly, he was not taking it lying down: “I have read in the newspapers that I am suspended. But nobody has written to me officially informing me of my suspension. So, as far as I am concerned, those are just newspaper stories.”
Of course, they were not, I told Shebe. We had written communication from the club, and confirmed on inquiry. “If that is the case,” scorned Shebe, puffing at a cigarette, “then I’ll make my next move.”
“Appeal?” I asked.
“How can I appeal? What letter would I quote? Official matters are dealt with official correspondence. Do you expect me to quote newspapers?”
“What then will you do?”
“Lawyers,” he said and stomped the filter of his cigarette underfoot.
At that time, he was 28. He had not played for Harambee Stars. But he tasted a life that many can only dream about. For two seasons since January 1985, he turned out for the Swiss First Division side, SC Schaffhausen, as a semi-professional. The club had toured Kenya late in 1984, and after a match with Gor Mahia, they were so taken up with Shebe’s skills that they made him an offer.
After protracted negotiations, Shebe was released by Gor. “I was making good money there,” Shebe told me. “Something like KSh30,000 a month.” That was a princely amount. So, why then could he not stay?
“I returned last December to get married,” he said.
“Then I turned out for Gor in a few friendlies and then I returned to Switzerland. When the season was finished, I came back and turned out for Gor in a few League matches. Then I was suspended and letters written to my club that I was under suspension. To those people, a player’s integrity is of such value that merely placing doubts on it bodes ill for someone’s future. Because of those damaging letters, I could not renew my contract.”
How could he be suspended by Gor when he was turning out for Schaffhausen?
“That’s the point,” Shebe replied, lighting up a fresh cigarette. “I am not a Gor Mahia player. So they cannot suspend me. But a lot of damage has been done.” Shebe was an entertainer, on and off the pitch. Even the way he spoke as he smoked kept you glued to what he was saying. There were gaps in his story made wider by his demeanour; he was at once lucid and economical with words, leaving you with all sorts of question marks.
But he was hard to ignore. Of his many games, I particularly enjoyed one against Re-Union at Nyayo National Stadium in the 1984 season when Shebe received a high ball while standing in a clearly off-side position. As the off side whistle blew, Shebe trapped the ball on his chest, dropped it on his feet, lifted his right leg backwards and brought it with much force towards the ball below him. But rather than shoot, he softly place his foot on the ball and wagged a finger at the Re-Union goalkeeper as if to say: “The ref saved you.”
Laughter reeled from the terraces. Shortly after signing for Gor in 1983, he excitedly promised me big things. “We are not used to one another yet,” he said of the team featuring the season’s new signings: “But it is just a matter of time. This team will go places. We have ambitions.”
Part of those ambitions was winning a continental title. Their hopes ended in the wreckage of a catastrophe in Cairo when the players lost their heads and foolishly attacked the clearly biased referee. In the wake of the mayhem, Shebe and some other players picked up CAF suspensions.
Now he angrily told me between his puffs: “People should not look for me. My wife has just got a baby. Can she have peace! Let her and the baby not be part of any quarrel people may have with me and my football.”
He described himself as club-less. But he also declared his intention to continue with football. That meant plenty more would be heard from him. And it was. On the heels of his outburst, the club’s deputy secretary, Sylvester Inda, got in touch with me to disprove of the striker’s comments. He sent me a copy of a letter Gor Mahia had received from Schaffhausen FC in Switzerland, releasing Shebe from their ranks.
Inda said: “Shebe left after the league season in 1984 after we had cleared him to turn out for Schaffhausen in Zurich. During this time, he stayed in the house of the Schaffhausen patron, Ernest Gremlich. He was subsequently offered a contract which had – as all contracts tend to have – some ambiguous fine print.
Since as the Swahili say kuuliza si ujinga, Shebe decided to return home and consult with family and friends on the contract’s stipulations.
“Such a mission could obviously not be sanctioned by Schaffhausen and so Shebe cooked a story that his father had died. The club soon after received an urgent telex from Mr Gremlich requesting us to ask Shebe to return immediately if the funeral he was attending was over.
When we inquired from Mr Gremlich what funeral they were talking about, he told us that they had bought him a ticket to deal with the emergency of his father’s death.”
That was news to Gor Mahia officials but they let it slide and did nothing to give Shebe away. Shebe returned to Switzerland as soon his father’s “funeral” was over. But very soon afterwards, he wrote to Gor Mahia informing them that he was now on loan to another Swiss team, Matigny.
There was nothing for the club to do about that and so they just noted it. But in short order, Shebe wrote another letter, this time addressed to Gor Mahia chairman Zack Mbori, informing him that he had disagreed with Matigny because the club had breached his contract.
Shebe announced that he would be coming home in December and he had a request: Was the club willing to take him back? Mbori confirmed these developments to me, complete with Shebe’s letter.
Shebe indeed came back in December 1985, got married and requested Gor Mahia to field him in the East and Central African Club Championship held in Tanzania in January 1986. Gor, however, rejected the request as they were unsure about his contractual status in Switzerland.
Ever resourceful, Shebe departed for Switzerland as his former team-mates at Gor prepared to defend their Cecafa Club title. Alas! The trip lasted two days!
“Shebe got stranded in Zurich and the Gor Mahia council had to organise an urgent fund-raiser to send him a ticket to return home. He could not find a club that wanted his services. We received a telex from the Kenyan Consulate there to come to his aid. Arrangements were made with Kenya Airways to fly him back. We saved Shebe the embarrassment of being repatriated,” Inda offered.
As they were doing all that, Gor Mahia talked to Gremlich, Shebe’s first host in Zurich, to find out what he knew of their homeboy. Gremlich told Mbori that no team in Switzerland was keen on Shebe’s services, and that Matigny had actually finalised payments to him. If he was not satisfied, he should feel free to consult his lawyers, Gremlich added. Shebe chose to make no fuss about it. On his return home, he disappeared only to resurface when Gor Mahia played the one-off Motokura Cup tournament in which Gor lost a breathtaking final to Honda FC of Japan at the Nyayo National Stadium.
Shebe was then rumoured to have gone in the hotel business, pursuant to some catering and hotel management training he had received while in Switzerland. Far from being the case, he turned to be an itinerant and secretive man, allegedly living off proceeds of money he had made in his Swiss sojourn.
But, of course, this wasn’t going to last. When I spoke to him, he told me he was doing nothing. He was just weighing his options. He couldn’t rule out a return to Europe. But he was emphatic about one thing: Gor Mahia fans should stop looking for him. He just wanted to enjoy his peace and ensure that he took care of his new baby. But football fans don’t take kindly to the erring ways of their stars. As Bobby Ogolla noted, you are a hero one moment, and the devil the next.
Shebe soon went out of circulation for good. When he died some years after this episode, the man who was among the first Kenyan players to play in Europe, couldn’t merit more than a few paragraphs in the pages he once ruled.
The appearance of Kenya’s players in Europe would not seriously begin until the advent of the Dennis Oliech era in 2005.