Majwega furious with Azam, KCCA

Majwega controls the ball during his last Cranes appearance against Botswana at Namboole on June 13.

PHOTO BY ISMAIL KEZAALA

Soccer.

Player claims Azam are holding him hostage, and that KCCA still owe him money. On their part, Azam accuse Majwega, who has not played football since mid-June, of absconding from duty, while KCCA think the player is dishonest.

Amid some gentle mid-morning sun, half a kilometre off Kiira Road in Namugongo, a Kampala suburb, a small door on a black gate glides open.

Clad in blue marching T-shirt and track suits, Brian Majwega emerges. Inside the premises is the main house and a handful of other smaller rentals. The former KCCA, now disgruntled Azam FC player, occupies one two-roomed abode, where he lives with his spouse.

In the living room, the Play Station battle between him and his friend, Allan, resumes. He is playing Manchester United and Allan, Barcelona. “Most of the time after my personal training I play my Play Station games,” says Majwega.

This is Majwega’s life since his last competitive club football early May, where the left winger created the winner for Aggrey Morris in Azam’s 2-1 victory over Yanga in the Tanzanian league. And now, rather than feature for the Cranes, who he last played for against Botswana at Namboole on June 13, he instead plays virtual football on his PS. The player has since failed to return to his Tanzanian club, where he signed a two- year contract from KCCA last December. He says he can’t stay where he feels unwanted and wants to be released.

“I was injured during Cecafa,” says Majwega of being left out of the Azam squad that won the tournament early August. “So one morning the Azam FC CEO, Saad Kawemba, called me and the other players that were not included in the Cecafa squad for the meeting.”

Majwega adds: “Once in the CEO’s office, he told me that ‘look, the coach (Stewart Hall) said he is not going to use you.’ “But for us as management, we see you are talented and still young and we don’t want to hold back your career. So we decided that we should loan you back to KCCA so that you continue improving.
“I asked Kawemba that if you insist that you are loaning me to KCCA for me to improve my career, how will the coach (Stewart) monitor me yet he didn’t even bother to watch me and others that were not on the Cecafa squad play recovery matches? Why not just release me?

“But then I said, okay, I will go back to KCCA on loan. But who will pay my salary? Kawemba said that Azam FC will pay me through Azam Uganda office.” We could not independently verify this salary payment mode claim.

Return to KCCA
After Cecafa, Majwega was to return to KCCA and train but he stopped after just one week.
“Th Azam CEO was supposed to send my loan letter to KCCA indicating that Azam Uganda would be paying my salary during the loan.

“But Kawemba was not picking my calls. He was also not replying my emails. Then strangely, he switched goalposts. They now wanted to switch me with Ochaya (Joseph) but KCCA refused. “They played with my career. I have a family and wife to feed and my job is football. My target was to be playing football to be in contention to face Comoros (last September) but here I am and not playing football.”

Majwega continues: “What then surprised me is that when I threatened Kawemba that I was going to write to the Tanzanian Football Federation (TFF), he wrote to Fufa saying that I had absconded from duty.” Yet it is hard to argue that Majwega did not abscond. He is an Azam player by contract and the fact that he is in Kampala as the club go about their football business in Dar es Salaam, he could be breaching the agreement.

“I can authoritatively say Majwega is still our player,” Kawemba reiterated to this newspaper in September. “We have his licence. We hear he is back in Uganda and we have temporarily left it to Uganda (Fufa) to handle the situation,” adds Kawemba, “We continue with our business here. When he is ready he will come back.” Azam indeed did write to Fufa about the situation. “The club wrote to us telling us the player was no longer at the club, that he had absconded,” says Fufa spokesperson Ahmed Hussein. “We wrote back telling them that the matter can only be handled by the Tanzania Football Federation (TFF).”

The trap
Majwega says he is targeting a move in January to any Ugandan or regional side as he tries to position himself in contention for a return to the Cranes. Yet his case with Azam remains a complex one to run away from. “My agent is working on it with TFF,” he says, “I hope this is all sorted so that I can play football again.

“I don’t care which club, all I want is to get back playing football again so that I get back to the national team.”
Yet according to Hussein, that can only be achieved if Majwega and Azam sort their differences.

“Majwega’s intermediary (agent, David Kigawalana) wrote to us saying that his player wants to move to another club. “But we can’t effect that transfer because it is the TFF to issue the ITC (International Transfer Certificate). “And for the TFF to issue the ITC, the player and Azam must have reached an agreement. If the case is not solved then it can be escalated to Fifa. For us as Fufa, we can only play a parental and guidance role.”

Cranes coach Micho Sredojevic is one of the few that have reached out to Majwega. “He called me on phone saying he wanted to meet me but we have not met,” Majwega offers.
“He wanted me to continue training with KCCA but there was no salary, no competitive matches.

“I mean, I want to train knowing am training to play matches. I just can’t train everyday with nothing to look forward to. So I decided to just do my own light training to keep my body in shape.”

Unconfirmed reports indicate that during that one-week training at KCCA, Majwega was trying to engineer a move to Tanzania’s Simba.

Sign-on fee farce
Although Majwega says he was ready to play at KCCA again, ties between some officials at the Lugogo club and the player had been severed over a reported sign-on fee balance.
“Before Azam signed me, I had signed a new contract with KCCA,” expounds Majwega, “We agreed a sign-on fee of Shs50m.

“KCCA paid me Shs25m and said they would pay the balance in six months. But when Azam bought me, KCCA claimed Azam had bought out my contract together with the sign-on fee. But you see, the sign-on fee was supposed to be paid at once.”

Julius Kabugo, the KCCA FC chairman, explains Majwega’s transfer to Azam. “Brian signed up a three-year Shs50m contract with the club with a buy-out close of $150,000 (Shs506m). “Azam offered $90,000 (Shs304m); $60,000 (Shs203m) for club and $30,000 (Shs101m) for the player) for the transfer of Brian, which we had initially rejected but the player insisted on a transfer.

“This implied that the club was bound to make losses on this transaction and as such, we negotiated with him for the forfeiture of the outstanding Shs25m, especially that he had not served even three months of the contract.” Kabugo adds: “Also as a club, we had sold him below our valuation. That’s when we received the $60,000 (Shs203m) and released him to Azam. If Brian is saying we didn’t agree on that, then that’s unfortunate. “I will request our legal team to study this and advise. Otherwise at the time that was the understanding.” Fufa’s Hussein explains that sign-on fees are not captured anywhere in Fifa player transfers.

It is only an agreement between a club and player but clubs do it in a way that it’s hard to beat them, he adds. Asked to clarify Majwega’s claims that he is not at KCCA because Azam failed to issue a loan release letter that specified that Azam Uganda would pay his salary, Kabugo only strengthens Kawemba’s assertions of absconding.

“First of all Brian remains Azam FC’s player who, in my opinion, should be at the club in Tanzania,” says Kabugo. “Azam offered to loan the player to us, which development we received with open hands and indeed some negotiations took place.

“But along the way, they inquired whether we could actually consider transferring the player permanently, an option that we could not take due to the amounts involved. “We, however, pushed for the loan offer which to this end received no reply from Azam. They indicated to us that they only wanted to sell the player, not loaning him out

“As far as I am concerned, no release letter was ever sent to us. We didn’t conclude anything at all, and did not reach a point, where the club would send a release letter. The negotiations were still at the primary stage.” Majwega, who still complains of going unpaid by Azam for “over four months”, was earning handsomely at the Tanzanian club. “The pay was comfortable,” he says, “Way above what is paid by Ugandan big clubs.”

Although Majwega does not want to mention the figure, this newspaper understands the player earned $2500 (Shs8.4m) per month.

Logic would dictate that rather than sit at Namugongo without playing any football, Majwega should instead have gone back to Azam and earned his money, at least until the club literally forced him out themselves. He, however, insists he was pushed out of the club.

What they say

“I can authoritatively say Majwega is still our player. We have his licence. We hear he is back in Uganda and we have temporarily left it to Uganda (Fufa) to handle the situation. When he is ready he will come back.”
Saad Kawemba, AZAM FC CEO

“First of all Brian remains Azam FC’s player who, in my opinion, should be at the club in Tanzania. Azam offered to loan the player to us, which development we received with open hands and indeed some negotiations took place.“
Julius Kabugo, KCCA FC chairman