AmaZulu president Sandile Zungu has revealed how his side were able to beat Swallows to finish in fourth position in the Carling Black Label Cup voting.
At first, it looked like Swallows had beaten AmaZulu to the prestigious fourth spot behind the big three, with chairman David Mogashoa mobilising lots of voters on twitter.
However, while Mogashoa and Swallows thought they had got enough votes, Usuthu launched a few campaigns themselves to overtake the Dube Birds in the final ranking.
Usuthu finished ahead of Swallows by 32,571 votes in fourth, collecting 144,829 votes overall, while Swallows ended on 112,258 votes.
“What we did was we mobilised our fans and we went to different radio stations in KZN where I urged fans to vote,” said Zungu to iDiski Times.
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“I spoke to supporters’ clubs from our structures that they must go all out to vote for Usuthu. I even hired some guys to go to the shabeens because there are a lot of people who are drinking Black Label but who don’t have time to vote.
“Either they don’t have money or they feel it is too much work to do. So they were prepared to give us those caps so that we could vote and that’s what we did.
“Everyone in my office of AmaZulu and Zico, we were up and down voting. I spoke to Jomo Biyela [the chairman] of Richards Bay, my GM [Tshepiso Mofokeng] spoke to MaMkhize to help us here.
“Even though they were not actively assisting us, they played their role. I then asked people like Khuzani [Mpungose], who are my friends, to share a video and urge people to vote for Usuthu.
“I think all that played a huge role in us finishing fourth in the votes.”
Usuthu will now face Mamelodi Sundowns in the semi-final on 12 November at FNB Stadium in the first match of the day at 9:30, while the other semi-final will be contested by Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates at 12:00.
Story by Robin-Duke Madlala (@duke_robin).
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