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On August 10, 1976, South African football suffered one of its darkest days following the cold-blooded murder of Kaizer Chiefs official Ewert 'The Lip' Nene.
A straight-talker with the gift of the gab, he was the driving force of the AmaKhosi off the pitch, and had been instrumental in its formation. He was an official at Orlando Pirates when the breakaway happened, and did the talking for the new Chiefs in the public space.
Ewert Nene was an innovating and trailblazing giant in the vanguard of African sport, and who bizarrely and unfairly remains unheralded in entertainment and untrumpeted in football. Nene was killed as he went to the house of Pilkington United Brothers midfielder Nelson 'Teenage' Dladla in an attempt to persuade the young star to move to the AmaKhosi.
This was a man who was on the cusp of tearing down Apartheid years ahead of schedule through a mulish love of football and his brothers-in-arms. Whites were starting to play against and with Blacks, and it was in part because of Ewert "The Lip" Nene, the man of whom it was said, "If they cut out his tongue, he'd find a way of speaking through his ears."
August 2026 will be the 50th anniversary of Nene's murder. Ian Thornton is co-writing the incredible story of Nene's life with Sello Moloko, whose polite obsession about The Lip has lasted five decades and which fuels this venture.
Despite a pending anniversary, the driving force behind this project is to recognise a great man, who has been lost to history even in his homeland. His family is deserving of a true legacy piece. And of course, one pauses to wonder what more The Lip could have achieved had he not lost his life so needlessly? How different might not only world football, but South Africa have been? We will never know. However, we can tell a new generation of his astonishing story.
A series of rare interviews with family, friends, the family of the murderer, judges, former players, national captains and even an ex-President will tell the true story of Ewert Nene, while asking what South Africa would have looked like without him and what it might have looked like had he survived.
