Playing ball without football

Inga Dlumane certainly has the X-factor. He also has some serious ball sense and a lot of common sense. And the insight to let the right kind of sense prevail. By Gerrit Rautenbach

Inga was born 31 years ago in the Eastern Cape in the town of Elliot, which is now known as Khowa. There, he had a good upbringing and schooling, where he developed an immense love for the game of football. Not only did he adore the game, he was seriously good at it. However, Khowa is a rural town, and farming is a massive part of the environment. It intrigued Inga the same way football did. So after matric, he enrolled at CPUT, studying for the National Agricultural Diploma, followed by Btech Agriculture. There, he also played his beloved football, becoming captain of CPUT after one semester, winning various leagues.

In his third year, he had to get an internship in what is known as Work Integrated Learning, where a student ends up on a farm, packhouse, or one of the many elements forming the value chain of the production process. He met with Lona Odendaal, who manages the internship mentoring programme with Hortgro. The interview went well, and afterwards, he made a beeline for the possibility of an internship at Nooitgedacht, a pristine Dutoit Agri farm in the Koue Bokkeveld.

“I wanted to do my internship there because it was one of the best learning possibilities, but the area also had a very active football community,” Inga explains. However, before he could don his togs, he was informed by Nooitgedacht’s management that he would be promoted to production manager. “So walking to the football field that Sunday after this announcement, I was looking at all the other guys on their way. I realised that I’d soon be their superior in the working field and there would be an awkwardness for them to have me as an equal on the football field. Sometimes relationships out of work can negatively influence your relationships in the workplace. Being their production manager they might feel I should be their captain on the football pitch as well, but there might be another better captain amongst their own who will then lose out. That’s not fair.”

It was a hard call for him to make, as football has been part of his life from a very young age. He lived for it. “It’s the one thing I’ve always known, I’ve always played football,” he says. What makes it even more intense is that his coach at CPUT urged him to go for trials in professional football. In his heart, he knew he would make it to the professional level, but he decided against it. He chose to pursue a career in agriculture. Although he would have made a lot more money playing pro football, the issue is that it would have been a much shorter career. He was 19 at CPUT, so let’s say a playing career of 10, maybe 12 years was possible (if he didn’t get seriously injured), and what then? Restarting his agri studies with a 12-year backlog?

“I still love football, love watching it, but my first love now is farming. If I apply myself, I can keep scoring for a long time. My dream is to live and learn. Like in football, I want to be better than I was yesterday. Strategy, practice, new techniques. Farming is also a team sport.”

Inga sees life as a big football match. To play well, you need talent, but more importantly, a good coach. So, for him to do well in farming, he needed good mentors. When he started his internship at Nooitgedacht in 2015, Arno Marais was his first mentor who awakened the passion in him. To broaden Inga’s horizons he was posted to Excelsior, another Du Toit farm near Worcester. Three years later he was called back to Nooitgedacht and worked under the watchful eye of  Johan Visser, the new estate manager still his mentor today.

“Inga now manages 125 ha here as production manager and he progresses with leaps and bounds. He is an absolute team player, and although he is modest and comes across as an introvert, he knows how to work with people,” Johan explains. “If you put 10 people from all walks of life, colour, creeds and backgrounds in a room, and Inga joins them, it takes no time for him to get them chatting away like old friends. He can have a sensible conversation with anyone, you can send him anywhere and the people will like him. He always has a good presence,” Johan concludes.

Should you ask Inga if he, as a production manager, is now also mentoring the workers in his team, he will just say, “I am trying my best.” Modest? Never! “I am passing on what I’ve learnt, and that will grow. I am just doing exactly what was done to me and trying to improve where I feel I can.”

Ten years ago, Inga made a decision to swop football for farming. Yet, in reality, the two have much in common. You need to be focused. You need to have a strategy. You need to be hands-on, thinking a few steps ahead. It’s a team sport. And you need to score. Goal after goal after goal.

The best of all is that with farming, you can play ball for a lot longer.