Basketball in Africa

On Tuesday evening, Charging Rhino started preparations for their return to the Fuba League Division One that is set for next month. Their forward Mathew Kayonde missed practice. His teammates hoped this was just lukewarm response to a first training session following the promotion exploits from last year not knowing he had passed on.

And so often, during the Division Two play-offs, he could barely find time to train opting to concentrate on his telecommunication engineering degree course at Makerere University. Bearing in mind that school is now in progress, his absence from training was not hard to explain.

Taken to Mulago
Little did they know that Kayonde had travelled with friends for an exhibition game at his former school – Kings College Budo. A few minutes into the game, Kayonde collapsed and was taken to the school clinic.

The school nurse quickly reffered him to Mengo Hospital where he was pronounced dead shortly after arrival. “Actually when I received a call from his cousin Douglas telling me about Kayonde, I thought it was a joke because I spoke to him a few weeks ago. It’s very hard to take.

My mind is off basketball now,” teammate Mark Opio said. Due to his lanky nature, Rhino teammates nicknamed Kayonde “Gombs” drawing comparisons with Kyambogo Warriors centre Sam Gombya. As the doctors conducted a postmortem yesterday, family members kept asking open-ended questions about what could have been.