In the latest edition of My Muti Story, KickOff gets in touch with former Moroka Swallows striker Noel Cousins, who shares his experiences with muti.
Who and where?
"I heard about it a lot when I was at Arcadia, but I saw it with my own eyes when I was at Swallows.
"There are actually two stories, when I first got to Swallows there was a muti man who used to collect our boots after each and every last training session before a match.
"Remember I was from Arcadia where we used to care for our own equipment, but at Swallows, the boots arrived just before Kick-Off full of sand and funny liquids all over them.
"I then took out my brush and polish, I thought they were going to kill me because I was rubbing the muti off.
"All the Swallows players were looking at me in disgust as if they were saying, now what are you doing you are rubbing all the muti off your boots. I polished my boots and my boots looked all clean it was my first game at Swallows and the muti man was not happy.
"But the biggest one was when we played Shakes Mashaba's Vaal Reef Stars in the semi-final of the Bob Save and we had to come through another entrance because Shakes' muti man had put some stuff in the other entrance.
"We ended up taking a dressing room that wasn't supposed to be ours. And the Swallows muti man put muti outside our dressing room's door and Shakes and his team had to go past our dressing room to get to their dressing room. But because he saw what happened they went somewhere else to change.
"They were 2-0 up at half-time and the muti man was going crazy about certain things.
"In the second half, we decided to walk through their muti and we won the game 3-2.
Why were you doing it?
"It was Swallows culture. That's what they said. We didn't ask many questions. We accepted it and we moved on. It was a big issue for us."
Who was the muti man?
"I don't know who the muti man was, I think it was the guy who was named Mdu if I'm not mistaken. He was with us in the dressing room all the time. He wasn't an old man or something like that, he was a younger boy."
What did you have to do?
"We just had to follow the protocol."
Did everyone take part?
"Yes, all our players took part."
What stood out?
"What stood out for me personally was I went from a predominantly white club to a Swallows club that showed me what football culture was about in the townships.
"And I'm grateful for that because it opened my eyes, and I made a lot of friends through that experience."
What was the result?
"In that first game for Swallows, we won 4-1 and I scored two goals. And I don't think we had a problem with the muti man after that.
"After beating Vaal Reefs Stars 3-2 we went to play Jomo Cosmos in the final, and that's where I basically ended my career.
"I had a knee operation, and I couldn't come back into the game. But we won in extra time I think Calvin Petersen scored the winning goal."