By Edgar Gabarinocheka
May it please the Court.
This matter before you is not merely about crowd trouble at a football match. It is about duty, operational responsibility, foreseeable risk and the dangerous temptation to reduce a catastrophic stadium security collapse into a convenient narrative against one institution, namely Dynamos FC.
My Lord, the evidence already in the public domain paints a picture far more complex — and far more troubling — than the selective version currently being advanced.
The hosts, Hardrock FC, together with the operational authorities responsible for this fixture, bore the primary duty to ensure:
- crowd segregation,
- perimeter integrity,
- access control,
- adequate stewarding,
proper deployment of security personnel,
and the general safety of every paying spectator inside Chahwanda Stadium.
This was not an ordinary fixture.
The Premier Soccer League itself has already publicly confirmed that this encounter had been classified as a high-risk match requiring:
- 80 police officers,
- 35 private security guards,
- and 90 marshals.
That admission alone is legally significant.
Once a danger becomes foreseeable, the law imposes a heightened duty of care upon organisers to prevent reasonably anticipated harm.
The obvious question therefore becomes:
Were those measures actually implemented?
Because if they were not, then the first breach of duty occurred before kickoff.
My Lord, the signs of operational breakdown were already visible long before the abandonment of the match.
Supporters were trapped in dangerously slow-moving queues outside the stadium. Fans reportedly entered the field of play before kickoff without intervention. Marshals appeared absent or overwhelmed. Tensions between supporters were escalating in full public view.
Then comes another deeply troubling incident.
Evidence suggests that a steward allegedly linked to the hosts attempted to remove a harmless supporters’ banner displayed by fans in appreciation of a club benefactor.
The reaction was immediate.
Angry supporters reportedly pelted the steward with projectiles, feeling provoked and disrespected by what they viewed as an unnecessary and inflammatory act.
The Court must ask:
Was this indeed a Hardrock steward?
And if so, under whose instruction was he attempting to remove that banner in an already volatile environment?
Because football crowd management is not merely about force; it is about de-escalation.
Any trained crowd-control official understands that unnecessary confrontation with emotionally charged supporters in a high-risk fixture can become the spark that ignites wider disorder.
My Lord, we further place before this Court allegations that Hardrock official Freedom Mwada entered the Dynamos technical area before kickoff, resulting in confrontation with Dynamos fitness trainer Thulani Muzambwa.
Again, the question becomes:
Why were operational boundaries collapsing before the match had even started?
Technical areas are restricted zones precisely because football authorities recognise the danger of provocation during emotionally charged fixtures.
But perhaps the gravest issue concerns the failure to suspend play once missile throwing reportedly began between supporters around the 75th minute.
At that moment, the stadium had entered what international crowd-management doctrine recognises as a critical containment phase.
Yet the match continued.
Why?
Why did match officials, security commanders and the hosts fail to halt proceedings and restore order before the situation deteriorated beyond control?
Dynamos’ position is straightforward:
Had play been suspended when the warning signs first emerged, supporters may well have remained within their designated areas and the eventual pitch invasion may have been prevented.
My Lord, football history repeatedly demonstrates that stadium disasters are rarely caused by supporters alone.
In the matter arising from the Hillsborough disaster, which occurred on 15 April 1989 during an FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, ninety-seven supporters ultimately lost their lives as a result of catastrophic crowd-management failures.
The subsequent Taylor Inquiry, chaired by Lord Justice Taylor and published in January 1990, concluded that the principal cause of the disaster was not hooliganism, but police mismanagement, failures in crowd control, poor perimeter management and catastrophic operational decision-making.
Indeed, the findings rejected early attempts to scapegoat supporters and instead established that institutional failures by those entrusted with safety were the dominant cause of the tragedy.
Similarly, following the Accra Sports Stadium disaster of 9 May 2001, where 126 people died during a match between Hearts of Oak and Asante Kotoko, official investigations concluded that failures in crowd control, delayed intervention and poor security management transformed crowd disorder into mass casualty catastrophe.
Those precedents are important because they establish a universally recognised football principle:
Where organisers fail to control foreseeable risks, liability cannot simply be transferred onto supporters alone.
Now let us address perhaps the most alarming issue before this Court.
- Why were individuals allegedly linked to Hardrock security operating inside or near the Dynamos supporters’ section?
- Why did some fitness goons with no visible accreditation or identifiable markings approach that section of the pitch?
- Under whose authority were they acting?
Most disturbing are allegations that some of these individuals physically manhandled supporters before players themselves intervened in shock.
The Court must ask:
Under PSL protocols and stadium regulations, were such individuals authorised to enter opposition supporter areas at all?
Because if unidentified and physically confrontational actors linked to the hosts entered opposition sections during an already volatile fixture, then the hosts may themselves have introduced the spark that accelerated the disorder they now seek to externalise.
And finally, My Lord, we arrive at the question from which the hosts cannot escape.
How did home supporters breach the perimeter, invade the field of play, sprint almost the full length of the pitch and reach opposition supporters?
That is not merely crowd misconduct.
That is a complete collapse of stadium security.
It fundamentally destroys any simplistic narrative seeking to portray this matter purely as a Dynamos problem.
Dynamos supporters who reportedly remained seated and never invaded the pitch were nonetheless exposed to violence after the perimeter had already failed.
The law cannot permit a party who failed to secure its own stadium, failed to maintain crowd segregation, failed to implement agreed security protocols and failed to control its own supporters to now seek refuge in selective blame.
My Lord, Dynamos FC does not stand before this Court arguing that disorder did not occur.
It stands before this Court insisting that accountability must follow evidence, not convenience.
Because justice ceases to be justice the moment investigations become exercises in narrative preservation rather than truth-seeking.
And in this matter, the truth points not merely to crowd violence —
but to systemic operational failure.
