Underdog Stories / Football history

How Did Kaizer Chiefs Start? The Story Behind the Club

The history of Kaizer Chiefs and how the club was founded: a Pirates prodigy, a stint in Atlanta and a house in Orlando West, Soweto, in January 1970.

By Brett Hanson · Underdog Podcasts · July 8, 2026

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Kaizer Motaung came off the bench for the Atlanta Chiefs on 27 May 1968, with Manchester City, the English champions, on the other side. He scored, and Atlanta won 3-2.

That goal is where the history of Kaizer Chiefs starts. It also explains how the club was founded, two years later, in a Soweto house.

The short answer: Kaizer Chiefs was officially established at 8414 Sentsho Street in Phefeni, Orlando West, on 7 January 1970. Motaung, a former Orlando Pirates prodigy who had starred in America, started it with players Pirates had cast out. He joined his own first name to the Atlanta Chiefs to make the name. Chris Horwedel tells the story on Why We Love This Club, in the episode "Kaizer Chiefs — The Glamour Club Born From a Mutiny". It's worth a listen.

Who was Kaizer Motaung before Kaizer Chiefs?

He was born in Orlando East, Soweto, and first played professionally at 16, for Orlando Pirates. Pirates fans had a nickname for him. It's usually spelled "Chincha Guluva", and Horwedel translates it as the man with quick feet.

In 1968 Atlanta's owner Dick Cecil and manager Phil Woosnam, a former West Ham player, recruited him after trials in Zambia. The North American Soccer League had only just started. Motaung finished that first season as Rookie of the Year, and Atlanta were champions.

The next year Atlanta finished second and he made the league's All-Star team. Horwedel's figure is 16 goals in 16 matches. He was doing very well in America, and that is where he was when things went wrong at home.

What happened at Orlando Pirates in 1969?

The episode title says "mutiny". The club's own account reads more like a sacking, though the two sides probably told it differently in Orlando.

Motaung landed at Jan Smuts Airport three days after Atlanta's season ended on 31 August 1969, and found Pirates in turmoil. Three of Pirates' best players, Thomas "Zero" Johnson, Edward "Msomi" Khoza and Ratha "Jimmy Greaves" Mokgoatlheng, had been expelled. Their offence was going to Gaborone, Botswana, to guest for a local club without properly telling management. Team manager Ewert Nene was expelled too.

Horwedel says Motaung tried to mend things with Pirates and couldn't. So he didn't go back. A week after landing, he announced a tour with his own invitation eleven, officially to scout talent for Atlanta.

Nobody has a signed letter proving it was a plan to start a club. But the "scouting trip" looks a lot like a rehearsal.

The Kaizer XI took off beyond everybody's expectations. A young Patrick "Ace" Ntsoelengoe scored twice on his debut for the side. Horwedel says the crowds liked the attacking football, the star names and the way matches were put on as entertainment. As Motaung got ready to go back to the States, fans pushed for the temporary team to become permanent.

History of Kaizer Chiefs: how was the club founded in 1970?

Motaung had a problem. He would be away playing in America, so he needed people at home to run things. He recruited Clarence Mlokoti, a good administrator, and China Ngema. His father also helped talk him into it, saying it would give him something to fall back on when he came back from the USA.

The players came from Pirates' wreckage and beyond. Eliakim "Pro" Khumalo and Ariel Kgongoane joined too, knowing how much this would upset Orlando Pirates. The badge and the gold colours borrowed from Atlanta. The style was Soweto's own.

It wasn't smooth. Many in football saw them as upstarts and wanted them to fail. Their slogan was "Love & Peace", and the club attracted a hippie crowd. Zero Johnson, one of the expelled trio, said he became a "dance teacher" for the players, because dancing with the fans was part of the show.

The first league title came in 1974, with 13 goals from Motaung, who missed most of the season playing for the Denver Dynamos. The founder won the league while mostly in Colorado.

“Chiefs were not a political organization, but their image mattered. This was a Black football club refusing to behave like a minor or temporary institution.”
— Chris Horwedel, on Why We Love This Club

Why are Kaizer Chiefs called the Glamour Boys?

The nickname is the Phefeni Glamour Boys, after the Soweto neighbourhood where they began. The glamour was the point.

The club was formed at the height of apartheid, and it never behaved like a team that knew it. Chiefs presented themselves as self-assured, modern and glamorous. Horwedel says the players dressed well and stayed in hotels before matches, which was unusual for Black South African teams then. Style mattered. His line is that Chiefs weren't a political organisation, but the image they built did a lot of work all the same.

One result shows why. Chiefs became the first Black side to beat a traditionally white one in the Champions of Champions, against Cape Town's Hellenic, who had won the first leg 4-0. Hellenic's manager had once boasted that a Black team would never be as good as a white one.

It also produced the Soweto Derby. Horwedel's point is that the league didn't draw this fixture up. It grew out of a split over pride, ownership and how a club should be run, with Pirates as the established institution and Chiefs as the glamorous upstart, in his words. He counts the April 2026 meeting as the 185th official derby.

How did Chiefs become the Cup Kings?

The 1970s gave them the crowds. They were the first South African club to have several players abroad at once, with Shaka Ngcobo, Ace Ntsoelengoe and Pelé Blaschke all in the US in the 70s.

The 1980s gave them the trophies. According to the episode, Chiefs won three league titles and 28 cups that decade. In 1981 they took the league and all three major cups.

The decade's most loved player turned up late in it. Doctor Khumalo made his first-team debut in 1987, starting in a Soweto Derby. The episode treats Doctor as his first name, though Wikipedia has him as Theophilus Doctorson Khumalo, and he is not a physician. He played 17 years and made nearly 500 appearances, which fits the 497 figure in the episode. When he stopped in 2004, the club retired his number 15 shirt.

What happened at Ellis Park in 2001, and what came after?

The two halves of 2001 are hard to hold together.

On 11 April, a crowd crush at Ellis Park killed 43 people during a derby between Chiefs and Pirates. The stadium held 60,000, and reports suggest another 30,000 were trying to get in. Twenty-nine people died inside the ground and 14 outside. There had been a warning. Forty-two people died at Orkney in 1991, at another Chiefs–Pirates game.

On 1 December, Chiefs won the African Cup Winners' Cup, known that year as the Mandela Cup. They beat Inter Clube of Luanda 2-1 on aggregate, with Patrick Mabedi's late penalty giving them the second leg 1-0. The first leg in Luanda had finished 1-1. Mabedi had also been captain on the night of the crush. His penalty went in from the same ground where the fans had died.

CAF named Chiefs its 2001 African Club of the Year. The winning run was nicknamed "Operation vat alles", Afrikaans for "take everything".

League titles followed in 2003-04 and 2004-05. Then came the lean years. The last league title was 2014-15, and a decade passed without a trophy. It ended on 10 May 2025 in Durban, when goals from Gaston Sirino and Yusuf Maart beat Orlando Pirates 2-1 in the Nedbank Cup final. They waited ten years and beat the old rival to end it.

Why is the band Kaiser Chiefs named after Kaizer Chiefs?

The band started as Runston Parva, then Parva. Parva were dropped after their label's parent closed the Mantra label. They started over with new songs and a new name. The name came from South African club Kaizer Chiefs, the first club of ex-Leeds United captain Lucas Radebe. Radebe played for Leeds from 1994 to 2005.

Horwedel's script slips here. It says the band is named after a South American club and a South American player. The club is South African, and the other half of the name is an Atlanta team. The band swapped the Z for an S and kept the Chiefs.

In 2008 the band went to Johannesburg and played the club. Singer Ricky Wilson opened the scoring. Radebe missed several chances, and his excuse was "I thought someone said away."