Freddie Mwila Snr

Freddie Mwila died at Maina Soko Medical Centre in Lusaka at around 01:00 on Monday 2 November 2026, aged 80, after suffering a stroke. His death was confirmed to FAZ Media by family spokesperson Lillian Kalikeka. The funeral gathering was held at the family home at Mapepe Farms, opposite Four Pillars Lodge in Chilanga. Burial arrangements had not been announced at the time of writing.

Freddie Mwila was born on 6 July 1946 in Kasama, in what was then Northern Rhodesia. His father, Dismas Chilufya, and mother, Senefa Chola, were working in Southern Rhodesia, so he was raised by his grandparents. In 1952 his grandfather moved him to Kitwe on the Copperbelt so that he could start school.

He attended Danbar, Buseko, Mindolo and Kalela primary schools, playing football in the townships and serving as a ball-boy at Scrivener Stadium so he could watch almost every match. At Wusakile Youth Club he captained an under five feet team that played sides from across the Copperbelt, and in 1961 the team travelled to Bulawayo. He finished primary school at Kitwe Main School, then went to Luanshimba School in 1964, training with Rhokana United while still a student.

Mwila made the Rhokana United first team in 1965 as a creative, left-footed midfielder. In 1967 he was picked by coach Phil Woosnam, with Emment Kapengwe, Howard Mwikuta and Samuel "Zoom" Ndhlovu, to play for the Atlanta Chiefs, making them among the first Zambians to play professional football abroad. Atlanta won the league in 1968, and on 27 May that year he scored twice, including the winner, in a 3-2 victory over English champions Manchester City in front of 23,141 people. He also played against Santos and Pele.

Tommy Docherty signed Mwila and Kapengwe for Aston Villa in 1969, and they became the first Zambians to play in the English Football League. He returned to Atlanta in 1971 and 1973, and played for Rhokana and Ndola United before retiring as a player in 1978.

For Zambia he scored on his debut against Middlesex Wanderers in June 1965, won 36 full caps and scored 15 goals. He captained the side to the Jamhuri Cup in December 1967, scored a hat-trick against Lesotho in a 1972 World Cup qualifier and played at the 1974 Africa Cup of Nations in Egypt, where Zambia lost the final to Zaire after a replay.

As a coach he was briefly Zambia's player-coach in 1970, aged 23. He went on to lead Ndola United, Nkwazi, Tafic in Botswana and Power Dynamos, where he won the Independence Cup three times, reached the 1982 African Cup Winners' Cup final and won the 1984 league title, becoming the first winner of Zambia's coach of the year award. Back at Power Dynamos in 1990, he won the 1991 African Cup Winners' Cup against BCC Lions of Nigeria, along with the league title. He coached Township Rollers and the Botswana national team, helped mould the new Zambia team after the 1993 Gabon air disaster, and was Zambia head coach from November 1996 to April 1997. Later posts included Qwa Qwa Stars, Zanaco, Lusaka Dynamos and Highlanders of Zimbabwe.

Mwila had six children with his wife, Kerrian Fox. Two followed him into football: Freddie Mwila Jr, a winger for Nkana, Zamalek and Zambia who died in Cairo in 2009, and Melvin, a midfielder who played for Dynamos, Zanaco and Zambia's age-group teams.

In October 2003 he was badly hurt in a road accident in South Africa shortly before he was due to join Free State Stars. He suffered two broken legs, and the driver, Malawian coach Robert Banda, was killed. He later settled in Lusaka, took up farming and appeared as a television analyst during the 2012 Africa Cup of Nations, which Zambia won.

Mwila belonged to the generation that first took Zambian football to the wider world, and he is rated as one of the country's finest players and coaches. His Power Dynamos side of 1991 remains the only Zambian club to win a continental trophy, and he was the first coach honoured with the national coach of the year award. He was known as outspoken and demanding, once saying of his players, "I get paid for shouting at them because that is my job."