ZIMBABWE’S Warriors finally exorcised the ghost that has been haunting them for two decades and dumped their label as the eternal bridesmaids of African football when they booked their maiden place at the Nations’ Cup soccer finals in Tunisia next year.

Until yesterday the Warriors were the best team never to have qualified for the finals of Africa’s biggest football festival but all that became history on a weekend that will remain part of local football folklore.

The Warriors’ failure had become something of a tradition and it was probably fitting that a team that has always collapsed on the final hurdle should book their place at the Nations’ Cup finals on the final day of the qualifiers.

On a day for the lightweights of African football Zimbabwe joined two other nations qualifying for the first time – Benin and little Rwanda who ousted heavyweights Zambia and Ghana.

Benin crushed Zambia 3-0 while little Rwanda defeated Ghana’s Black Stars, four time winners of the Nations’ Cup, 1-0 in Kigali to seal their places at the Nations’ Cup finals for the first time.

South Africa won 2-0 in Burundi and their qualification ensured that Cote d’Ivoire, another of the heavyweights, will not be in Tunisia next year.

Zimbabwe and South Africa were the only success stories for Southern Africa in this campaign as Zambia were thrashed in Benin and Malawi were hammered in Angola in a match of academic interest.

The Warriors have, for a long time now, been regarded as one of the best football teams in Africa, consistently playing at a level good enough to see them ranked among the top 10 sides on the continent.

But, somehow, when it came to the crunch they always came short and there were fears, after the events in Seychelles and Harare on Saturday, that the last-gasp hurdle had come back to haunt us.

However, Gabon’s 2-0 win over Sierra Leone in Libreville yesterday gave the Warriors the ticket to their first Nations’ Cup and ended one of world football’s enduring mysteries.

One man who will probably feel relieved is Ghanaian Football Federation chairman Ben Kouffie who, for the last 12 years, has been blamed by Zimbabweans for allegedly casting a bad spell over the team.

Kouffie, a former Warriors coach, infamously declared 12 years ago that Zimbabwe would not qualify for any major tournament even if they imported a coach from the moon.

The Ghanaian had just seen Zimbabwe blow away a golden chance to qualify when they were held to a 2-2 draw by Congo at the National Sports Stadium in 1991 with goalkeeper John Sibanda at fault for the two goals.

Kouffie was fired from his post and, as Zimbabwe wasted great opportunities in the subsequent years, his declaration started to be taken seriously in a sporting discipline pregnant with superstition.

Kouffie will be relieved today to realise that noone will ever ask him whether he cast a spell on the Warriors although he might be under pressure in his native Ghana to quit his post as football association president following the Black Stars’ humiliation in Kigali yesterday. Zimbabwe’s win is also a big boost for those who have always campaigned that the solution to Africa’s football problems lies in African coaches with Sunday "Mhofu" Marimo succeeding where a host of European coaches failed.

Southern African representatives South Africa and Zimbabwe famously put their faith into the hands of their own local coaches with Ephraim "Shakes" Mashaba masterminding Bafana Bafana’s tricky route to the finals.

In contrast a number of teams with expatriate coaches — notably Ghana and Sierra Leone — failed in their quest to reach the Nations’ Cup finals.

Zambia, for a long time the torchbearers of Southern African football, will miss out from the Tunisia finals — exactly 10 years after a late goal by Kalusha Bwalya gave them a point at the National Sports Stadium that took them to Tunisia at the expense of Zimbabwe.

The Zambians, still coming to terms with the plane crash off the coach of Gabon that wiped out virtually their first team, went on to reach the final of the Nations’ Cup before losing 1-2 to Nigeria.

Ten years down the line the force is with the Warriors and who can bet against a team that went to Bamako and came away with a point from going all the way to the final of the Nations Cup in Tunis next year?

Whatever the case one thing is for sure — no one will call us the nearly men of African football again.

This is a great time to be Zimbabwean.