Edwin Mbaso is one of Zambia’s reowned footballer born in 1953.
He featured for his country during their first ever African Cup of Nations appearance in Egypt in 1974.
Mbaso was born in Ndola and according to a profile published when he won the 1975 Zambian Footballer of the Year award, he never played football in primary school and only took up the game when he was about 15 years old.
He attended Masala Secondary School in Ndola where he played football for the first time in 1968. He joined amateur side Ndola Wolves as a right winger in 1969 and the following year, got a transfer to Kansenshi Secondary School and signed for Division I side Ndola United in the same year.
He returned to United in 1971 and after completing school, continued his football career and developed in leaps and bounds leading to his crowning as the club’s Footballer of the Year for 1973 and his appointment as Ndola United captain despite his tender age .
After representing Zambia at CAN 1974, he got further recognition when he was named Zambian Footballer of the Year for 1975, only the second defender to do achieve that after Dickson Makwaza in 1973.
He continued featuring as a right fullback for a strong Ndola team which also featured Kaiser Kalambo and Gibbon Chewe and finished third in the league in 1976.
Mbaso was first selected for the ‘B’ side during Zambia’s first foray in the East and Central Africa (ECA) tournament in Uganda in September 1973.
In early January 1979, Mbaso left his employment with Ndola United’s sponsors Ndola City Council to join Zambia Airways, and was preparing to join the airline’s FAZ Division III outfit Zambia Eagles when tragedy struck.
Events after Mbaso’s death led to one of the biggest hits in Zambian music history Mukamfwilwa (widow) by a group called The Five Revolutions which tells the story of a Ndola woman who soon after her husband’s death, starts frequenting bars and night clubs.