Ladies, where art thou?

16 Dec, 2018 - 00:12 0 Views

The Sunday Mail

Veronica Gwaze
Sports Reporter

AFTER months of mudslinging, suspensions, and not-so-disguised digs, the circus that is the Zifa elections finally comes to an end today.

But before we close this never-ending chapter- and it has felt like an eternity, hasn’t it? — indulge me for a second.

One of the most avoided subject in the run-up to this election is the apparent neglect of women’s football.

Of the 10 individuals vying for the key six posts, none have put the women’s game as part of their campaign strategy.

Of all the talk about business and corporate governance during the campaign trail, there hasn’t been efforts to appease the ladies’ game.

There hasn’t been any pretence of fake promises or even attempts to lie that whoever comes in will try to revive women’s football.

It’s as if the 2016 Rio Olympics never happened.

But to simply shift all the blame on  aspiring candidates would be grossly unfair – after all, don’t women have a voice of their own?

I am reminded of a quote by American Pulitzer Prize award winner, novelist and activist Alice Walker.

She said, “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”

This is 2018 and we live in a world where the most powerful person in Zimbabwe sports is a woman, and that is Youth, Sport, Arts and Recreation Minister Kirsty Coventry.

There are also numerous examples of women in key football positions, like Fifa secretary-general Fatma Samba Diof Samoura, council member Lydia Nsekera, or UEFA director-general Florence Hardouin, to name but a few.

So where are all the ladies?

The tragedy of women in Zimbabwean football has reached such extremes that even those with a voice have stifled themselves.

The women’s game is in dire straits, as seen by the few who granted us an audience only on condition their names are redacted from the published article.

“For long, women soccer has been neglected; we have been running with very little to no funds and this is slowly making us lose quality. All the while, development (of our game) is still in its infancy,” said one of the sources.

“We need our fair share of the Fifa grant if we are to stay in the loop in terms of the development of women sports.

“It is our hope that the new leadership will place women’s soccer side as one of their core responsibilities.

“We are still developing and there are some areas that we feel need their hand, and as the new leaders come in, we need them to attend to their needs,” added the source.

“If we are to have a top-performing and consistent women soccer side, we need to develop the game from grassroots because we may end up without a national team.

“We need to start rebranding and have all national team age groups active and participating at big tournaments like Afcon and World Cup qualifiers to create quality from the roots.

“The new board needs to consider dialogue as often as possible so that they get our problems straight from us,” the association said.

It goes without saying this will not happen, at least not in our lifetime, unless something drastic happens.

The most logical step will be to have someone with the ladies’ game at heart, seated at the table.

So ladies, we have roughly four years to get our act together, someone please stand up.

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