The Sunday Mail
It is my hope that my mail finds you well, Cuthbert; what with the madness that preceded our Afcon 2017 qualifier match against Malawi yesterday.
Under normal circumstances anybody associated with an organisation which displays such rank incompetence ought to be weighed down regardless of their position in the said organisation, worse still its head, as is in your case.
But being the Cuthbert Dube I have known you to be since 2010 when you assumed leadership of a then respectable national association, I will not be surprised to learn if you do not give the aforementioned madness a second thought.
If I were to borrow a line from Zim dancehall star Seh Calaz, I will say: Surely, we are different as a people and we were brought up in very different ways.
On April 8, 2015 — nine weeks ago — I received an e-mail from CAF notifying me as a member of the media that our Warriors had been drawn in Group L for the 2017 Orange Afcon qualifiers.
The same e-mail or at least the same message was communicated to the organisation that you head and the obvious assumption was that we had to start planning for the qualifiers, which included trips to Malawi, Guinea and Swaziland.
Local football analysts ignored the technical side of football, and went to town imploring you and the association that you head to put in place the required logistics needed to see us through the qualifiers for “bungling” — and not our opponents — has become the biggest challenge to our success.
I will not waste time reminding you how preparations for our first assignment went on last week, for the wise assumption will be that you already know.
You have in the past sung and continue to sing the hymn of financial challenges as the biggest challenge to our football, but this past week has proven you wrong or at the very least brought forth some lingering doubt.
It is my humble submission that our biggest challenge is human resources at Zifa House and that includes the person who occupies the office of association president and some of those that he leads.
You can’t tell us that the team is punching below its weight because you had no money to fly them to Malawi because the team did have airfares to fly to Blantyre.
How then that they failed to board the plane is a pure case of mismanagement.
You can’t say it goes back to money because for all we know the team left Harare without the $500 they were demanding, but just an undertaking that the money will be paid tomorrow.
So, the question here is why then didn’t you make that undertaking before Air Malawi left for Blantyre?
Having missed the Thursday flight, the team again managed to get funds to fly on Friday, having resolved their allowance impasse.,However, again this time they failed to fly owing to the unavailability of adequate seats on connecting flights to Malawi.
You see, the point I am making here, Cuthbert, is that as long as you go out there to source funding for the Warriors, you will always get it.
The problem is that you do it, and have continuously done it, at the very last minute.
It has come to our attention that your chief executive Jonathan Mashingaidze, and probably yourself, knew on Wednesday night that the players were not happy with the $65 that had been offered and were threatening not to travel unless their grievances were addressed.
But somehow, he had the temerity to drive to the airport on Thursday afternoon hoping to meet the team despite knowing perfectly well that he had not addressed their concerns.
Who does that?
Wouldn’t it have been better for Mashingaidze to convince the players at their hotel, like you later did with the help of Prophet Walter Magaya, than to embarrass himself, Zifa and the whole country in such grand fashion?
When you came into office you glossed about unlocking the value of the local game and went to town about the need to bring on board technical sponsors with a view of selling replica jerseys, but NOTHING of that sought has happened to date.
Are you aware, Cuthbert, as I write to you that there are proposals from at least four technical sponsors on Mashingaidze’s desk waiting for your association’s approval to start supplying the Warriors with a kit and the much-needed replicas for our fans?
But I know you can never fault him because he is too busy with football politics, sustaining your leadership and crushing all discerning voices in ruthless fashion.
If you and your chief executive were not busy with something else which has nothing to do with football, you could have picked it earlier that Kallisto Pasuwa was not happy and wouldn’t name a squad for the Malawi assignment.
Now, it took the intervention of Minister Andrew Langa to convince Pasuwa and even to book the team into Rainbow Towers Hotel. What then are you going to say now when Government comes down heavily on Zifa and demand a change in personnel?
As detached from football matters as you are, I feel duty-bound to tell you that a number of our players are missing out on life-changing opportunities of joining European clubs because very few in those shores are still taking us as a serious footballing nation.
I remember one of these days I had a chat with former Warriors captain Norman Mapeza and he was saying football is the easiest route to escape poverty, if taken seriously.
With that in mind, how many of our players could have moved to better remunerating leagues had you not bungled our path to the 2010 Nations Cup finals with that co-coaching arrangement of yours?
Imagine how many of our players could have moved to better remunerating leagues had you not bungled our path to the 2012 Nations Cup finals with your almost meaningless bans on our budding stars and brilliant football administrators like Methembe Ndlovu.
For all the plaudits you claim are due to you, Cuthbert, it is under your leadership that our national youth teams have been banned from international football for failing to fulfil fixtures.
It is under your watch that Highlanders were banned from the CAF club competitions after being registered in a tournament without their knowledge and consent.
It is under your same leadership that we have seen something called co-coaching of a national team.
I might spend the whole day chronicling the ills that your leadership has brought to our football, but my appeal to you is since you have shown that you are very generous with your purse to our national teams, why don’t you step aside from the presidency and become the teams’ official sponsor.
I am sure Zifa or the fans will not have problems to see your name emblazoned on the Warriors’ shirt just as Dynamos and Highlanders do with the BancABC logo, but only if you step down from the presidency.
Yours in football
Ishemunyoro Chingwere.
