The Sunday Mail
Sports Editor
THE Sports and Recreation Commission (SRC) are insisting that the Zimbabwe Football Association (ZIFA) must undertake reforms needed to rehabilitate the association after years of mismanagement.
Some recalled ZIFA board members have been trying to discredit a recent report compiled by the ZIFA Restructuring Committee, which recommended steps that were critical to revive the country’s biggest sport.
It is understood that former ZIFA vice president Omega Sibanda has joined the bandwagon of ousted board members that have been trying to besmirch the ongoing reform process.
He has reportedly been describing the report as “hollow and offside’’.
Sibanda has been linked with the Felton Kamambo executive.
He allegedly even tried to lobby Youth, Sport, Arts and Recreation Minister Dr Kirsty Coventry to reverse the SRC suspension of the Kamambo-led ZIFA board.
Sibanda believes the SRC needed to reinstate Kamambo for FIFA to lift Zimbabwe’s suspension.
He also views the reform process at the association as an exercise in futility without the recalled board members.
“All what they are saying in that report is offside,’’ Sibanda was quoted saying.
“That is all fallacy; it’s a nullity what they are doing.
“The Restructuring Committee took one year, one month to provide their report and that report is busy attacking people. We can’t have a report which is so arrogant in terms of wording.
“They are saying football people are semi-literate, who rubber-stamp decisions as long as they are transported to the bright lights of the city. That is not a report. A report should have a reference. If they are saying the ZIFA constitution is flawed, they should give a reference and put proposals on where it should be corrected. But they are busy attacking people and incriminating people on things which they did not do.”
However, SRC chairperson Gerald Mlotshwa yesterday said Sibanda had misunderstood the contents of the report.
“That is the problem with trying to criticise what you don’t understand or have struggled to read or comprehend.
“You literally end up offside,” he said.
Lawyer Blessing Rugara led the ZIFA Restructuring Committee, whose members included leading international sports expert Tommy Sithole, banker Desmund Ali, ex-Zimbabwe Olympic Committee chief executive officer Anna Mguni, lawyer Rudo Mugandani, Doves Holdings general manager Joel Gombera, former CAPS United administrator Joyce Kapota, ex-CAPS United and Arcadia United defender Charles Sibanda and Brian Busani Moyo, who once served as the SRC Matabeleland provincial coordinator.
The report they produced is a product of a broader consultative process with football stakeholders, most of whom claimed football was underperforming because of corruption, a flawed constitution and a skewed electoral process at ZIFA.
There were also concerns over lack of proficiency by office holders, manipulation of football governance systems, financial mismanagement, lack of development strategies and the neglect of women’s football.
ZIFA have not had a strategic plan in over a decade.
Minister Coventry recently told the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Youth, Sport, Arts and Recreation that she was confident the report would help ZIFA revive the game.
One of the notable recommendations from the report was to bar politicians and all public office holders from being elected into ZIFA structures to “avoid actual and perceived conflicts of interests, or politicising the association for personal glory”.
