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NewsDay

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Eradicate hooliganism from football

Opinion & Analysis
The nation will always remember July 9, 2000 when 13 fans died at the National Sports Stadium in a stampede during an international football match between Zimbabwe and South Africa.

The nation will always remember July 9, 2000 when 13 fans died at the National Sports Stadium in a stampede during an international football match between Zimbabwe and South Africa.

Newsday Editorial

The stadium was then a family entertainment venue. Families, including toddlers, attended the match on that tragic day. Fans started rioting after South Africa scored and the police threw teargas to suppress the crowd and all hell broke loose leading to the loss of lives.

A decade later football has become a battleground. Families are beginning to shun some stadiums.

Only a fortnight ago, Highlanders and Shabanie Mine fans went on a rampage that left the mining town of Zvishavane scarred.

The media, which are clearly divided on regional basis, are complicit in the violence, especially over the last five seasons.

The under-reporting of some incidents has called into question the role of the media.

It also does not help that the Premier Soccer League and the Zimbabwe Football Association seem not to be punishing the clubs severely enough when their fans engage in violent behaviour.

Only as recently as February during the Bob89 Cup, Dynamos and Highlanders fans were involved in skirmishes that have become familiar every time the two giants meet.

Beer cans, having been allowed into the stadium, became the missile of choice.

In most instances where fans engage in violent behaviour, property — especially cars — belonging to innocent people is destroyed.

It seems that the small amounts that clubs are fined are not a deterrent. Every season we find that certain clubs’ fans are invariably violent.

It does not help that the police seem not to be taking stern action against football hooligans.

We should shudder to think about what happened in Egypt when police officers allegedly stood by as violent clashes between rival fans at a football match in the north-eastern city of Port Said left scores dead.

Zimbabwean soccer administrators must learn to be stern. There is no harm in directing a team to play before an empty stadium so that football becomes once again a family sport and the corporate world might then want to be associated with sport.