THE plight of the Mighty Warriors is saddening, to say the least, and the very fact that there is no action from the women soccer bosses makes it even more worrying.
NewsDay Editorial
To have a national team holed up in camp being fed on matemba for a whole week because they can’t travel home, let alone get their allowances after qualifying for the next round of the African Women Championship (AWC), clearly shows something is amiss at Zifa.
Potentially, these girls are 180 minutes away from the AWC finals and perhaps a place in the World Cup in Canada in 2015. But is this the way to treat them? Certainly not!
What we know about the Mighty Warriors is that when things are rosy, all praise goes to Mavis Gumbo, but when things go wrong a scapegoat has to be found.
In this case, we have the scapegoat being Zifa chief executive officer Jonathan Mashingaidze. Unfortunately, Deputy Minister of Sports, Arts and Culture Tabeth Kanengoni-Malinga was roped in to try and rescue the girls, which was eventually done on Saturday.
We had not heard anyone asking what Gumbo – who has been running the game since 2010 almost single-handedly – was doing to source funding for the team.
While we were amused by fitness trainer Gerald Maguranyanga who failed to direct questions to his immediate boss, Mashingaidze should have quickly moved in soon after the girls returned from hunting.
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Mashingaidze is the chief executive officer and what happens with all national teams he should be ready to assist and ensure that the players are not inconvenienced over such things. It points to the organisational structure of the beleaguered football association. Gumbo is equally culpable though we don’t doubt that Mashingaidze has his own serious flaws!
Last year, when clubs complained about lack of transparency in the running of the Zimbabwe Women Soccer League and the failure of the games to take off, they were ignored. They had a point and now the chickens are coming home to roost.
Gumbo has played her part in the game, taking the Mighty Warriors everywhere across the globe, but when things go wrong, she must be there for her charges.
Women football was dead until “resurrected” in 2010; we cannot let it die again. Countries like Zambia, who took up the game later than us, will have their Under-17 team at the World Cup while we cannot feed our girls in camp.
What has also been lacking is government support for the sport generally. We have this wrong belief that national teams belong to their respective associations. No, they belong to Zimbabwe and everybody must be involved in taking care of them and government must lead the way.
And, where is the Sports and Recreation Commission in all this? Just waiting to collect levies and ploughing nothing in return? Clearly something is wrong here.
