BY MICHAEL KARIATI
ZIMBABWEAN football should not be blinded into believing that the Zifa council is the solution to the problems afflicting the Zimbabwean game.
After all, this is the same Zifa congress which over the years has contributed greatly if not 80% to the same problems which they now claim they want to solve.
Apart from the PSL representatives, some of these councillors have been in office for over 16 years and have been part and parcel of the rot in Zimbabwean football during that period.
It should be placed on record that this is the same Zifa council that elected Cuthbert Dube as Zifa president and threw him out before his term expired, the same council that also elected Felton Kamambo whom they now also want out.
Remember in December, 2018, this same Zifa congress or council that unanimously rejected Phillip Chiyangwa in favour of Kamambo only for word to come out that some of the councillors were bribed.
This same Zifa councillors are alleged to have been rewarded en-masse for their part in the elections with a trip to Afcon 2019 in Egypt where some of them took with them their side chicks.
The question is: What was the whole Zifa Assembly going for at the Afcon finals?
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The names of some of these councillors are in court papers on allegations that they received bribes from Kamambo in the last Zifa presidential polls and the question is where do they now stand in this transitional period?
It should also be recorded that prior to this whole Kamambo saga, the same Zifa assembly is alleged to have received inducements to vote for Dube and later for Chiyangwa after Dube was ousted.
If this Zifa council has all along been electing the wrong people to lead Zimbabwean football, how can they this time around be trusted to do the right things.
For them to come up and say they will resolve the problems of Zimbabwean football in one meeting is probably the joke of the year : Where have they been all along when Zimbabwean football was sinking very deep into the mud ?
After all, this Zifa council only became very active after the Sports and Recreation Commission indicated they were also probing this same Zifa Assembly for a number of things.
Why didn’t they call for this particular meeting long before the SRC came in to try to rescue the situation?
Observers are of the opinion that the council’s renewed efforts are nothing but a way of trying to save their faces by trying to look clean when in fact they are the real rotten apples in the package.
The question that also comes to mind is whether the Zifa Assembly’s term of office will still be running after April 23, the day of their proposed meeting.
If the term of the Zifa executive was expiring on March 31, then the term of the Zifa assembly which elected the Zifa executive expires earlier.
Who elected them for their mandate to go as far as April 23 and who are some of them still representing when football no longer exists in their districts?
The SRC must not lose sight of the fact that the Zifa council needs heavy cleaning irrespective of whatever role they are playing in making sure that the Kamambo board goes forever.
Why does Zimbabwe still have dead associations like five-a-side and beach football in the Zifa Assembly when coaches, referees, junior football and the footballers union are not represented.
It would be dishonest to expect this council or assembly — judging by its history — to come up with a future Zifa leadership that Zimbabwean football can trust.
The cleaning of Zimbabwean football should not only be at Zifa executive committee level but also at the bottom and more importantly on the people tasked with electing the Zifa leadership.
The best thing would be to start on a clean sheet by letting the whole Zifa assembly go – Perhaps that might change our football.
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