Online Reporter
T
ODAY should mark another milestone in the governance and development of Zimbabwe’s football.
This is because the Zimbabwe Football Association (ZIFA) Congress, the domestic game’s top-policy meeting, will converge in Harare for an elective assembly where a new president will be voted into office on a four-year mandate.
Since July 11, 2023 when world football controlling body FIFA announced that they were lifting Zimbabwe’s 18-month suspension from the international game, ZIFA have been like a company under judicial management.
In lifting Zimbabwe’s suspension, FIFA tasked Lincoln Mutasa with chairing a Normalisation Committee
A Normalisation Committee is known to be a group of people appointed by FIFA to run a football association’s day-to-day operations.
The committee’s responsibilities include restructuring the association’s administration, reviewing its statutes, and ensuring elections are held.
Thus, Mutasa and his committee have been hard at work, starting with the restructuring of the secretariat, appointments of national teams’ coaches and overseeing a Congress-driven amendment of the ZIFA statutes.
Today, Mutasa is expected to complete his last big task at ZIFA in terms of the mandate he received from FIFA by standing as the Electoral Committee and presiding over the elections to choose six board members, two vice-presidents and a president.
As reported elsewhere in this publication, it is an epochal election, one whose aftermath should result in the transformation of ZIFA into the kind of football association which this country yearns for.
An association that exhibits the tenets of corporate governance and priorities development from the grassroots to the elite level.
We believe that everyone else has so far done his and her part and the onus is now on the Congress delegates popularly known as the Councillors to deliver the right leadership for ZIFA today.
Presidents and board members have come and gone, often taking the blame for ZIFA’s problems with councillors somehow, getting away with murder.
Today the 78 councillors, who are expected to cast their ballots owe it not just to the candidates who have been canvassing for votes but to the entire nation, to the government, COSAFA, CAF and FIFA to ensure ZIFA will not relapse, post this election.
Football and only football must be the biggest winner from today’s milestone event.
While they may have a tainted past, of selling their souls and voting with their stomachs, the election today provides the ZIFA Congress with a perfect platform to re-package themselves.
Zimbabweans are expecting an election that will unite ZIFA more than one that will in the end plunge local football into more problems and invite FIFA and government intervention again.
We believe the men and women who have been entrusted by their respective ZIFA affiliate members to vote, have some principles, are ethical and professional enough to ensure that the only victor is football.
Yes, the six candidates lining up for the post of president — Marshall Gore, Martin Kweza, Philemon Machana, Nqobile Magwizi, Twine Phiri and Makwinji Soma-Phiri — are all capable of running ZIFA.
But only one of them will secure the mandate of the Congress and that winner must be supported throughout his four-year term.
The idea of some losers immediately ganging up against the winner to make football ungovernable is the kind of attitude that can only serve to drag the game into the abyss.
Football development is not an overnight event, but a process that needs careful planning, the right strategies and backed by smart partnerships with private and public institutions.
That ZIFA is a broken institution needing massive restructuring is evident for all to see.
Fortunately, FIFA through the Normalisation Committee have laid a strong platform for the incoming executive from which they can start.
The country’s flagship sporting team — the Warriors are in a healthy state — having not only qualified for the Africa Cup of Nations but enjoying the kind of tranquillity that is conducive for the production of a winning team.
Thanks to FIFA, German expatriate coach Michael Nees is on an initial two-year deal in which the world body is taking care of his welfare.
This means that if by chance the incoming executive were to do the unthinkable and immediately change the coach, it is FIFA who will pay off Nees.
Despite playing all their qualifiers away from home, the Warriors have been able to travel on time and be well remunerated with their bonuses also being timeously paid.
So, it is incumbent on the councillors to make all such considerations in choosing a leadership that will ensure ZIFA continue on the new slate that they have been enjoying, even when Mutasa and his committee of Rosemary Mugadza and Nyasha Sanyamandwe have long packed their bags and gone.
If successive executive committees at ZIFA failed to foster a sense of unity and purpose within the association, the 78 delegates have an opportunity to right some of those wrongs.
Given that previous administrations of ZIFA also failed to align the activities of the association to its core business, it incumbent upon the councillors to shun corruption and ensure after today the domestic football mother body will have men and women who drive development and produce outcomes that are not contrary to its purpose.
May the best men and men make into the ZIFA First XI.
