Sunday Mail
Sunday, 27 March 2011
By Goodwill Zunidza
A MAJOR football indaba is looming after the Minister of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture, David Coltart, summoned the entire Zifa board for a meeting last week where he indicated his desire to have their never-ending problems brought to heel.
Coltart hosted the football chiefs in the boardroom of his ministry’s head offices in Harare, the first such meeting since the Cuthbert Dube-led board was voted into office at Prince Edward School on March 27 last year.
It is said the minister, who has since confirmed his face-to-face meeting with Zifa to The Sunday Mail, was talking tough and made it clear the problems that continued to dog football had to come to an end.
“It was really a private meeting,†Coltart said. “But I think the most important issue is that we agreed to convene a football indaba soon to be attended by all the stakeholders in football.â€
He emphasised it had always been his wish to get first-hand information on how and why the football industry in Zimbabwe just could not take off.
“I requested to meet the new Zifa board soon after they came into office last year, but the meeting only took place last week,’’ said the minister, an avid sports follower who was in Asia recently to watch the Zimbabwe cricket team play at the ICC World Cup.
The dialogue between the ministry and the national football association on March 17 preceded a series of conventions in the football fraternity that began with the Premier Soccer League assembly in Kwekwe last weekend.
On Friday, the Zifa board also met in a stormy session in Harare that was followed by the association’s annual general meeting also in the capital yesterday.
No details could be obtained from yesterday’s council gathering but the board meeting held a day earlier discussed the spate of resignations that has rocked the Zifa secretariat. These include long-serving executive secretary Harriet Samkange, who had worked at 53 Livingstone Avenue under different managements for over a decade.
Samkange bade farewell to Zifa alongside senior accountant Samuel Munyaradzi.
No reasons were cited for their voluntary departure in the board briefing that also confirmed acting chief executive officer Jonathan Mashingaidze as substantive CEO with effect from April 2 2011.
No official comment on the unfolding events in Zifa could be obtained from Dube, the association’s president who chaired both the board and council meetings.
“I am busy with Zifa meetings this week, call me next week,†said Dube.
While Minister Coltart listed his deputy Lazarus Dokora and principal secretary Paul Damasane as having attended the meeting, there were conflicting reports over who stood in for the football mother body.
In fact, board members revealed the meeting with the minister was inconclusive after several of their colleaugues did not turn up.
Mashingaidze had earlier written to board members advising only Harare-based members would attend the meeting due to logistical challenges in bringing over officials stationed outside the capital.
“In the end only the then acting chief executive officer, Twine Phiri (the PSL chairman), Nigel Munyati (board member, marketing), Solomon Mugavazi (Northern Region chairman) and Benedict Moyo, the board member competitions who made it from Kwekwe, were present in the meeting,’’ one Zifa insider said.
He said Coltart had then brought the meeting to a quick close, saying the 13-member board in its entirety should attend the meeting.
Earlier reports reaching The Sunday Mail that a three-member Zifa delegation that included Dube, Mashingaidze and women’s football chairperson Mavis Gumbo met Coltart separately could not be verified.
But Coltart’s initiative to table a wide-ranging indaba to iron out problems bedevilling the sport will no doubt be received eagerly by the football fraternity.