The Sunday News

29 September 2012

TODAY is the last day that Fifa had committed itself to funding the Zifa Independent Ethics Commission (IEC) set up to investigate the Asiagate scam.

The world football’s governing body Fifa had indicated they are willing to fund the committee only up to 30 September and the cash strapped national mother-body will have to foot the rest of the bill.

Fifa, which has been making efforts to stamp out match-fixing in the game, agreed to fund the committee as Zifa was finding it difficult to pay for the work of the commission.

An official at Zifa, unauthorised to speak to the Press, confirmed the cut off date by Fifa and expressed worry over delays in the release of the report.

According to media reports the report is complete and is being printed.

“As you might be aware, (Zifa president) (Cuthbert) Dube demanded the report from the committee because they promised it will be available early this month.

“We need to have this issue behind us and we move on. We will, however, have to wait for the report,” he said.

Efforts to get an official comment from Zifa were fruitless.

The Asiagate investigation was also an issue at the recently held football indaba that included various parties including Zifa, the Minister of Sport, David Coltart, Sports and Recreation Commission among others.

Delegates at the meeting expressed dismay at the delay of concluding the match-fixing saga, stating that it should come to a closure soon if Zimbabwean football is to move on.

Sources at Zifa said there were worries about the delays in the release of the report because of its implications on the pending qualifying Warriors match against Angola on 14 October in Luanda.

The sources said there were suspicions that the failure by the IEC to clear more players could have a negative effect on team selection.

“If the IEC managed to absolve 33 players in April, why has it taken them so long to clear others? If they cannot release the whole report why not name a few players who have no case to answer?

“Or are they telling us the rest of the players fingered in the report are guilty?” asked the source.

The source added there was fear that the Asiagate masterminds could have infiltrated the committee in order to discredit the association by ensuring the Warriors’ failure to go through to the 2013 Afcon, although there is no evidence to prove such claims.

“The Warriors technical department needs all players at their disposal and if the IEC was working in the interest of the nation then they would release the names of the cleared players to ensure they play a role in assisting the Warriors qualify for the 2013 Afcon.

“I do not think those behind Asiagate would want to see the team succeed and the IEC is yet to give Zifa any plausible reasons on why they are yet to release the report, raising fears there could have been infiltration,” said the source, who declined to be named for fear of victimisation.

Dube is reported to have clashed with Emmanuel Chimwanda, a key official in the IEC over the delays in releasing the report.

The committee was appointed in October last year to bring to finality investigations into the suspected match-fixing scam that saw almost 100 players suspended from national duty and five elected officials suspended from the Zifa board.

Our sister paper Chronicle reported that Zifa demanded that the Asiagate report be released without further delay, not only to pacify a restive nation but also to clear players who might have been found not guilty and are needed for the senior national team’s final 2013 Africa Cup of Nations second leg qualifier against Angola next month.

Efforts to get a comment from Chimwanda and other members of the IEC were fruitless.

Bulawayo 24 NEWS

By Staff Reporter

29 September 2012

Minister of Education, Art, Sports, and Culture David Coltart has said Zimbabwe’s education system should act as a vehicle for change and development through the use of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs), which promote connectivity across the globe.

The Independent

By Daniel Nhakaniso and Kevin Mapasure 

28 September 2012

GOVERNMENT has encouraged Zifa to join bids to host major tournaments to stimulate investment in infrastructure development.

So far Zimbabwe has been unsuccessful in her bid to host the African Cup of Nations (Afcon) due to lack of government guarantees.

The nation’s stadia are among the oldest in Africa, with some built in the 1950s without any major facelift since.

Speaking during a press briefing after a football indaba on Wednesday, Sports minister David Coltart said: “We agreed that there is need for government to invest in local football stadia around the country. We have set a goal to get an international tournament such as Afcon allocated to Zimbabwe to give government something to work towards in the rehabilitation of our stadia.”

However, Coltart was not specific on when the country could make a bid, saying the parties would deliberate on recommendations and resolutions reached at the Indaba.

“These recommendations will be refined in the next week or two and once the ministry and Zifa agree, it will be made public. Those resolutions which need to go to cabinet for endorsement will be taken there in a separate paper which will draw on our deliberations,” he said.

Zifa chief executive officer Jonathan Mashingaidze said his association was considering bidding for Afcon 2019.

“Hosting would result in the improvement of our infrastructure and the profile of the country,” said Mashingaidze.

“We have always wanted to host one of the big tournaments.

“We are looking at Afcon 2019 but before that we will try for junior tournaments such as the Under-17 and Under-20. We have some old stadia in the country and the only way we can attract investment is through the hosting of major tournaments.”

Wednesday’s indaba, which was the first of its kind in local football, brought together various stakeholders to find solutions to Zifa’s perennial financial challenges.

Coltart said they had agreed to review the issue of gate takings and various levies paid out to various stakeholders and service providers so as to ensure accountability.

Zifa and local clubs have always cried foul over what they term unreasonably high levies paid to councils, police and the Sports and Recreation Commission, among others.

“We looked at investment and infrastructure in the game and we studied in detail the issue of accountability and gate takings and various percentages which are paid, for example, to the responsible ministry, local councils, and the police.”

The closest Zimbabwe came to hosting Afcon was in 2000, but the Confederation of African Football took away its hosting rights at the last minute citing lack of preparedness.

News Day

By Daniel Nhakaniso, Sports Reporter

28 September 2012

The Indepdent

By Elias Mam

28 September 2012

ZIMBABWE’S education system was once among the best in Africa — with the country at one time having the highest literacy rate on the continent before dropping to number two after Tunisia — but now standards are declining due to a combination of factors.

Some of the reasons why Zimbabwe’s education system is deteriorating include economic and funding problems, dumbing down of learning and examination standards, mushrooming of poor private schools and colleges, growing number of low-class universities,lack of commitment by teachers and students and corruption in terms of entrance requirements, studies and examinations. The country’s education system consists of seven years of primary school, four years of secondary and two years of high school before students can enter colleges and universities. Before starting school, children go to kindergarten and pre-school.

When the country gained independence in 1980, the new government introduced a policy of free education in a bid to educate the majority of the population sidelined through colonial discrimination and inequalities. Education was declared a basic human right in Zimbabwe and a non-racial system was pursued, allowing black students to enter formerly whites-only schools. After inheriting a good education system base and infrastructure at all levels, the new government expanded the facilities to offer mainly poor students an opportunity to get at least basic education.Many children from poor backgrounds got a chance to learn and rescue themselves from poverty.

However, since the late 1980s, government steadily introduced or increased school fees and other demands making it increasingly difficult for poor children to get education. Apart from school fees, students started paying charges like development levies. The situation got worse at the beginning of 1991 when government adopted austerity measures under the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme, which encouraged reducing the budget deficit and ensuring a leaner government. Subsidies on many things, including education, were removed. When the economic meltdown set in after 2000, the situation got worse.  Schools and colleges started losing teachers and lecturers while students dropped out en masse.

Besides the economic crisis and funding problems, there were problems of localising examinations which led to corruption and cheating through the opening and selling of exam papers, deterioration of learning and examination standards and mushrooming of private schools, colleges and universities offering poor quality education. Although the political turmoil and economic collapse made headlines worldwide over the past 12 years, the decline of the country’s once well-regarded education system has largely been ignored. owered academic standards, traceable to the mid-1990s, have unfortunately coincided with the growth of a knowledge-based economy requiring workers with higher levels of qualifications. This poses a challenge for Zimbabwe. Since government scrapped the Zimbabwe Junior Certificate exams and localised ‘O’ and ‘A’ Level examinations in the mid-1990s, education standards have been plummeting. Education departments have been lowering basic entry requirements to enrol  more students, while there is a perception that exams have become easier, resulting in lower quality graduates.

Decaying infrastructure and onslaught on schools and tertiary institutions’ autonomy through undue political interference have had a telling effect on the quality of the country’s education, which needs a major policy shift and robust funding in order to get back on the rails.

At the height of the country’s socio-economic crisis, Zimbabwe lost the entire 2007 and part of the 2008 academic years as teachers and lecturers concentrated on meeting basic survival needs through alternative means. Unicef asserts 94% of rural schools, serving the majority of the population, were closed by 2009, with attendance plunging from over 80% to 20%. Years of serious underfunding have forced the country’s tertiary institutions to operate under the principles of economic rationalism, rather than principles of education. In colleges and universities, students quality is secondary to ability to pay.

Naturally, Zimbabweans are deeply concerned about declining academic standards at all levels of education and have questioned preferential college and university admissions and relaxed standards of curriculum, teaching, grading and marking. Education minister David Coltart places the decline in quality of education on government’s misplaced priorities. “Zimbabwe’s investment in education has drastically declined in the past two decades due to misplaced priorities and the sector still remains in a state of crisis,” Coltart said. “The inclusive government is spending three times more money on globetrotting compared to education and this has compromised the quality of education.”

Private colleges have mushroomed across the country’s urban areas as proprietors seek to make a quick buck, raising fears that the colleges, once frequented by those who had initially failed their public exams, were compromising education standards. But Coltart dismissed the fears, saying the advent of private institutions had not compromised the quality of education because students still write the same examinations. “It is the funding that is needed to maintain our standards,” he said. However, Coltart’s view was contradicted by remarks carried in a state-run daily this week in which Zimbabwe Schools Examinations Council (Zimsec) public relations manager Ezekiel Pasipamire said they had withheld ‘O’ Level results for a private college in order to maintain quality. “To maintain the credibility of our examination system, Zimsec has adopted a zero tolerance to malpractices particularly by private centres,” said Pasipamire. “Those are the ones that give us a headache every time there are examinations by not adhering to the standard examination procedures.” Pasipamire warned Zimsec would de-register such centres to maintain good examination standards.

Zimbabwean academic Brian Raftopoulos, a senior research mentor at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa, said the country’s education system continues to decline in the wake of insufficient efforts from the coalition government to resuscitate it.
“After 2000, in the context of the more general political crisis, a whole series of highly-politicised problems emerged in the educational sphere,” said Raftopoulos. “These problems have centred around the disciplining of teachers for their support for the MDC, the militarisation of youth centres, politicisation of the university entrance system as well as the struggle over the curriculum —
in particular the teaching of history,” he said. There is also a problem of political interference where army commanders, ministers, politicians and other influential people now enter colleges and universities through the back door, compromising standards.

Former University of Zimbabwe vice-chancellor Graham Hill was forced to resign in 2002 following revelations he had facilitated the enrolment of Zanu PF Manicaland governor Chris Mushowe for a post-graduate programme in 1995 when he did not qualify. The localisation of setting and marking of exams caused serious leakages of exam papers, mix-ups and errors in question papers and certificates. The late Edmund Garwe resigned as Education minister in 1996 after his daughter was found in possession of exam papers she had accessed after he had taken them home. However, University of Zimbabwe (UZ) vice-chancellor Levi Nyagura, widely  criticised for presiding over the UZ’s decline, is optimistic the education system would return to its former glory. The UZ has now been enrolling students who do not have ‘A’ Level English, but have 15 points with passes in subjects like Shona, Ndebele, Divinity and Geography.“Zimbabwe’s education is on the rise again and we want to safeguard society by providing quality students who will be effective in industry,” said Nyagura. “At this institution, we aim to bring back our former glory and for the first time, we have enrolled female law students with 14 points and have As in ‘O’ Level English, as well as 61 first-year female faculty of medicine students.”

Higher and Tertiary Education minister Stan Mudenge said the quality of education remained high despite years of deterioration.“We are now number two in Africa according to UN literacy levels and we want to maintain those high levels,” said Mudenge. The survey shows Zimbabwe has a 92% literacy rate while Tunisia tops with  98%, although the reality is that the quality of the education system has  been compromised.

The Chronicle

Goodwill Zunidza

27 September 2012

ZIFA, stung by mounting public demand for a swift close of the Asiagate chapter, are now at loggerheads with their own Independent Ethics Commission for failing to release findings of their probe a year after they were constituted for the exercise.

The two parties exchanged heated words on Wednesday evening soon after the well-attended football indaba held at the instigation of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture minister David Coltart and co-ordinated by the Sport and Recreation Commission at Pandhari Lodge in the capital.

Cuthbert Dube, the Zifa president, clashed with Emmanuel Chimwanda, a key official in the Independent Ethics Commission (IEC) that the football mother body set up in October last year to bring to finality investigations into the suspected match-fixing ring that saw almost 100 players sanctioned from national duty and five elected officials suspended from the Zifa board.

The association’s senior board member (finance), Elliot Kasu, and Morgan Dube, Zifa’s Southern Region chairman, also tore into Chimwanda accusing him of withholding the report to sabotage the probe.
Chimwanda, from the Anti-Corruption Commission, has become the leading figure in the committee tasked to deal with the Asiagate  saga following the unexplained departure of Justice Ahmed Ebrahim who had been appointed chairman when the IEC was set up in October last year.

Ebrahim is understood to be now domiciled in the United States of America and Chimwanda has since taken over his duties.

Confronted by Zifa officials, who also included the association’s chief executive officer Jonathan Mashingaidze and Eastern Region chairman Fungai Chihuri, Chimwanda reportedly told the football bosses that the report was now at printing stage.

Dube last night confirmed that Zifa have demanded that the Asiagate report be released without any further delay, not only to pacify a restive nation but also to clear players who might have been found not guilty and are needed for the senior national team’s final 2013 Africa Cup of Nations second leg qualifier against Angola next month.

The Zifa boss said he was concerned with the time it had taken to put a lid on the long-running issue.
“We really don’t know, they are saying it is with the printers but we are wondering how long it takes to print a report. We are getting worried now, we told them that the nation is anxiously waiting, and even the government would like to give a comment.

“We are saying, what is the point of all this delay? And you see some statements that were put out by stakeholders in (Wednesday’s) meeting were that it is probably blackmail, in terms of these people wanting to be paid before they release the report because they have given us so many deadlines and nothing has come out,” said Dube.
According to the Zifa boss, the committee had last promised to hand over their findings at the beginning of this month.

“When I left for the Caf meeting in Seychelles they promised me that by the time I came back the report would be out. But still it’s not there, and now Fifa are saying anything that is done after September 30, they will not pay for. They will only pay up to September 30, which is this weekend.”
Neither Chimwanda nor any of the other members of the IEC, which is comprised mainly of legal practitioners, could be reached for comment at the time of going to print.

The commission has largely operated outside the public view, with their work shrouded in further mystery since Ebrahim left, apparently early last month, for the US and putting the process into likely jeopardy.

Dube highlighted the importance of the upcoming decisive tie in Luanda, saying he wanted at least a hint on which players might have been cleared by the commission.

“(Tapiwa) Kapini is out injured, Chinyengetere is not going to make it so what we are saying is dai vanga vatipa some indication yekuti who of those suspended players has been exonerated, if any.

If they are there, they must be released like what they did with the first lot so that the technical team can see which other players to consider for the game against Angola.”
Warriors coach Rahman Gumbo has since named a squad bereft of the mainstream players still implicated in the seemingly endless Asiagate saga that has left him with a depleted pool of players to select from.

The Zimbabwean

27 September 2012

Officials at the Natural History Museum need more than $ 1 million to refurbish the world-renowned structure, according to Museum Director, Dr Moira FitzPatrick.

She said that while they had received some donations to upgrade parts of the museum, they faced a shortfall to finish the exercise.

“The solution to the problem is going to be costly, and estimated at well over a $1 million, and therefore we will need help from overseas,” FitzPatrick told The Zimbabwean.

She added that the museum had approached Arts, Culture and Sports Minister, David Coltart to raise the necessary money.

“Failing to raise the required amount would be a disaster for the museum as ultimately it could face collapse,” she said.

The Museum of Natural History, which houses over 75 000 specimens, is the largest museum in the southern hemisphere.

The Herald

By Godknows Matarutse, Sports Reporter

26 September 2012

ZIFA will today get a rare opportunity to try and con­vince both the Government and the private sector to provide fund­ing for the association in order to take local football to bet­ter levels. The soccer mother body will come face to face with all the major stakeholders at the football indaba scheduled to begin at Pandhari Lodge this morning. Vice-President, John Nkomo, is expected to set the tone for the indaba when he gives a keynote address before the participants go into a day-long closed session.

The Sport and Recreation Commis­sion who are co-ordinating the indaba, indicated that Education, Sport, Arts and Culture Minister David Coltart, and Zifa president Cuthbert Dube, will then hold a joint press conference at the end of the proceedings this evening.

Tirivashe Nheweyembwa, who is the Sports Commission corporate commu­nications officer, said the meeting would look mostly at issues on how football in the country can be devel­oped: “They will seek to identify the key issues that merit interventions to achieve sustainable football develop­ment,” said Nheweyembwa.

The indaba will also look to develop consensus on strategies to develop grassroots football, and to mobilise stakeholders support for investment in football development pro­grammes and national teams efforts. Another objective of the indaba is to develop a suitable fund mobilisation and manage­ment model to maximise resource availability for football development pro­grammes.

The Chronicle

25 September 2012

COULD today’s Football Indaba in Harare be the first step in turning around the fortunes of Zimbabwean soccer?

The Ministry of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture together with the Sports and Recreation Commission and the Zimbabwe Football Association are today meeting football stakeholders and the meeting is aimed at finding lasting solutions to the perennial problems dogging the country’s biggest sport.

Education, Sport, Arts and Culture Minister, David Coltart yesterday tweeted that he was getting ready for today’s meeting.

“Preparing for Football Indaba with Zifa to be held tomorrow Wednesday 26th September in Harare. Time to sort our Zimbabwe football,” said Coltart.

The major challenge that Zifa faces is lack of funding which has in the past seen national teams failing to adequately prepare for international matches.

Last month Zifa failed to send the national Under-20 men’s team for the return leg of the African Youth Championships qualifier against Angola in Luanda due to lack of resources.

At the weekend, the national Under-17 boys’ team almost failed to travel to Maputo for the return leg of the African Youth Championship qualifier against Mozambique who they beat 2-0 to advance to the next stage on a 4-2 aggregate scoreline. The Young Warriors made the trip after Zifa secured a bus at the 11th hour.

On numerous occasions, the national team has almost failed to fulfill their away games forcing Zifa president Cuthbert Dube to use his personal money to foot the team’s costs. Mbada Diamonds and Marange Resources Limited are some of the companies that have at times helped the cash-strapped football mother body.

The companies are some of the football partners that are expected to attend the Football Indaba set for Pandhari Lodge. The SRC’s corporate communications officer Tirivashe Nheweyembwa said they have invited a number of stakeholders with a view to addressing problems bedevilling Zimbabwe football.

“All is set for this milestone or landmark meeting and the stakeholders have confirmed their participation. The Mayor of Bulawayo Thaba Moyo and Town Clerk Middleton Nyoni will be here and so will be representatives from Mutare, Masvingo and Harare councils.

“The councils are the owners of stadia and as such they play a big role in our football and we need them to be part of this indaba. We have companies and soccer administrators who will be part of this meeting,” said Nheweyembwa.

The facilitators for today’s meeting are lawyer Canaan Dube and Rejoice Ngwenya. Nheweyembwa said the indaba will also seek to come up with investment models which will help raise funds for national teams and other developmental programmes.

The Asiagate matter is also likely to be among the topics that would come for discussion at the Football Indaba. Zifa will also seek an insight from the corporate world on why they have been shunning the game.