Masepe hits back at Harare Mayor
HARARE City Football Club chairman Alois Masepe has disputed what the Harare Mayor Bernard Manyenyeni said pertaining the rampant abuse of funds and said his freedom of expression should not be used to mislead the people.
On Thursday, Manyenyeni lifted the lid on the spending spree at Harare City. The Mayor told Star FM last night that the Harare City sports budget has in the last four years gobbled $6 million. But yesterday Masepe said inasmuch as the Mayor had the right of freedom of expression he should not mislead the people.
The chairman said it was sad that their Mayor has a habit to shoot from the hip which only affects players at the end of the day.
“The Mayor has a right to say what he wants to say but let’s get the facts right. The Mayor is known for not wanting to support soccer. But it is a decision made by Council, and the Council allocates the money as per budget.
“Our vision is not limited to the football team, we are developing sport for Harare children for their own benefit.
“We have a whole programme involved in the development of soccer, including the girl child, and this starts from the Under-13. So this requires us to hire youth professional coaches.
“We have a $2 million budget for sports development which includes all the sport teams starting from the Under-13, so I don’t know where this $6 million is coming from.
“We never sought for a supplementary budget which means we did not exhaust our budget. We will have our annual general meeting soon and then we will have the audit report and know how much we used this year. The players are owed salaries and allowances and they also read newspapers, then they will see stories that we have used $6 million. It is not fair.
“We owe them salaries so please let us be fair to the players we are developing,” said Masepe.
Masepe said running the sporting teams is also a service delivery which should be supported.
“This is not about winning Chibuku Super Cup or winning the league. It is a comprehensive programme with a good vision. In the same manner that the Council built stadia like Rufaro and Gwanzura, it is also supporting Harare children by engaging in sport development.
“We run an annual tournament for our 32 council schools. This year we have sponsored 70 of our teachers to do Level One coaching certificates and we also had 69 of our teachers acquiring a professional refereeing certificate so that the teachers can properly guide the students at our schools,” said Masepe.
The Harare Residents Trust Director Precious Shumba commended the Mayor for taking a stance on the club’s expenditure.
“The Mayor of Harare has to be commended once for standing to his values about funding soccer by the City of Harare. He has always denounced the Council for overspending on the soccer team.
“His complaints reveal his powerlessness to stop the rot at Town House. He is merely a ceremonial Mayor who should only attend to Council business to chair Full Council Meetings and officiate at other functions and receiving visitors where he adorns his Mayoral garb, and feel important, when his role is merely symbolic.
“The reality is that the Office of Mayor for Harare, Bulawayo, Mutare, Masvingo and Gweru should be Executive in line with Section 274 (5) of the Constitution which states that ‘an Act of Parliament may confer executive powers on the Mayor or Chairperson of an urban local authority, but any Mayor or Chairperson on whom such powers are conferred must be elected directly by registered voters in the area for which the local authority has been established.’
“It would be very important for the Parliament of Zimbabwe to seriously look into this area and empower Councillors to regulate the behaviours of their employees who are currently free to do as they please because they get protection through the Local Government Board and the Mayor is powerless to really control and discipline errant workers.’’
Shumba, said it was unfortunate that the Mayor had no powers to stop the rot.
“Mayor Manyenyeni makes a lot of moral sense regarding expenditure by the City of Harare on the Harare City Football Club.
‘’The Mayor should have started a long time ago to engage individual councillors to make them see his viewpoint and then have the matter brought up through a Committee of Council so that it is tabled in the Full Council.
“As long as he is just speaking about it without lobbying his fellow councillors he will only get media attention but the policy of council will not really change.
“They need to change the formula they use to fund their sporting activities as a local authority. It is sad and unfortunate that the Finance Director, the Chief Legal Officer, Councillors like Peter Moyo, Christopher Mbanga, Panganayi Charumbira , Moffat Aliseni, Resias Masunda, Thomas Chineka, Special Zuze and Barnabas Ndira have these vested interests in council and are rooted in wealth accumulation where the City Treasury Department is heavily involved, and some councillors have directly benefited,” said Shumba.