Our football cannot be dragged back into dark days

ZIMBABWE Football Association (zifa) councillors are set to converge in Harare today for their annual general meeting which has been preceded by a wave of boardroom negativity, with some hawks fighting a relentless battle to push for elections for the association’s leadership, which they argue are due by the end of next month.

In the new political dispensation, where there has been a refreshing wave of positive vibes from the front pages of mainstream newspapers, as the world embraces this country’s new leadership and declares its intentions to come here and invest, in the process, creating jobs and boosting our economy, the back pages have been the ones that have surprisingly been dominated by negativity.

Day after day, week after week, we have been reading the disturbing reports where there is a clique that believes the current zifa leadership should present themselves to their Congress, if they want a fresh mandate to rule the game beyond the end of next month, or risk plunging the game into a serious constitutional crisis.

That group argue zifa president Philip Chiyangwa and his executive were merely elected in December 2015 to complete the remainder of the four-year term of the Association’s former boss Cuthbert Dube and his board, who had their mandate to continue leading the game, revoked by the Councillors for failure to discharge their duties.

However, Chiyangwa and his team feel that group is ill-informed because, as provided for by the zifa statutes, there are no clauses which prescribe that a president of the Association, once elected into office, should serve less than a four-year term unless his or her mandate has been revoked by the Councillors.

The zifa statutes, which Chiyangwa and his team have thrown into the public domain, are very clear that a president of the Association’s term of office starts from the moment he or she is elected into office and ends four years after that election.

Chiyangwa, to his credit, didn’t craft the zifa constitution, but inherited it from the previous zifa board, who revised it five years ago in a manner, as we can now see clearly, was meant to protect the position of Dube.

The constitution separates the zifa presidency from any other position on the board and treats it as a very special position with Article 38, clearly saying “the president shall be elected by the Congress for a period of four years (and) his mandate shall begin after the Congress which has elected him (and) may be re-elected once.’’

To try and suggest that Chiyangwa was completing the term of office left behind by Dube, when Article 38 is very clear of the mandate of the president as to when it starts and ends, is clearly in violation of the zifa constitution.

Article 32 of the same constitution clearly draws the difference between the ordinary membership of the zifa executive, from the vice-president to the committee members, and that of the president as it says that, “if a position, other than the president, should become vacant (e.g death, resignation, unexcused absence from the executive committee for three consecutive meetings), the executive committee shall fill that position until the next Congress when a replacement will be elected for the remaining term of mandate.

Clearly, the zifa presidency isn’t a position where one can be elected to complete the term of someone else and, as for the other members of his executive, their protection, in the event that the next elections overlap the four-year cycle is found in the zifa Electoral Code which says boldly that, “unless this code states otherwise, the elected internal bodies of the zifa shall continue to exercise their functions until the completion of the electoral process.’’

The Sports Commission, clearly, is off-side here in trying to interfere in the internal affairs of zifa by suggesting that there will be a constitutional crisis in the event, as is certain now, elections for the Association’s leadership are not held by the end of next month.

We are humbled by the approach taken by the Sport, Arts and Recreation Minister Kazembe Kazembe, who summoned the two parties to his offices on Monday and told them, in clear terms, the Government, in the new dispensation, would not tolerate the negative fights that used to be common in sport in the past.

Kazembe was right to caution the Sports Commission against rushing to issue press statements, instead of calling the zifa leadership to a meeting to iron out their differences, and that shows a mature hand in the resolution of such cases.

We understand that there are some Councillors, of course, who usually find themselves feasting, in one way or another, when there are elections and these people must be disappointed that their feast has been taken away from them this time around.

But the game is bigger than such individuals and that is why we call for some sober minds, when the Councillors meet in Harare today, where the interests of football — rather than the interests of some power-hungry individuals — will guide them.

For a game that suffered the ultimate embarrassment of seeing its flagship national team being expelled from the 2018 zifa World Cup qualifiers, without kicking a ball, and for the current board to come through and rescue the 2022 World Cup campaign within just a month of assuming office, we cannot afford to see our football being dragged back to those dark days.