Time Harare City Council puts politics aside on Rufaro

HARARE football giants, Dynamos, had a double celebration of some sort when they won the new-look Chibuku Super Cup for the first time last month after beat ing Ngezi Platinum Stars in the final that capped a competitive 2023 season.

Finally winning the country’s major knockout trophy after nine years of trying and making up for missing out on the Castle Lager Premier Soccer League title was the main reason for celebration.

Success in the Chibuku Super Cup earned Dynamos a ticket into the CAF Confederation Cup for the 2023-24 season— a return to the African safari after a long sabbatical. Another reason for celebrating the 2-1 victory at the Baobab Stadium.

On paper the tournament is going ahead but there are obvious concerns following sentiments by CAF president, Patrice Motsepe, that there should not be more than the CAF Champions League and the newly-introduced but elitist African Football League.

“We might cancel the Confederation Cup. We’ve too many competitions. We cannot and will not have too many competitions …. The Champions League is excellent; we want to protect and promote it,” Motsepe told reporters in Abidjan early this month ahead of the 2024 Afcon finals in Cote d’Ivoire.

That statement suggests the CAF Confederation Cup will be axed and now what is yet to be confirmed is when, as opposed to “if”.

Worst case scenario for Dynamos will be an immediate disbandment of the tournament in the year they would have participated after a long absence from the continental scene.

In the event that the tournament is spared this year, Dynamos will be back but face a huge challenge with regards a home venue as the National Sports Stadium and Rufaro are failing to secure approval from the Confederation of African Football to host international matches.

There are plans to attend to the National Sports Stadium early this year following an allocation of money for the venue’s refurbishment in the annual budget announced by Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube.

If all goes to plan, the giant stadium might be approved by the time the CAF inter-club tournaments get underway around August.

However, Dynamos prefer Rufaro Stadium and would have loved to have the venue available for both the domestic and CAF matches.

Their love affair with the stadium can be seen by their sustained attempts to secure a long-term lease agreement with the Harare City Council.

Early this week, Harare Mayor Jacob Mafume told the media that Rufaro will be re-opened for domestic football with Dynamos and CAPS United clashing in a proposed Mayor’s Cheer Fund Cup on February 11.

But more significant was the announcement by Mafume that both Dynamos and CAPS United will be granted long-term leases to be joint users of Rufaro as is the case with AC Milan and Inter Milan, who share the San Siro in Italy.

Mafume revealed that the Harare City Council and the two giants have principally agreed on the modalities and will soon be putting everything in black and white.

“The two giants are going to be our key tenants in this stadium. They will share the stadium. We are going to keep the tenants of this stadium at a minimum to preserve it. We don’t want to see it reverting to a disrepair state it was almost in.

“We are going to enter into longterm lease agreements with these two anchor tenants with the leases going beyond 10 years.

“We will do this so that we can work together in the renovation of the stadium. We have already painted gates in the city end stand green where CAPS United supporters are housed and painted the Vietnam stand blue where Dynamos fans sit.”

But the venue’s unavailability for international matches is more disappointing and dampens the proposed lease agreements with Dynamos and CAPS United.

Harare City Council has struggled to rehabilitate Rufaro, which last hosted a Premiership game in 2019, to a standard where it can be allowed to stage local top-tier games.

CAF are recommending that the turf needs reconstruction while Mafume said the municipality will only be able to do so during the second phase of the re-development works at the stadium that begins at the end of the impending 2024 season in November or December.

The sad part is that Harare turned the issue of Rufaro political and frustrated a bid by Sakunda Holdings to lease the venue and then turn it into a modern stadium that would meet all requirements by CAF and Fifa.

Mafume went on an all-out attack, declaring that he would not allow the proposed lease to sail through citing what he deemed anomalies even after officials from the local authority had approved it as a welcome move.

Now we have a situation where Dynamos will get a lease of more than 10 years and be expected to contribute towards the refurbishment of Rufaro and Sakunda happen to be their main sponsor.

And it is the same Sakunda that was forced out by the Harare City Council on political grounds. It is hoped that there is a new approach to how Harare City Council handles these matters given the implications of political decisions made without alternative solutions.

Harare City Council, like many other local authorities in Zimbabwe, has too many challenges to worry about and cannot afford to frustrate arrangements whose benefits outweigh whatever political egos there might be.