Revoke your illegal, unlawful, disbandment order of the Zifa board

WE challenge the Sports and Recreation commission chairperson Gerald Mhlotswa and his board to reverse with immediate effect, their ill-informed, misguided and foolish decision to disband the Felton Kamambo-led Zifa board, with only four months remaining of its term of office. The term of office of the Zifa board is expiring in March 2022, although Phillip Chiyangwa has some issues pertaining to the length of his term of office after taking over from Curthbert Dube. Mhlotswa, a former Polo Association of Zimbabwe chairperson, has displayed the highest level of failure in mastering and understanding soccer administration issues. Mhlotswa, a legal practioner by profession, is the SRC board chairperson. He is connected to President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s family through his marriage to the president’s daughter. After years of doing nothing tangible for sports, the Mhlotswa-led board decided to create a piece of history through controversy by foolishly disbanding the Zifa board, whose outcome has far-reaching consequences, that is inviting banishment by Fifa of all Zimbabwean men and women’s national soccer teams, from international competitions. Mhlotswa, who has no experience at all in soccer administrative issues, is better placed to deal with horse riding than soccer.

We demand that he must stop messing up the world’s most beautiful game, as enunciated by Brazilian soccer legend Adson Arantes Donacimento, better known as Pele.

The clueless and directionless SRC board wants to be seen to be doing something, after years of failing to achieve anything meaningful for sports in the country. All previous SRC boards have well-documented evidence of failure in terms of sports administration in the country, ever since attainment of independence in 1980.

Instead of SRC disbanding Zifa board, actually the government must disband the SRC board, for doing nothing in terms of sports development. For the Mhlotswa administration to vent its anger on an innocent Zifa board, that has been working very hard under very difficult circumstances, caused by the economic decline that has been brought about by the ever misfiring and corrupt

Zanu PF regime lead by Mnangagwa, is surprising and a shame.

Surely, what else does this useless and clueless SRC board expect from the Zifa board, after it managed to qualify for the January 2022, Africa Nations Cup finals in Cameroon.

SRC cannot accuse the Zifa board of failing to qualify for the 2024 World Cup finals in Quatar, because since independence, no Zimbabwean national soccer team has qualified for the World Cup finals. The performance of previous Zifa boards was measured on the ability of the national soccer teams to qualify for Afcon after every two years.

The spurious accusations being levelled against the Zifa board do not constitute a serious offence, that warrants disbandment. The SRC board falsely accused the Zifa board of financial impropriety, an accusation that has been rebutted by the Magistrate Courts and police investigations. Kamambo and his board were recently exonerated by the courts after a full trial, if there was any misappropriation of funds, the courts would have found them guilty and convicted them.