Tense Alex searches its soul
ALEXANDRIA Sports Club plunged into a soul-searching exercise on a tense Saturday afternoon as one of the country’s top sports clubs battled the winds triggered by revelations it was largely run along racial lines.
The Saturday Herald reported this weekend that the battle for Alex has exploded amid some back-room manoeuvres by some to position themselves to become the club’s leaders at elections set for the end of the month.
Enock Jokomo, who was ousted from his position as club president at an extraordinary meeting, has reportedly bounced back into his position as part of boardroom politics for the control of the club which has some of the best football, cricket, tennis and bowling facilities in the country. Alex have one of the best bowling teams in the country but, instead of that being a source of pride for the club members, it is a source of deep divisions.
Others also feel there is an element of racism in the way the club operates as its white members are predominantly members of the bowling club and rarely interact with their football counterparts who are predominantly black.
And, on Saturday the atmosphere at the club was tense as the leaders sought to find the moles who were leaking information related to what happens at Alex.
“It’s very tense today, it has been like that since morning because meetings have been going on and there is a lot of finger-pointing right now,” a club member told The Herald.
“Some people are pointing fingers at the chairman and others are pointing fingers at club members but it just tells you that things are now what they should be.
“The trustee has been here for a long time and the man whose presidency has caused conflict has also been here too. There is an acknowledgement that things must change and there are issues about transparency, what should have been generated from advertising space that is around the club and what that money could have been used for.
“Some of the members wonder why some people just want to cling on to their positions, as if they get a lot of financial benefits from that when this is supposed to be just charity work but, who knows, maybe there is more to what has been happening than what meets the eye.”
There are some members who feel that the club’s management have been reduced to be mere supervisors of the other sections of the club like football, squash, cricket and rugby and are powerless when it comes to dealing with the bowling wing.
“The bowling members run their own island here,” said a member when The Herald paid the club a visit on Friday.
“They have their own wing, which has their own bar and all the other stuff and the interaction with their black fellow members is only when there is a meeting and voting for positions.
“We have a management which should be overally in charge of the club, the entire club, but these guys only supervise what happens in the football section, the squash section and, to some extent, the rugby section.
“This has created two clubs based at one place and the bowlers run their own affairs and the other wings run their own affairs when it should ordinarily be one club under one management.
“Of course, there are some black bowlers but they are just about one or two and it’s sad that, after all these years after Independence, you get a feeling that we are operating along racial lines and the management don’t have any power to correct this anomaly.” The battle for the club’s leadership has also been a cause of conflict.
“The wing that is used by the majority of blacks, who are members of the football section, closes at 10.30pm and the wing that is used by the majority of the white members, the bowling section, can close as and when they feel they want to go home. A lot is going on here my friend.
“The former president Jokomo was removed from his post a few months ago but we hear that no official communication was passed to him because some people, who run the day-to-day activities at the club, don’t agree with that decision and that has brought up a lot of confusion ahead of the elections.”