Depoliticise ZIFA — Masepe

VETERAN football administrator and Harare City FC chairperson Alois Masepe’s experience and expertise has been channelled to help end the crisis at ZIFA.

The former Dynamos official is now part of the committee that has been mandated to lead proceedings at Saturday’s crunch ZIFA Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) in Harare.

Masepe spoke to The Sunday Mail Sports Reporter Langton Nyakwenda ahead of the indaba that is set to shape the destiny of the national game, especially after Zimbabwe’s suspension by FIFA

WE have accepted the fact that FIFA have suspended Zimbabwe or ZIFA from international football. That fact stands.

But we also agree that the EGM is the only option because currently, we have a vacuum at ZIFA. So, the EGM is taking place on Saturday in Harare.

ZIFA cannot hold meetings at the moment, the office is dysfunctional and we feel as councillors we need to bring back some normalcy at the association. So we believe the EGM is necessary.

We also feel the EGM will help in a way in our bid to have Zimbabwe readmitted back into FIFA; that is why we are saying this is the only way forward.

But there are realities we must face, that there is no longer a contest between SRC (Sports and Recreation Commission) and FIFA.

FIFA have already endorsed as a Congress the suspension of Zimbabwe and also that of Kenya.

Possibility of FIFA normalisation committee?

Our scenario is different from the Namibian situation where FIFA set up a Normalisation Committee. That committee is set up to avoid a suspension.

This represents a situation where FIFA are involved in the resolution of whatever is the disagreement.

FIFA come in that way particularly when we have football structures fighting each other or where you have a ZIFA executive committee fighting within itself — that is when FIFA are invited to normalise the situation.

In our case, the Government, through the SRC, is at war, not with the ZIFA Congress, but with the ZIFA executive committee (board), and that is very critical to note.

In Namibia, FIFA are not saying there is outside interference, they had internal struggles within their association.

Zimbabwe and Kenya have the same situation … you have a scenario where FIFA are saying there is third-party interference and the two countries have been suspended.

So, the approaches are different. FIFA are not coming here; we will have to reapply for readmission.

But, we have to normalise the situation first.

We need to do our own house-keeping issues. There are a lot of areas requiring hygiene processes.

We need to first establish what it is that causes tension and conflict within our process or between ZIFA and the SRC. There is need to find out why there is always tension between successive ZIFA leadership and the Premier Soccer League (PSL). What causes that?

We need to look at this and come up with solutions.

I think there are structural deficiencies; there are constitutional deficits that we need to address.

And we need to task this EGM to look into those issues before we go to the elections.

In a way, the SRC are right in their view that we should have a structural review of ZIFA.

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