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Ruth Butaumocho Gender Editor
Outgoing Zimbabwe Women Football League chairperson Mavis Gumbo was so confident of retaining the post that she is still to come to grips on why her constituency dumped her in favour of Miriam Sibanda.
She had already set her goals for her second term as head of women’s football in Zimbabwe but that was not to be.

Despite leaving office, Gumbo is a happy woman who believes that she made an invaluable contribution to the transformation of football in Zimbabwe.

For a discipline that had long stopped getting recognition, a sport that could not attract much funding and was now being regarded as “mere tokenism”, Gumbo says her involvement injected a new life into women’s football.

She believes women’s football earned loyalty and trust from Zimbabwe’s soccer fans, who had become disillusioned with the performance of the Warriors.

“We rejuvenated women’s football and naturally soccer fans were excited. We had given them something to talk about and they rallied behind the girls, as we made our mark in both local and regional football.

“However, those achievements did not come on a silver platter. We had to work, convince the corporate world that we needed their support.

“Looking back, I can safely say it was not easy putting the jigsaw puzzle together, but persistence paid off.

“I am glad people can now proudly marvel at women’s football, not only in Zimbabwe but also across the region,” she said.

Coming from a non-sporting profession, having worked as a journalist and later joining the civil service, Gumbo says her success in revamping women’s football was ably aided with the structures that her team put in place during their tenure, something that the team diligently crafted and fortunately brought the desired results.

Although she would have wanted to maintain the same structures, Gumbo will have to wait a little bit longer, after she failed to garner enough votes for another four year term.

In the election held at the weekend, Gumbo narrowly lost to Sibanda, who polled 22 votes against her 20. The result effectively gave Sibanda the mandate to lead Zimbabwe’s women football for the next four years.

Despite the defeat, Gumbo is not vilifying the incoming team, which she said would have to straddle the same turf, and work even harder to maintain the momentum, while pushing further the graph of women’s football in Zimbabwe.

“The task is to maintain the momentum and not lose sight of the goal, which is to uplift the status of the girl child in sport. I am sure soccer fans would love to see more of that,” she said.

Reflecting at her four-year-old tenure, Gumbo said the team had a shared vision, of uplifting the girl child’s involvement in soccer, to ensure that in the long run, women would take up the sport as a profession.

“We were looking at a scenario where a girl would actually say, I am a full time footballer, when asked about her profession.

“We had seen it happen with men, surely the same could be achieved with girls, who want to eke a living from football,” she recalls.

Gumbo, however, knew that dream would not happen overnight.

It was a long-cherished vision, she had kept for years from the time she started playing football, at a tender age, in her rural home in Mberengwa despite discouragement from her parents and siblings.

When she moved to Harare in the early 80s even the bright city lights did nothing to dazzle her determination to create a positive narrative on the girl child’s involvement in football.

“While growing up, I really wanted to play football, but the sport was fenced off from girls.

“It was actually regarded as a sport for boys because they had stamina, zeal and unparalleled strength on the pitch. So naturally when I got the opportunity, I rekindled my passion.

“Although I could no longer play football, I knew I could still make a difference,” she said.

After getting into office, taking over from the Susan Chibizhe led-executive, Gumbo and her team immediately put their structures in place.

The first year was spent reviving the women’s game after years in the doldrums, where women’s football was none existent, save for a few ceremonial matches, or occasional football encounters with neighbouring teams in the form of friendly encounters.

To Gumbo, there wasn’t much to talk about female football in Zimbabwe, then.

“It had actually become a pale shadow of the once-vibrant team that participated at the 2002 COSAFA tournament where they lost to South Africa in the finals at Rufaro Stadium.

“With little funding, lack of corporate funding towards the girl child coffers, we were not discouraged.

Gumbo recalls what was crucial to her during that time was to change the narrative and bring, glimmer and hope to thousands of girls in remote areas, who had passion for the game, but had no resources.

“You can imagine my excitement when we successfully created a new region, the Central Region so that women football could easily be accessed everywhere and by everyone.

Some of her achievements included inviting President Mugabe to become the Chief Patron of the Mighty Warriors and Young Mighty Warriors.

That alone could have acted as a confidence booster for the girls who managed to take part in All Africa Games, Under 20 Women’s World Cup qualifiers and the African Women Championship.

Buoyed by the support they were getting from the highest office in the land, the Mighty Warriors successfully hosted and also won the Cosafa Women’s Championship.

Such level of success opened up sponsorship from the corporate world, which was happy with the strides that the Mighty Warriors were making.

Marange Resources came aboard to support the national league, while NetOne was responsible for the knock out tournament for the clubs.
However, Gumbo’s contribution to women’s football has not been without controversy.

Gumbo stands accused of siphoning money from Marange Resources meant for development of women’s football, and US$500 affiliation fees for clubs, something that could have cost her the chairmanship.

She, however, downplayed the issue, saying there was no way she could have abused public funds, more so for the girl child, whose interests she had been promoting.

“People are bound to talk, but that’s not true,” she said.