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now been stuck in a paralysis of endless controversies and a quagmire of eternal under-achievement.
He is a virtual saint, the shining knight with the Midas Touch, who has – in their judgment – done more in two years than what others failed to do, in a combined 10 years of service, in the seat of the Zifa chairmanship.
To those people Dube is an oasis of hope, in a desert of hopelessness, and an island of light, in an ocean of darkness, who provides the flicker of belief that tomorrow could bring a better day.
In a domestic football world that has always delivered a morass of mediocrity, for a fiercely loyal fan base that has somehow remained hopeful, Dube has come about as a man with a special gift who is providing the ray of light.
His electoral victory as Zifa boss was as emphatic as they will ever come, a 31-4 landslide that buttressed the football constituency’s belief in his capacity to deliver, and his supporters believe he has fulfilled most of their wishes.
He charmed the Zifa councilors with the promise that the problems facing their association needed a man with a proven record of lifting such sinking organisations and his message won universal appeal among the members of the assembly.
After all Dube is a very successful business executive, whose brilliant management skills helped turnaround the fortunes of the giant Premier Services Medical Aid Society, into the thriving business that it is today.
Like every human being, Dube has his own failings, but his supporters believe that the good things he does in a selfless service to the national game far outweigh the isolated shortcomings that emerge, now and again, in his management of our football.
One of those people who fiercely support Dube as the best candidate to lead Zifa right now is the Zimbabwe National Soccer Supporters Association president, Eddie “Mboma” Nyatanga.
This week Nyatanga hailed Dube as a distinguished leader, following his appointment into one of the top Fifa committees, saying this has come as a huge vote of confidence by the world governing football body in the Zifa boss’ character.
Nyatanga said if Dube could be suitable, in Fifa’s eyes, to be part of the committee that organises the Confederations Cup, then he surely was suitable to be Zifa president, not only for one term, but for two terms.
It hasn’t been all smooth sailing for Dube but you can’t fault his commitment to make things move and, if he is not using his financial resources to bail out the national team, then he is using his personal funds to pay the salaries of the Zifa employees.
When you have someone pumping in more than US$550 000 from his private funds, just to ensure that some financial obligations at Zifa are taken care of in the past two years, then you can’t certainly question his commitment to the project he is leading.
Dube is bullish these days and when he says that if it wasn’t for his financial packages, which have been channeled into the Zifa coffers at regular intervals to oil the system at the association, the organisation would have collapsed, there are a lot of people who believe him.
It’s hard to argue otherwise.
When Dube wasn’t in Harare last week, as he wound the clock on his Christmas and New Year holiday programme, we all saw the chaos that engulfed what was supposed to be a straight-forward trip by the Warriors to Botswana for a friendly international match.
Without the guidance and helping hand of their boss, Zifa turned into a theatre of confusion as the officials bungled one key aspect of the travel arrangements after the other and, twice, the trip was postponed until Mimosa Mining Company came with a US$10 000 donation to foot the expenses.
There were times, during the mayhem, when it became increasingly clear that there were better odds on the cancellation of the trip than on the Warriors making the journey and Botswana, who had requested the friendly to fine-tune their 2012 Nations Cup preparations, could only helplessly watch from a distance.
In contrast when Dube was around, and the team didn’t have the money to fly to Mali for a 2012 Nations Cup qualifier, the Zifa boss tendered the title deeds of his house to the bank as a guarantee to secure a loan that was needed to underwrite the trip.
In contrast Botswana, which is just across the border, turned into a nightmare for Zifa – with their boss not available – while arranging for the Warriors to travel to Mali, stuck on the other side of West Africa, proved an easier task for the association, with their boss calling the shots.
But not everyone believes in Dube and those who have chosen the other side are very severe in their criticism of what is happening at 53 Livingstone Avenue.
One of them is Chris Sambo, the former PSL chief executive, who this week sent the following piece to this blog.

Zifa And Its Mistakes – Chris Sambo
When I was doing Form Two at Harare Secondary School, my then English teacher, Fay Chung, who later became the Minister of Education, once severely reprimanded me for not learning from my mistakes.
I somehow repeatedly got the spelling of the word rendezvous wrong in tests and, even up to this day, I sometimes get it wrong.
If we look at our football today, can we honestly say the current Zifa board has learnt from the mistakes of the past?
The answer is NO.
While I have respect on the capabilities of certain individual board members, collectively the current Zifa board is in danger of becoming one of the worst to manage the national game.
The board lacks unity of purpose and some of their decisions appear to be motivated by geo-ethnic considerations.
With the coming in of Cuthbert Dube to the helm of our football, most of us were made to believe that the problems that were continually bedeviling our national game football were now a thing of the past.
Despite assurances of turning around the financial fortunes of the organisation, it’s a brutal fact that Zifa is now worse off, in terms of its finances, than when the current leadership came into office.
After inheriting a deficit of US$610 000, the association is now over US$2 million in the red.
The current leadership promised us that the corporate world would arrive on the scene in a very big way once they got into office and that became a key factor in the electorate settling for them.
But that has certainly not happened and, in just over a month from now, Dube and his team will be in office for two years and they can’t even point to one sponsor.
Dube is now supporting the association through his own finances.
While appreciating his sacrifice, which comes at a huge cost, the practice cannot be sustained in the long-run and there is also a risk of this running into conflict with Fifa statutes.
Planning of international friendlies and international matches is still being carried out in a haphazard manner, just as was the case with the old leadership that was replaced.
We have instead watched countries such as Botswana, with no player resources to talk about, qualifying for the 2012 Nations Cup finals while we destroyed our campaign by putting selfish interests ahead of national ones.
Since 2006, we have not qualified for any meaningful competition, we have even lost confidence in ourselves to the extent that we are now importing referees from other countries.
Caf have even turned their back on our referees and, while we could send a referee to the 2002 World Cup finals in Japan/South Korea 10 years ago, we can’t even send one to the 2012 Nations Cup finals.
Zifa made a lot of noises about Asiagate and attracted a lot of unwarranted international attention.
Because of the manner this exercise was carried out, it is very unlikely that they will secure prosecution of any player or official.
I feel sorry for those board members who have been suspended. For how long should they be made to wait before they know their fate?
Justice delayed is justice denied.
Recent allegations of corruption and bribery against the Zifa president by one of his board members were damaging and, hopefully, when this drama ends, this will be proved to have been unfounded because it has the capacity to seriously damage our game.
And if such allegations are not investigated, it would appear as if the system targets piranhas while the sharks swim freely.
As for our campaign for 2014 World Cup finals, it would appear we are heading for another disaster.
By now we should have secured a corporate partner who will sponsor our campaign.
Contractual agreements between Norman Mapeza and his assistants should be finalised and we all need to get the assurance that he and his team will be the one leading our campaign.
And so do the players who also need stability in the technical camp.
By the time we start the 2013 Nations Cup campaign next month all financial resources and strategic plans should be in place.
In June 1996, the then Minister of Sport Education and Culture set up a Commission chaired by High Court Judge Paddington Garwe.
At the end of the exercise the Commission came up with 36 recommendations.
One of the most contentious issues raised in the Garwe Report was the bribing of councilors during Zifa elections, an issue which is still being raised 16 years later.
If Zifa could only implement 50% of those recommendations our football will never be the same again. With 12 minutes remaining at the Emirates on Tuesday night,

My Humble Contribution To The Debate
For all the challenges that have plagued Cuthbert Dube’s first two years in charge of Zifa, for all the mud that has been thrown in his direction, for all the occasions that he has seemingly appeared to be coming short, I still believe he has done a pretty good job of it all.
The good things that he has done, in my humble analysis, far outweigh the occasions when he has come short.
He appeals to me as a very honest man who always gives his best shot and, even on the occasions that everything doesn’t ultimately work out, you get the impression that he probably could not have done anything better.
Honesty is a virtue and, in a domestic football family that has had its fair share of dark characters, Dube brings that refreshing comfort that he is not doing it for the money but he is doing it from the heart, even spending his money, just to try and make things tick.
It’s easy to ignore, overnight, the crumbing organisation that he inherited and only those with an agenda to get him out, at whatever cost, will find refugee in the nonsense that cleaning the Zifa House needed just a year and therefore Dube has failed.
It’s easy to ignore right now the fact that this Zifa board has spent two years staggering as a divided unit, with one powerful bloc pulling one side, and what happened when it came to the appointment of the national coach, with that Tom Saintfiet/Mapeza saga, clearly illustrated the deep divisions.
Mending those divisions and getting the board to speak with one voice and move in the same direction, was a huge task and, to his credit, Dube has apparently sorted out that challenge and you get the impression Zifa are united right now.
At least, we have moved from that chaotic situation where Dube would say one thing in the newspapers today and others, camouflaged in the disguise of sources, would say something completely different the next day.
Rather than criticise Dube for using his financial resources, as and when the situation has demanded, I believe that we should salute him for being there for his nation when challenges stalked the national game and threatened to drag it into its grave.
Yes, Dube came into power with a promise that he would get sponsors for Zifa but we have to give him the benefit of doubt that when he was making such promises he didn’t know that the profile of the national game was about to be battered by the controversy that followed Asiagate.
He made the promises, assuming everything was normal, and you have to give him the benefit of doubt that, in a very normal environment where the landscape had not been poisoned by all the controversies that followed, which have nothing to do with Dube, chances are that his sponsors would have come on board now.
Yes, some will rightly argue that the Botswana FA handled their Asiagate challenge better than Zifa and were rewarded with the sponsors remaining on board and the Zebras qualifying for their maiden Nations Cup at the 2012 showcase in Gabon and Equatorial Guinea.
The issue of vote-buying, in my humble analysis, is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury but ultimately signifying nothing.
Unless someone or some people are there to provide credible evidence that they were bought to vote in this and that manner, I believe we should forget about this nonsense and move on.
Any election generates a response and winners and losers always have a lot to say but it doesn’t mean that anything that is said is credible and, after all, proving that someone was bought, when that person is saying he wasn’t, is a wild goose chase.
If Fifa, who demonstrated a zero tolerance towards vote-buying by outlawing their vice-president Mohamed Bin Hammam from the game, have the guts to appoint Dube onto the organising committee of the 2013 Confederations Cup, then their message to those pushing the vote-buying agenda here is loud and clear – YOU HAVE NO CASE!
It’s one thing your name being dragged into a scandal, the way we did to Brazilian legend Ronaldo in the Asiagate report, and it’s another thing Fifa, or a disciplinary committee, confirming that you, indeed, are guilty of whether allegations that were piled against you.
So when Fifa endorses Ronaldo’s appointment as the Brazilian head of his country’s hosting of the 2014 World Cup, despite all the innuendoes carried in the Asiagate report that he received corrupt payments from Asian betting syndicates during the ’98 World Cup finals, there is a strong message that we should read from the world football governing body. And, when Fifa appoints Dube to the organising committee of the 2013 Confederations Cup, despite all the innuendoes that have been raised by those who claim he was guilty of bribery in the countdown to the Zifa elections, there is a strong message that we should read from the world football governing body.
Dube is just halfway into a four-year term and, if you read the Zifa constitution well, you will realise that a vote of no confidence cannot be passed in his chairmanship.
So, I guess, rather than wasting all our time fighting and painting him as a monster, when he certainly is far away from that, why don’t we give him the space to do what he promised he would do because, as far as I’m concerned, the Warriors’ qualification battle for the 2013 Nations Cup finals is far more important than how Dube won the Zifa presidency.

Twelve Is The Number Thierry
Thiery Henry scored his 12th goal against Leeds United in 12 appearances, wearing the number 12 shirt in the year 2012, scoring from exactly 12 yards, exactly 12 days after he first announced he was coming back to Arsenal and spotting a beard that has not been shaved in 12 months.
Incredibly, 12 years and six months have passed from the time Henry joined the Gunners in August 1999 to the moment he scored that goal against Leeds in his comeback match for Arsenal. And, in case you were just thinking this is not all linked to fate, just count the number of letters in the name THIERRY HENRY and you will see that they add up to 12. Count the number of letters in the name of the coach who brought him to Arsenal, ARSENE WENGER, and they add up to 12.

The Greatest Turns 70
Even for a football-mad columnist like me, you can’t help but join the pending celebrations on Tuesday as the world takes a bow to the greatest boxer to ever grace our planet – Muhammad Ali.
The Greatest turns 70 and, for a man who dominated heavyweight boxing with a style that might never be seen again and who has bravely battled against Parkinson’s in his later life, please take a bow.
Yes, Ali floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee and special sportsmen like him come once in a generation. From the Rumble In The Jungle against George Foreman in Kinshasa in ’74 to the Thrilla in Manila against Joe Frazier in the Philippines, Ali charmed our hearts and minds.
Alex Ferguson turned 70 on December 31, just two weeks ago, and as Ali turns 70 on Tuesday, you begin to wonder whether in the two weeks as 1941 gave way to 1942, the Almighty decided to create a group of very special people.
To God Be The Glory!
Come on United!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Chacharitoooooooooooooooooooooooo
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
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