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Ndumiso Gumede

IT has been quite a dramatic week on the domestic football front with the ZIFA leadership flexing their muscles and punishing those they deem to have brought the game into disrepute in the past few months.On Monday, ZIFA announced the suspension of the Premier Soccer League chairman Peter Dube, the first casualty of the chaos that has stalked the relegation and promotion of clubs into the country’s top-flight league since the association’s congress met recently and resolved to axe only two, instead of four, clubs from the Premiership this year.

Until that indaba, the arrangement was that four clubs will be axed from the Premiership, following a resolution passed last year during which the football governing body contend that the PSL agreed to finance the play-offs that will involve the four winners of the four Division One leagues.

But the PSL told the ZIFA Assembly, at their last meeting, they didn’t have the resources to bankroll such an exercise and the regional leaders felt betrayed by the top-flight league’s leadership and asked for a vote where all the four winners of the Division One leagues will gain automatic promotion into the PSL.

Given that the regional leaders have the numbers, in a ZIFA Assembly where the PSL only has 16 votes out of more than 50 votes, the top-flight leadership were predictably doubly defeated, putting into motion the confusion that is yet to be resolved to this day.

The ZIFA executive felt Dube was a major player in the chaos that has ensued, and on Monday announced they had suspended him pending his appearance before the association’s Disciplinary Committee.

Since then, Dube has refrained from attacking the ZIFA leadership, saying he is waiting for the right platform to prove his innocence. On the other hand, the PSL clubs are set to meet to chart the way forward and, possibly, speak on behalf of their leader.

Dube was suspended on the same day as Highlanders chief executive Ndumiso Gumede, who until last year had been the ZIFA vice-president for five years. The veteran football administrator is accused of leading a revolt against the Philip Chiyangwa-led administation by suggesting that Zimbabwe football was in a mess.

In his dossier to world football governing body FIFA Gumede also recommended the dissolution of the current ZIFA leadership, and the setting up of a caretaker committee to run the game. Among the dossier’s alleged co-authors are serial critics of the country’s football leadership who include Chris Sambo, Francis Zimunya and former ZIFA chief executive Jonathan Mashingaidze.

The dossier prompted FIFA to send their point man in Southern Africa, Ashford Mamelodi, to see for himself the challenges bedevilling our football. After meeting with all the parties Mamelodi compiled a report which he dispatched to Zurich. The world football governing body declined to dissolve the ZIFA leadership and, instead, challenged them to liquidate the mountain of debt estimated at $7 million.

It was a slap in the face of those who had petitioned FIFA, including Gumede, and ZIFA have now reacted by banning him from the game for his underhand activities which they claim brought Zimbabwean football into disrepute.

While we have issues with a national game that continues to be dogged by suspensions and all the negativity that such things bring, we are concerned with the way Gumede has gone about trying to portray himself as above the laws that govern the beautiful game, simply because he has been in its administrative trenches for more than four decades, and suggesting he is beyond censure.

Foolishly, he has even sought to find refuge in tribalism, insinuating at a media briefing this week that ZIFA’s actions have the capacity of triggering a tribal war in the game.

What nonsense!

It’s the same Gumede who shamelessly tried to defend that Highlanders hoodlum who displayed a banner, during a match against Dynamos at Barbourfields, mocking Shona-speaking people as dogs because, he said, he had heard some DeMbare fans sing songs mocking Highlanders in the past.

When this ZIFA leadership suspended Twine Phiri, because they felt he wasn’t qualified to hold his post as PSL boss, which led to Dube being elected as the PSL chairman, where was the tribalism that Gumede is now seeing in the mist of his ban?

When Gumede was part of the ZIFA board that was suspending everyone who cared to challenge them, just a few years ago, why didn’t he see the dangers of the imaginary tribal wars that he is now speaking about?

Is he suggesting that, because of his tribe, he should never be sanctioned because doing so will provoke a tribal war?

Why does he give an impression that the entire ZIFA leadership is made up of Shona-speaking people, out to drive their Ndebele counterparts out of the game, when the current ZIFA vice-president, Omega Sibanda, is not only Ndebele but is a life-long member and fan of Highlanders Football Club?

Trying to hide behind tribalism is hopeless, Mr Gumede, because what you simply need is to carry your cross because you erred in joining a rebellion and when a coup fails, in football as in politics, there are consequences.

In case you don’t believe that, just check what is happening in Turkey right now.