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IT has been a week since Sports Minister Andrew Langa finally ran out of patience and exploded, tearing into ZIFA as an organisation that was rotten, allergic to accountability, disjointed, confused and an embarrassment to this nation. Seven days have passed since Langa demanded, in his own words, that “HEADS MUST ROLL” at 53 Livingstone Avenue and told us that “ZIFA has failed the nation and is holding the nation to ransom.”

Langa’s damning appraisal of our football leadership was not something that shocked the average fan, who has always smelt this rottenness, every time they walk past ZIFA House, and see how their football headquarters has been reduced into a structure fit for the graveyard, on the outside, a shell without even chairs and desks, inside.

It now looks like a Ghost House, where zombies meet for a feast in the dead of the night, a 21st century recreation of Charles Dickens’ decaying mansion, Satis House, in Great Expectations, where you find ghost-like characters like Miss Havisham, where the clocks were long stopped in March 2010, when the heart of the game stopped beating.

At least, Miss Havisham’s Satis House, for all its pronounced decay, still had a table where she kept her rotting wedding cake, which should have been eaten at her wedding ceremony, before her world crumbled when she was abandoned by her groom on her wedding day.

And, just like all the clocks at ZIFA House that stopped in March 2010, when life started to be squeezed out of this game by an administration devoid of any knowledge of how to run a national sporting discipline, the clocks in Miss Havisham’s decaying Satis House were stopped at twenty to nine, the moment she realised her groom had abandoned her.

“So unchanging was the dull old house, the yellow light in the darkened room, the faded spectre in the chair by the dressing-table glass, that I felt as if the stopping of the clocks had stopped Time in that mysterious place, and, while I and everything else outside it grew older, it stood still,” little Pip takes note he visits Satis House for the first time.

The average football fan has long known ZIFA’s allergy to accountability, from the moment its leadership swept under the carpet the case of the more than $700 000 which could not be accounted for by their auditors, and that it took five years for this game’s leaders to produce qualified audited accounts, justified their beliefs.

And, when it’s revealed that the $6 000 yearly payment from CAF has not been used to pay the Education Officer, as demanded by the continental football governing body, but appears to have been going into the pockets of an individual, since we did not see it being included in the audited statements as income, and there is no reaction from the football leadership, the fans have a right to believe it’s all part of the allergy to accountability.

That supporter has long known that the country’s football leadership is “disjointed, confused and an embarrassment to the nation,” because from a distance he or she has watched, in disbelief, as this association is stripped bare by creditors, who even attached and sold the artificial surface, donated by FIFA for the development of generations of Zimbabwean footballers, at the ZIFA Village.

What made the average fan stand and take notice of Langa’s damning appraisal of ZIFA was not the power of the phrases he used in his stinging criticism of a football leadership described as a joke, by one of its board members, but that this was coming from the Minister who, until his explosion last week, had appeared to be a very strong ally of those Tom and Jerry characters at 53 Livingstone Avenue.

Until last Friday, when Langa issued his damning statement, our Sports Minister appeared to be the man who saw no evil, spoke no evil and heard no evil even, as our football was being torn apart by these men, who came into their public positions promising to add value to this game, but who have, in just five years, devalued it so much all that is now left is a rotten skeleton of what used to be a national game.

Bothwell Mahlengwe, our columnist who played in the domestic Premiership while working as a banker, was so charmed by Langa’s sudden explosion he even praised the Minister this week, for finally seeing that no amount of patronage, or public relations spinning wizardry, would ever make something, which is black and white in colour.

But, events at ZIFA this week, appear to suggest that Mahlengwe, and all those fans who celebrated that the Minister was ready to crack his whip, and ensure that, in his own words, “HEADS MUST ROLL,” engaged in premature celebrations as the “rotten, disjointed and confused” establishment appears not yet ready to go away without a fight.

And, in all this, it’s Langa, I am afraid, who might end up looking not only powerless, if not harmless, but certainly having been reduced by these men, whom he rightly noted were holding the nation to ransom, to a stooge who fits the old adage that a “barking dog seldom bites.”

THE WEEK ZIFA TOLD THE MINISTER TO GO AND HANG
For all his fury last week, in addressing the crisis that envelopes our football right now, Langa might have noted that the venom of his criticism did not move the ZIFA leadership even an inch at all from the position they were before they met him at his offices last Thursday.

His demands that they, at least, apologise publicly to the nation for the way they bungled the Valinhos case, by not only sitting on his papers and ignoring the lawsuit until it exploded into an expulsion of the Warriors from the 2018 World Cup qualifiers, but also not advising authorities like him of that crisis, were ignored.

When Bafana Bafana crashed out of the group stages of a CHAN tournament they hosted last year, while our home-based Warriors, without even a tenth of the resources that had been availed to their neighbours, somehow made it all the way to the semi-finals, South Africa’s Sports Minister, Fikile Mbalula, was so disappointed by this that he called his team a “Bunch of Losers.”

That phrase alone seemed to jolt an entire South African football establishment into working overtime, to ensure that they don’t keep embarrassing their nation, and the results have been there for everyone to see — Bafana Bafana qualifying for their first Nations Cup finals, which they didn’t host, in seven years.

Then they had their Under-17 national team qualifying for the World Under-17 Cup after finishing as runners-up at the African Youth Championships, one of South African football’s finest hours, and their Under-20 national team making it to the final of the African Under-20 Championships.

Now, our Minister calls ZIFA “rotten, disjointed, confused and an embarrassment to the nation,” demands that “HEADS MUST ROLL” and, orders them to apologise to the nation for the Valinhos gaffe, and he is ignored, completely, as if he didn’t utter a word, let alone a phrase, in a stinging rebuke of our football leadership.

Instead, they sell him a dummy, that they are going to meet in a week’s time, in the first of meetings to try and put their house in order and, on the eve of that indaba, the chief executive, Jonathan Mashingaidze, unilaterally cancels that meeting, saying that it’s in violation of the ZIFA constitution.

The same Mashingaidze who sent notices last Friday, advising board members, of the meeting when the heat was on and the grand plan was to dupe the Minister that something was being done to address his concerns.

Others rightly ask, why this violation of the ZIFA constitution was not being highlighted, all this time, when key appointments were being made at 53 Livingstone Avenue, which needed the endorsement of the board, and such endorsement wasn’t sought nor granted?

How it was possible, without serious violating the ZIFA constitution, that the association could launch a bid to host the 2017 Nations Cup, without the board sitting to give its endorsement of such a huge project, as was the case last year when Zimbabwe jumped onto the bandwagon of bidders, and it all ended up in a first round humiliation?

How it was possible, without a violation of the ZIFA constitution, that an explosive case like the Valinhos one could be hidden from some board members, and was never part of their board meetings since they came into office last March, even when it had such serious ramifications like the expulsion of the Warriors from the 2018 World Cup qualifiers?

How it was possible, without a serious violation of the ZIFA constitution, that another explosive case, like the Tom Saintfiet issue, and the fact that there are pending disciplinary proceedings against Zimbabwe over the case, would have been kept away from the board members, without being raised at any of the five board meetings, which they have held since last March?

How it was possible, without a grand violation of the ZIFA constitution, that the board member in charge of finance, duly elected by the assembly to take care of all the financial issues of the association, could be isolated from such financial transactions, for a whole year, while the ZIFA House was burning as creditors raided every attachable item they could lay their hands on?

How it was possible, without a violation of the ZIFA constitution, that the so-called Emergency Committee would meet, now and again, without even caring to send minutes of their deliberations to their colleagues on the board, as demanded by that constitution, and they are ignored, from the information chain, as if they were not voted into office by the Council?

The cancellation of yesterday’s indaba was ZIFA’s polite way of telling Langa, who represents the government, that they can go and hang because, as far as these men are concerned, Zimbabwean football was long privatised, in March 2010, and turned into a private property that now belongs to just one or two people.

Langa, sadly, has been reduced to just a mere supporter of the Young Warriors, as was the case at Rufaro last week where, to his credit, he came to the stadium to support the boys, but the real owners of this game, and the team that was playing that day, were having coffee at home, without even having the courtesy of even coming to give these boys morale support.

REAL FOOTBALL NATIONS PLAY THE GAME ON THE FIELD
So, because our national game has been taken over and converted into the private property of some two individuals, we shouldn’t be surprised when they choose, as they did this week, that the Warriors should not play during the FIFA International Friendly Week, a window that allowed teams to play even two games.

We shouldn’t cry foul when, as happened this week, we happened to be the only country, among the FOURTEEN cosafa nations, which chose not to plunge into battle, to prepare our team, while little Mauritius, a lightweight in the game, played two matches.

The African countries, where football is still a national sporting discipline — Mauritius, Burundi, Gabon, Mali, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, South Africa, Gambia, Mauritania, Togo, Seychelles, Kenya, Ghana, Senegal, DRC, Zambia, Rwanda, Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire, Namibia, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Algeria, Cameroon, Mauritania, Cape Verde, Egypt, Angola, Ghana, Senegal, Mali, Comoros, Madagascar, Seychelles — were all in action this week in friendly internationals.

Even Tunisia, reeling from that terrorist attack in their capital, still found the wisdom to organise a friendly game while Morocco, who will not be playing at the 2017 Nations Cup finals, felt they still needed to prepare their team and played Uruguay.

Of course, we didn’t play, because our game has long been taken over by two individuals and, it seems, there is nothing that even the Sports Minister can do about it.

To God Be The Glory!

Come on United!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

‘Nobody beats United’s pulling power and no club is as globally popular as them or, as rich, in terms of revenue’ — Daily Mail

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