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Petros Kausiyo Deputy Sports Editor
SPORT and Recreation Commission board chairman Edward Siwela is confident the interim committee they will put in place to run the Zimbabwe Rugby Union will hit the ground running and help end the administrative crisis dogging the ailing game.

The Sports Commission announced on Tuesday that they had dissolved the ZFRU board led by Nyararai Sibanda, just a year after they were elected into office on a four-term.

Unlike previous ZRU boards which used to serve one-year terms, Sibanda and his leadership had been given a four-year mandate to administer rugby.

A poor run by the Sables in the Africa Gold Cup, the precursor to next year’s 2019 Rugby World Cup qualifiers did not help matters either for the executive committee, whose other members included Sibanda’s two deputies — Noddy Kanyangarara and Tapiwa Mangezi and treasurer Joseph Kunyetu.

The provincial chairpersons were spared the Sports Commission axe as did Abigail Mnikwa for women.

A cocktail of administrative blunders and infighting also seemed to follow the Sibanda board prompting the Sports Commission to curtail their stay in office and avert the situation from deteriorating further.

That chief executive Blessing Chiutare had been reduced to a mere figurehead, without any powers to sign any of the ZRU bank accounts, put into perspective how the suspended board was micro-managing the affairs of the game at the expense of the secretariat.

Siwela said his Commission had already identified names for the interim committee, which would be recommended to the Minister of Sport and Recreation Makhosini Hlongwane for ratification.

“The SRC Board met on Monday, reviewed the situation, the deteriorating situation at ZRU and made a decision to suspend the ZRU executive committee which some people refer to as the board.

“This is obviously to enable the SRC to investigate deeper into the causes of the challenges that are being experienced by the Zimbabwe Rugby Union.

“At this meeting the SRC Board also did actually address the issue of the interim committee, we are cognisant of the fact the sport of rugby should continue to be run, it should not suffer on account of the fact that the executive committee has been suspended.

“Firstly I must point out that the administration under the CEO remains intact and therefore as far as administration is concerned it will continue to be run. But to the pertinent question about the interim committee… the provisions of the SRC are that where an executive committee or a board of a national association is suspended as SRC we should put forward names that should constitute an interim committee, put them forward as a recommendation to the Minister of Sport and Recreation.

“We have already identified what we consider to be suitable individuals and we are formally writing to the minister recommending that those people be appointed interim committee that will oversee the running of the sport of rugby in Zimbabwe for the interim.

“It has been suspended that is the accurate statement

“Our wish is that it is in place for the shortest possible time, you really would not want interim committees to mutate into full term committees, you would like them to be there for a specific purpose and usually it is to address the gap that is created when the board or executive committee in this case is suspended.

“As soon as issues have been sorted out we would normally see to it that we revert to the normalisation of the situation and the normalisation of the situation should be for example the outcome of the inquiry be that the board should actually be dissolved you then are looking at as quickly as possible organising elections to elect a substantive executive committee to take over.

“So we are looking at a period of six months to at most a year but really around six months that should pretty much take care of the challenges,’’ Siwela said.