Zimpapers Logo

Chris Sambo

Sports Reporter
LIFELONG Footballers Trust chairman Francis Zimunya has vowed to revive ZIFA and is spearheading the formation of a working committee to resuscitate the association which was recently dissolved by its congress because of bankruptcy.

Zimunya is the chairman of the normalisation committee which is made up largely of parties opposed to the decision by the ZIFA Congress to disband and form a new organisation to lead the country’s football.

His secretary-general at Lifelong Footballers Trust, Chris Sambo, is also part of the committee.

Shortly after making a presentation before the Parliamentary Committee on Sport and Recreation, where he vehemently opposed the dissolution of ZIFA, Zimunya said they do not recognise the newly-constituted National Football Association of Zimbabwe and will seek to reverse the developments.

“We had a stakeholders meeting on Tuesday where we put in place a working committee to find out ways how ZIFA should find its way back on its feet and start operating normally.

“The committee is still being instituted because we would want all stakeholders to be represented.

“This committee’s mandate is to help ZIFA to be functional. Right now it is the only registered association because it was never deregistered. We don’t recognised NAFAZ because it is illegal and it not registered with the Sports and Recreation Commission.

“As far as we are concerned ZIFA is still there but those guys who were in leadership dissolved themselves and formed a splinter group which is not recognised anywhere.

“If you ask the players they have contracts with ZIFA, the national team coach has contract with ZIFA and they were playing all those games including the AFCON qualifiers and COSAFA under the ZIFA banner.

“We have questioned the wisdom of trying to run away from debts. It’s not the way to go because it destroys corporate trust.

“No one would want to do business with you in the future. But from the discussions we had, I can say the solution to the debt problem has been found.

“We have negotiated with some of the creditors who agreed to turn their debt into equity and become stakeholders of ZIFA. Most of them are happy with the arrangement,” said Zimunya.

NAFAZ president Philip Chiyangwa said Zimunya’s organisation is not a member of the football governing body in this country and is not recognised by either COSAFA, CAF or FIFA.

“We were at COSAFA recently and that shows we are the organisation that matters and we were with the national team coach yesterday and that tells you he knows who are his employers,” said Chiyangwa.

“An elephant doesn’t stop in its adventure because some small dogs are barking, it continues on its journey, and you can tell that these are power-hungry individuals, who have failed in the past, because they have already started parcelling out positions to themselves.

“If they were a pressure group, whatever you call them, and they were fighting for a genuine cause, why then do you find them already calling themselves leader, assistant leader and so forth? “Some of these people, like Zimunya, have served a FIFA ban from football for causing chaos in the game in this country 12 or so years ago and they are still there, creating the same problems, and we can tell them that they will face the music.”