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Eddie Chikamhi

Senior Sports Reporter

THE visiting FIFA delegation is today expected to meet the ZIFA board comprising the current and ousted members fronted by Felton Kamambo as part of their fact-finding mission in Zimbabwe.

The meeting which could have taken place earlier this week, failed to take off after it was noted that some of the members including Gift Banda, who is the acting ZIFA president, and Sugar Chagonda were not in attendance.

FIFA senior member associations governance manager Sarah Solemale and FIFA head of development programmes in Africa Solomon Mudege — a Zimbabwean based at the FIFA headquarters in Zurich — have held marathon meetings with football stakeholders since they arrived in the country early this week.

CAF director of member associations Sarah Mukuna and COSAFA president Artur de Almeida de Silva were also expected yesterday along with Football Association of Malawi president Walter Nyamilandu and Botswana Football Federation president Maclean Letshwiti.

The FIFA delegation apparently wanted to meet all the elected members of the board from the December 2018 ballot and an objection was raised before the discussions could take off. “Some of the board members raised the objection. They argued that the board was not complete without some of the members. There is a clique led by Kamambo that had wanted to sideline some of the key witnesses,” said a source.

The FIFA delegation has since met with the Premier Soccer League and the Zimbabwe Women’s Soccer League.  “So far these guys have been shocked by what they heard from the submissions. The FIFA guys had hoped to persuade the PSL clubs to push for the reinstatement of the ousted board members.

“But they could be forced to have a rethink if they came here with a position. The PSL clubs were blunt about the transgressions of the ousted board members and they indicated reinstatement was a non-starter.

“The Women’s Football League also did the same. They complained about their funds from FIFA which did not reach their constituency and the general lack of support for the women’s game.  “What the FIFA guys had in their minds and what they are finding on the ground is totally different.”

The FIFA emissaries were reluctant to comment on their visit and they are expected to have more meetings with football stakeholders to gather more information on the football crisis in Zimbabwe.

The Sports and Recreation Commission were the first to meet the visiting delegation. Sports Commission chairman Gerald Mlotshwa was confident solutions to the issues bedeviling Zimbabwean football administration could be found sooner than had been expected.

Mlotshwa said the visit was crucial to put the Zimbabwe situation, which is now a complicated subject, into the correct perspective.

“As you know, we have invited FIFA to come through on a fact-finding mission just so they can see things on the ground for themselves, rather than relying on third party reporting and that sort of thing, which (coming to Zimbabwe) they have done and which we are thankful for,” said Mlotshwa.

“They have engaged us. We had a very fruitful meeting. We had a very positive meeting. The CAF delegation unfortunately didn’t manage to make this meeting but we are meeting them on Thursday and there will be further updates coming from that. But everything is quite positive, let’s put it that way.

“I think it means that both sides are committed to finding a solution to the problems bedeviling football in this country.

“It’s always a good thing when people are communicating and are meeting especially physically like this because there’s then a lot of clarity on issues that may not have been clear before,” said Mlotshwa.

The ZIFA Congress, the Footballers Union of Zimbabwe and the supporters’ bodies are also interested in giving their input. Mlotshwa indicated the visitors will reach out to as many people as they could during their short stay in Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe’s membership rights at FIFA were suspended last year in February after the world football governing body ruled that the intervention by the Sports Commission to suspend the ZIFA board pending investigations into various allegations of corruption and mismanagement constituted third party interference.

The ZIFA board was suspended in November 2021 and three months later FIFA descended on Zimbabwe.

Currently, a lot of toxicity currently permeates the landscape.

The visit by FIFA representatives has put paid to the narrative being peddled by ousted ZIFA executives that include Kamambo, Philemon Machana, Bryton Malandule and ex-chief executive officer Joseph Mamutse, that FIFA were not prepared to engage with anyone other than the quartet.

The quartet was kicked out of football by the ZIFA Congress via a vote of no confidence last year and have been fighting tooth and nail to find their way back, despite the serious allegations of corruption and sexual abuse of female referees hanging on their necks.

All the same, the four-year term of Kamambo’s presidency expired on December 17, 2022. But they will get their opportunity with the visiting FIFA representative, to tell their side of the story.