Zimpapers Logo

Temba Mliswa

Petros Kausiyo Deputy Sports Editor
HOUSE of Assembly Member Temba Mliswa has challenged the Ministry of Sport, Arts and Culture to ensure that technocrats will take a leading role in the drafting and implementation of the proposed national sports policy and the Zimbabwe football’s turnaround strategy.Mliswa said he had noted with concern the continued exclusion of technocrats when polices that are key to the growth of football and sport in general where being crafted and later implemented.

Giving his input on the proposed turnaround strategy for football in Zimbabwe, Mliswa challenged Sport, Arts and Culture Minister Andrew Langa to ensure that people with the requisite skills and passion for sport were appointed to such key bodies like the Sport and Recreation Commission.

Mliswa is also the chairman of the parliamentary portfolio committee on Education, Sport, Arts and Culture and his committee has since their arrival in the August House last year, taken a keen interest in the goings-on in the different sporting associations that include Zifa, Zimbabwe Cricket, National Athletics Association of Zimbabwe and the Zimbabwe Rugby Union.

The firebrand former Warriors and CAPS United fitness trainer said politicians should not take the leading role in policy formulation for such sports like football at the expense of technocrats with the legislator giving examples of the availability of local football legends such as Stanford “Stix’’ Mtizwa and John Phiri “from whom a lot could be tapped’’.

Langa indicated that he is going to dissolve the Sport and Recreation Commission board led by Bulawayo lawyer Joseph James as well and warned Commission director-general Charles Nhemachena and his staff that they could also be restructured if they do not shape up to the demands of sport in the country.

Mliswa said there was need for a “paradigm shift in the way Zimbabweans approach football and sport in general ‘’ and said that switch in mindset needed to start at household level.

“Dissolving the SRC board will be a right start. You must ask yourself what it is that you are doing for your son or daughter who is playing sport, do you have a vision for them and have you put in any investment for them to succeed? We need to change mindsets and take football and sport as serious business. We also need to ask ourselves if we have sports lawyers in the SRC who can understand sport.

“We cannot have politicians everywhere from top to bottom we need to have the technocrats and we need to have a proper structure, this country is endowed with human capital and let’s utilise it.

“There is a football indaba but the national coach (Ian Gorowa) is not even here when he should be giving direction on what needs to be done.  Are we really serious about our football? We tend to want to achieve so much when we have not done the basics.

“Before we can think of the next Cosafa, CHAN, 2016 Olympic and the 2018 World Cup we need to get invest in the game and start with the basics. The PSL clubs must also pay their players well so that they do not go to the national team for money.

“Players should feel proud and to play for the national team, the national team should not be a platform to market players to agents,’’ Mliswa said.

Mliswa also challenged Zifa to come up with a clear vision for football when the association meets at the end of next month for their strategic planning indaba.

“Zifa must have a clear vision that should be sold to schools, to tertiary institutions, to government, the corporate rate world and everyone. We also need the involvement of the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Higher and Tertiary Education so that they can understand the needs of football and sport in general and they have to have a buy-in and avail resources.

“We should cease to be reactionary as a nation and have the proper resources and a proper national plan. You do not do the right things once in a while, you do the right things all the time and there has to be actual approach to the way we do things’’.

The former cricket and rugby development coach, who leapt to the defence of Zifa, said the association, however, needs to focus their attention on their core business “of managing and developing football’’ and ensure they exercise proper corporate governance.

Mliswa also castigated the “so-called grassroots development programmes’’ which he felt were publicity stunts done by companies and individuals and disguised as development initiatives.