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Bernard Manyenyeni Special Correspondent
ONE writer wrote that “the duty of mayors is to garbage and the arts” and I subscribe to that.

I just have two specific problems with our football club, namely the amounts splashed and the limited disclosures around their funds.

As patron of Harare City Football Club, my duty to support them has always been compelling, but should never be some blind duty.

That is the part that you missed completely in the “Sharuko On Saturday” blast.

We have many other deserving causes in sports and the arts which go unsupported because of our lop-sided disbursement to soccer.

We have seen a top boxer travelling in a haulage truck to compete outside our borders when just $400 would have given him a return air ticket.

We have watched the national football team scrounge around for pennies from individuals to fulfil continental obligations.

We watched HIFA fail to take off last year: HIFA is a huge brand — an event which has taken the city and the country to the world.

I am in favour of a more diverse allocation of sports and arts funds — we are a city, not a village.

The total budget amount for such must relate well with our overall mandate — at no time must our figures tell the observer we are a misguided bunch of councillors.

The funds are not ours — we must allocate or disburse these trust funds with some level of conscience. There are a lot of vested and compromised interests in the current deal.

I fear a forensic audit for Harare City FC may possibly embarrass Council judging by the violent objections to any fiduciary oversight around team finances.

If we are indeed a community team maybe some independent residents should serve on the team board and management.

I have quizzed the amounts involved — I challenge the quantum not the game itself.

I have never believed we should win our matches or competitions using our wallet. It is unfair to other teams and to the beautiful game itself.

By the way this is not a new conversation.

I was worried by and quizzed the annual awards winner amounts which completely dwarfed and eclipsed the national Soccer Star awards.

To allocate over $2m to one team when 25 of our 47 garbage trucks are permanently grounded and we have garbage all over the show doesn’t look smart.

A brand new garbage compactor can be as little as 80 000, just to indicate.

I have previously challenged the disclosures — it becomes a “zero-comfort” zone when player acquisitions and sales amounts are secret and they refuse to tell us who gets paid what.

For the wider good of the game of football I have hinted on the possibility of funding some of the national team’s costs but also even a commitment to any qualifying local team for CAF or regional forays — with compliments of the City Fathers.

A private entity can do what it wishes to do with its sponsorship budget but a public entity can never have such latitude — we must always look our residents straight in the eye.

We have to be a little more honourable with the figures we throw about — for whatever cause!

With this I hope the Mayor of Casterbridge remains lonely without me.

• Harare Mayor Bernard Manyenyeni was responding to an article carried in the blog, “SHARUKO ON SATURDAY,” in The Saturday Herald last week. The instalment questioned his decision and contradictions related to his position as patron of Harare City Football Club. It queried why the city fathers were apparently sleeping on duty in December last year when removing the artificial surface back then and replacing it with natural grass would have seen the stadium being ready for use by Premiership clubs when the season got underway last weekend. Instead, there is a crisis where all the capital’s clubs have been forced to use the National Sports Stadium because the natural grass was only laid at Rufaro two weeks ago. The apparent shame in a club that is owned by council being forced to rent a home ground, as was the case when the Sunshine Boys hosted Yadah Stars on Saturday, because the city fathers have failed to renovate the stadiums they run was clear on Saturday. The mayor was also questioned why he doesn’t criticise the arrangement where golf clubs dotted in low-density suburbs — where he plays his golf — pay a nominal fee, with some sports clubs paying just $1 a year to the council. Clubs like Dynamos have to pay 20 percent of their gross gate-takings to council for renting Rufaro on their match days.