The Sunday News
Mehluli Sibanda, Senior Sports Reporter
HIGHLANDERS will use their Annual General Meeting at their clubhouse set for this morning to seek a members buy-in into proposed constitutional transformation which if fully implemented will extricate the oldest football institution in the country from its ballooning debt.
A sub-committee of the board of directors led by Davies Ndumiso Sibanda has been busy trying to come up with a way to check the club’s debt which has been steadily increasing every year with no tangible solution in sight.
Elkanah Dube, spokesperson of the arm of the board charged with finding ways in which the club could ensure its existence into the future said they will solicit for permission from the members to embrace the transformational process.
Dube explained that reforms were meant to get the club in line with the Fifa model of club management and to make it possible for the club to realise its full commercial worth.
“We will be trying to seek mandate from the members to embark on a process of constitutional amendments to achieve two things, to make the club management and operations compliant with Fifa preferred management systems, to enable the club to positively exploit its huge commercial potential to the fullest as football is now full-time business and as such there is a need for the club to adapt in order to avoid eventually dying due to ultimate suffocation from its debt,’’ said Dube.
“For Sunday, we are trying to solicit for a mandate from the club membership. At that meeting, the proposed roadmap will also be presented. If they endorse the constitutional reform, they will also endorse the roadmap.’’
Dube said there was no way for the club to come out of its financial quagmire without any transformation taking place. He pointed out that once the members gave the green light, a process of gathering views will then take place with a report back meeting likely to be called during the course of this year.
Asked how long it will take for the club to fully implement these modern ways of running a football club, Dube said it was likely to take time.
On the possibility of the Bosso members rejecting these proposals, Dube pointed out that it was up to the card holders to give them the go ahead or decline the whole process with the danger being that if the club did not transform, it might be swallowed by its debts.
“If people are happy with what they have then there is nothing that we can do, I think everyone is in agreement. What we are purely interested in at this moment is their mandate. Our biggest failure is to tap into this gold mine. We are one of the most supported teams but the resources that we tap are not synonymous with that, we must adjust according to the times. The owners of the team must feel it so that they are with us in this whole process,’’ said Dube.
Even though he could not go much into the detailed suggested constitutional changes that were likely to take place at Highlanders with the blessings of the members, it is understood that those carrying cards will be upgraded to shareholders who then go on to elect a board of directors.
The current structure made up of a board, executive as well as secretariat will be done away with, the likelihood being that the decision making would be done by an elected board of directors with a strong secretariat under them.
Another plan is to have the members holding shares at the club which will easily clear the club’s debts which at the beginning of 2015 stood at $651 901 and is likely to have increased.
Highlanders members have the fate of the club they profess to love so dearly in their own hands with the decisions that they make today likely to determine if the 90-year-old institution either survives or is suffocated by the ever increasing debts.
