The Sunday News
Simbarashe Dube
ALL is not well in the Zimbabwe Handball Association amid revelations that the infighting within the association has seen the country failing to fulfil international assignments.
As the nation is focusing on the fiascos within the Zifa panel, the nation’s handball motherboard the Zimbabwe Handball Federation (ZHF) is just another association rocked with chaos.
Things came to head last month when the ZHF failed to send both the men and women senior’s national teams for the All-Africa Games Region 5 qualifying tournament in Zambia as the federation failed to secure funding for the trip to Lusaka.
The championships were serving as qualifiers for this year’s All-Africa Games in Brazzaville, Congo from 4 to 19 September. The two national teams are virtually out of any participation at the 50th edition of the continental Games.
Two years back the federation managed to send four teams to the 2013 Partille Cup in Sweden, but their failure to convince the corporates to bankroll their trip to Zambia for a qualifying tournament is a signal that the sport was on its deathbed.
The local national teams last participated in the All-Africa Games in 1995 when the country hosted the Games.
The national handball teams have been inactive at international level for about two years now.
Alphios Magiya the secretary general of the ZHF is understood to have recently indicated that they were unlikely to source funds for the Zone Six qualifiers as they were “busy” preparing for the ZHF elections scheduled for 31 March.
However, the elections failed to take place on that day raising further questions of the state of affairs in the Federation.
Up for grabs at the elections were positions of president, vice president, secretary general, treasurer, women in sport, two committee members and athletes’ commission.
Outgoing president Amon Madzvamuse said the elections were moved to a later date since some of the provinces did not turn up and the treasurer failed to present a financial report.
“The elections were postponed because there were some provinces that did not come, namely Matabeleland South, Matabeleland North and Harare. They were supposed to vote and we did not have a financial report from the treasurer. So, because of that I saw it fit to postpone the elections,” said Madzvamuse.
The elections would have seen all the 10 provinces voting as well as Nash, Naph, the Women in Sport Commission and Athletes’ Commission. However, there was more confusion as the Women in Sport also failed to hold their own general assembly meeting last week where they were supposed to elect a new chairperson who would have represented them in the elections.
Madzvamuse who is also part of the Zone Six executive pointed out that they were going to nullify the result of the Manicaland province elections which he said was done without the blessing of the handball mother board.
“Manicaland had their election, but did it without ZHF permission and automatically we are going to nullify the elections,” he said.
The Zimbabwe Premier Handball League meeting that was scheduled for 21 March at Harare Girls High School to map the way forward for the upcoming season was also deferred after clubs failed to turn up for the assembly. The meeting was expected to map the way forward on how this year’s league would be run.
As it stands, the league which is supposed to start next week hangs in the balance as there are no appropriate fixtures for the upcoming season.
