The Sunday News
FORMER Highlanders player, team manager and chairman Earnest “Maphepha” Sibanda says his comeback at the helm of the club will depend on supporters.
Sibanda has been touted as one of the leading candidates for the Highlanders chairmanship post at the club’s elective annual general meeting set for early next year.
Incumbent Peter Dube has not yet publicly declared whether he will seek another term as the Highlanders executive boss, a post he took over from Themba Ndlela in 2012.
Asked whether he was interested in having a second bite of the cherry as Highlanders chairman, Sibanda said for now his worry was how his struggling team fares in the remaining four matches of the current Castle Lager Premier Soccer League. He said the matches should be taken seriously because they would determine whether Highlanders would be in this year’s edition of the Mbada Diamonds Cup which will be contested by the top four clubs at the end of the season.
“At the moment we are all concerned about the team’s remaining four matches. It is just a rumour that I want to return as the club chairman, I am waiting for the people, for now I have not heard anything from the people,’’ said Sibanda.
In 2006 the charismatic Sibanda was voted in as Highlanders chairman to replace now PSL chief executive officer Kennedy Ndebele. Sibanda was elected while he was away with the Zimbabwe national team, The Warriors, at the 2006 Africa Cup of Nations in Egypt.
In his first season as the club’s chairman, Sibanda saw Highlanders, under the guidance of another former player Methembe Ndlovu clinch the championship.
Sibanda fell out of favour when he authorised the match between Highlanders and Sudan’s El Merreikh to play a 2008 CAF Confederations Cup home fixture at Gwanzura Stadium in Harare.
However, it emerged that accommodation could not be secured for the visitors in Bulawayo as the match coincided with the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair, hence the match had to be played in Harare where there were at least a three star hotel according to the Caf requirements. In what became one of Highlanders’ worst seasons of the millennium, Bosso, with Reuben Tsengwa in charge finished number seven on the log.
Ahead of the club’s elections in 2009, Sibanda decided not to stand for re-election which saw Themba Ndlela being voted in to replace him.
Further woes followed Sibanda in 2010 when he was handed a three-year suspension from all club activities by the Highlanders Board following financial discrepancies over the transfer of striker Obadiah Tarumbwa to Belgian club Cercle Brugge in 2007.
Sibanda admitted liability and made an undertaking at the 2009 club’s AGM to pay it back.
A winner of four championships in a row as Highlanders team manager from 1998/99 up to 2002, Sibanda has come out of hibernation and has been spotted at most of the club’s matches.
He was part of the crowd which watched as Highlanders were humiliated 3-0 by Harare City in the semi-finals of the Chibuku Super Cup at Rufaro Stadium last Sunday. The former player believes that the team had just hit a bad patch and would soon come right.
