The Sunday News
THE Sports and Recreation Commission met with the Zifa board yesterday in a meeting were both parties were agreeable that the country’s football mother-body was heavily crippled due to lack of funding.
Speaking shortly after the meeting late afternoon yesterday, SRC board chairman, Edward Siwela said they would have to write a report to the Ministry of Sport, Arts and Culture before releasing the full details of the meeting but what was clear was that lack of funding had a serious negative effect on Zifa’s operations.
Siwela said they met the full board, including Zifa president, Cuthbert Dube and vice-president Omega Sibanda and the secretariat led by Jonathan Mashingaidze in what was a “frank and fruitful” meeting in Harare.
He said the meeting touched on various aspects of the game but above all that it was well known and publicised that Zifa’s financial woes were affecting the performance of the football authority.
“What came out is that Zifa’s challenges are mainly financial as it is proving difficult to bring national teams to camp and give them enough time to prepare for fixtures and fulfill matches. From the juniors, women teams and male teams the constraints are funding and there is also no money to finance the association’s operations,” said Siwela.
Siwela said there are “other issues” that were discussed but would need further analysis and interrogation for them to be solved but he could not elaborate on the issues. The SRC, according to Siwela, would engage other stakeholders on the issues raised and do follow ups including collection of tangible evidence.
“The aim of the process initiated by the Minister is to assess the state of football in the country and interrogate the capacity of the Dube-led board to lead the game. We need to reach a situation where people are satisfied with the capacity of those running the sport and the efforts they are putting into football,” he said.
Siwela said tensions between the secretariat and some board members was healthy conflict, where people practiced “independence of thought”.
