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Augustine Hwata Senior Sports Reporter
RELATIONS between the Dynamos board of directors and representatives of the clubs’ supporters appear to have broken down and have been providing an ugly sideshow to the team’s quest to win the League and Mbada Diamonds Cup for the third straight year.Some feel this boardroom turbulence has been at the centre of the team’s recent poor run in which the Glamour Boys were badly beaten in Hwange before being held by lowly Monomotapa.
The problems spilled into the public domain when the board placed a newspaper advert registering concern at “the realisation that certain individuals have opened and are operating bank accounts under the name Dynamos Football Club Supporters Association without its authority,”
“Members of the public are hereby advised that Dynamos Football Club (Pvt) Ltd has no register of supporters at the moment and therefore does not have any connection with the aforesaid individuals together with their activities.
“Further, it has come to the attention of Dynamos Football Club (Pvt) Ltd that certain companies and individuals are selling Dynamos Football Club regalia without its authority,” the board said in a statement.
“These actions of the aforesaid companies and individuals are clearly being perpetrated in violation of the Trade Mark of Dynamos Football Club (Pvt) Ltd.
“In the meantime, the Dynamos board is taking legal action with a view to procuring an interdict against the illegal use of its name.”
Chris Kasiyazi, the board secretary who placed the advert, said this was their first move to try and protect their brand.
“As Dynamos, we have a principal which is BancABC and we have to see that everything that we do, does not infringe on the standing contract or relations with the sponsors,” said Kasiyazi.
“I do not think we can take drastic measures to stop people from selling flags at the moment.
This is up to the police but we are saying anyone who wants to make or sell something using our brand, should engage our marketing committee.
“I would say the Dynamos brand is bigger than some of the corporates that are listed on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange.
“It goes beyond the borders but I can say we have not really utilised the brand to its full potential.
“We have identified at least three shops in the capital that are selling replicas for Dynamos.
“What we are saying is that we do not stop anyone from selling our regalia but they should come through our marketing committee and see how best we can all benefit.
“Right now we could be losing potential revenue of thousands of dollars every month.
“There are a lot of people who are actually going to China to bring their own jerseys without any direct benefits to the club.”
The leaders of the supporters, Philemon Bonde and Felix Dzukwa, said some members of the board were spoiling for a fight with them.
Bonde, who is the president of the national supporters’ body, said the issue wasn’t about replica sales but about a Dynamos board that wanted to control the club’s fans and instal its preferred people to be the leaders of the supporters.
“The advert is directed at us, it’s mischievous for the board to claim that they have no register of the supporters.
“In 2009, we went and created chapters in Gweru, Bulawayo, Mutare and then came up with a constitution to govern the operations of supporters,” said Bonde.
“It is that constitution which empowered us to open bank accounts so that we can handle the funds from the supporters. You know issues to do with handling cash need accountability and that’s why we had to use the official bank channels.
“During the time we drafted the constitution, Chris Kasiyazi, who is now on the board, was one of us and helped us to come up with the document.
“We have given the board US$700 on more than three occasions to help the players ahead of trips to Bulawayo and last season we gave one board member US$1 500 when we requested players to attend our end-of-year function.
“The players did not come to that function but we just kept quite and said let’s just let bygones be bygones. But we expect them to give us a little bit of respect because we know a lot and they should not try to lie to the public to create this impression that we are bad people.
“We have worked hard for this team to be successful in the past two years and we have set up chapters in all the towns who provide support for the boys but some board members are either power hungry, or just feel insecure when they see people who are organised, they just decide the best way is to fight us.”
Bonde said their fallout with the board had its roots in their ties with Savanna.
“We were given a bus by Savanna as supporters and we wanted to hand it over to the club for use by the juniors but the board said we should delete the sponsors’ logo,” said Bonde.
“This was unacceptable to our sponsor and on another occasion we wanted to give the club US$5 000 but the Dynamos board wanted the donation to be made a secret and we ended up giving the money to former players like Henry Chari and George Shaya.”
Dzukwa, who is the chairman of the Harare Chapter, said they have minutes to prove several meetings the supporters have held with the Dynamos board.
“We have minutes to prove that we held meetings with the board and they cannot claim that there are no structures for supporters and they don’t know us,” said Dzukwa.
“The club has sponsors and when the board said that whatever money that is generated from our structures should come through their account, we said we had no problem with that as long as the board was prepared to publish audited financial statements of what they did with the money.
“But that appears to have created problems for us.
“What we know is that the people who are selling flags, jerseys and other branded things are actually paying a fee to some board members.”
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