adminIN just four months’ time, the clock will mark THREE years since Felton Kamambo first appeared in court to answer charges of allegedly bribing his way into becoming ZIFA boss in 2018.
If the Sports Commission had not intervened, and suspended Kamambo and the ZIFA board he led, it’s very likely that he would have completed his entire four-year term of office, with the case still to be finalised.
That term of office was supposed to end in December last year and, in the event that he had failed to successfully plead with the ZIFA Councillors to give him another term, his time as the head of domestic football would have ended with a shadow still hanging above his head.
It’s a case that has rumbled on and on and, even as of now, three years after he first appeared in court, there isn’t any indication that it will end this year or even in three years’ time.
It even spilled into the High Court recently with Kamambo’s bid to have the charges quashed hitting a brick wall following a ruling that he must stand trial over the case.
He is alleged to have paid inducements to 32 ZIFA councillors in order to win the association’s elections in which he upstaged Philip Chiyangwa.
High Court Judge Justice Benjamin Chikowero, with the concurrence of Justice Pisirayi Kwenda, on Friday dismissed Kamambo’s appeal against the bribery case which is before Harare Regional magistrate Bianca Makwande.
“The general rule is that a superior court should interfere in uncompleted proceedings of the lower courts only in exceptional circumstances of proven gross irregularity vitiating the proceedings and giving rise to a miscarriage of justice, which cannot be redressed by any other means or where the interlocutory decision is clearly wrong as to seriously prejudice the rights of the litigant,” ruled Justice Chikowero.
“We understand the law to be that even if an interlocutory decision is grossly irregular, a superior court must still not interfere unless the decision vitiates the proceedings irreparably.
“If that decision can lose its impact in the course of those ongoing proceedings, a superior court will not interfere before the proceedings are finalised.”
Hopefully, the latest developments will enable this long drawn-out case to be finalised.
It’s not just about Kamambo, who is on trial here, but the entire domestic football system with 32 of its most powerful people, who have the mandate to elect the man who leads the game, facing the damaging allegations.
All these people have been carrying the weight of these allegations, and the consequences that come with it, on their shoulders for the past three years.
They need closure.
The national game also needs to know whether all these people, who still hold powerful positions in its structures, deserve to continue playing those roles or, in the event of conviction, should be forced to step aside.
The sooner that this case is finalised, the better for everyone associated with our football.
Online Reporter