adminGrace Chingoma
Senior Sports Reporter
FIFA have ordered the Sports Commission to reinstate the suspended ZIFA board by January 3 or face the grim possibility of Zimbabwe being suspended from the international football family.
Such a suspension could result in the Warriors, who are set to take part at the 2021 AFCON finals in Cameroon, next month, being the first casualty of the sanctions, as they will be barred from the tournament.
The world football governing body, however, maintained they remain fiercely opposed to any corruption, and have a zero tolerance to abuse of women, at their member associations.
They said they were committed to investigate the allegations, including the sexual abuse of female referees within domestic football, which formed part of the SRC charge sheet.
The FIFA letter came on another dramatic day when it was revealed that the SRC were in the process of charging a number of ZIFA Councillors, whom they accused of accepting payments, during the elections which brought Felton Kamambo into office.
The matter is being at the courts of law but the SRC say the evidence provided in court so far, which shows the Councillors accepted the payments, which they claim was to cover for their transport costs, violated the integrity of sport.
Interestingly, FIFA made similar threats, in a letter to the Kenyan Government, early last month, after they intervened, and elbowed out the board led by Nick Mwendwa.
The Kenyan authorities replaced the Mwendwa leadership with an interim board led by a judge. Almost two months later, FIFA are yet to suspend Kenya from international football. FIFA Chief Member Association Officer, Kenny Jean-Marie, wrote to suspended ZIFA chief executive, Joseph Mamutse, advising him to inform Sports Commission FIFA will submit the matter to the Bureau of FIFA Council, for a determination, in the event the board was not reinstated.
The world football governing body have also ordered the Sports Commission to reverse their decision to appoint a nine-member ZIFA Restructuring Committee, meant to review the national game, and also conduct a forensic audit.
“We refer to the chain of events reported to our services in the past few weeks regarding the situation of ZIFA. In particular, we took note that, on 16 November 2021, the Sports and Recreation Commission (SRC) decided to suspend the ZIFA executive committee in view of “several incidences of gross incompetence, being contrary to the national interest” as per the Sports & Recreation Act.
“We, further observed that on 1 December 2021, the ZIFA executive committee appealed the said decision before the Administrative Court in Zimbabwe.
“We understand that this situation is similar to a suspension imposed by the SRC on the ZIFA general secretary on 26 November 2020 (cf. our letter dated 30 December 2020 on the said suspension), which was appealed before the Administrative Court in Zimbabwe on 3 December 2020.
“In this respect, we are not aware of any final decision which may have been taken.
“This being said, we must take this opportunity to remind all parties about the contents of art. 14 par. 1 let. I) and of art. 19 par. 1 of the FIFA Statutes, which stipulate that all FIFA member associations — including ZIFA — are obliged to manage their affairs independently and without undue influence from third parties. Any failure to these obligations may lead to sanctions provided for in the FIFA Statutes, even if the third-party influence was not the fault of the member association concerned (cf. art. 14 par. 3 of the FIFA Statutes).
“Furthermore, FIFA has a zero-tolerance policy to any form of corruption as well as sexual abuses of any sort in football.”
FIFA said, so far, they believe the suspension of the ZIFA board was based on allegations which are yet to be tested or proven.
“In this context, we consider that the aforementioned decided decisions by the SRC to suspend all members of the ZIFA executive committee based on mere allegations without proof of a final and binding ruling, and subsequently to appoint a “restructuring committee” in lieu of the ZIFA executive committee would appear to be clearly contrary to the above statutory principles.
“As a consequence, should such decisions be considered by FIFA to constitute undue third-party interference in the internal affairs of ZIFA, the appropriate sanctions may have to be imposed on ZIFA by the competent FIFA body.
“In such a case, all of Zimbabwean football would suffer the consequences, especially on the eve of the AFCON 2021. In addition, we would like to highlight that it is up to FIFA alone — on the basis of serious and well-founded information as well as under exceptional circumstances — to remove executive bodies of member associations and appoint normalisation committees (cf. art. 8 par. 2 of FIFA Statutes).
“Therefore, we kindly ask you to inform the SRC that in the event its decisions to suspend the ZIFA executive committee members, and to appoint a “restructuring committee” instead are not reversed before 3 January 2022 at the latest, we would have no other choice but to submit the present matter to the Bureau of FIFA Council for consideration and decision.
FIFA said they had been in touch with both ZIFA and the SRC before the latter’s chairman, Gerald Mlotshwa, chose not to be part of last week’s Zoom meeting.
“As a matter of fact, on 14 December 2021, a Zoom meeting was to take place with the ZIFA President and the SRC chairperson in order to finalise the relevant roadmap.
“In return, the SRC was to lift the suspension on ZIFA executive committee.
“Eventually, we took note that the SRC chairperson declined to participate in the relevant final meeting and stated that the draft roadmap presented by FIFA was inadequate as it could allegedly not be implemented in practice by the ZIFA executive committee members who shall remain suspended.
“Instead, on 17 December 2021, the SRC informed FIFA that it had appointed a “restructuring committee” composed of 9 members, which tenure would end by no later than 31 December 2022,” wrote Jean-Marie.
The Zurich-based organisation further said they encouraged healthy relationships between Government and their member associations. “As a whole, we would like to stress that we are seriously concerned about the state of the relationship between ZIFA and the SRC for the past couple of years.
“We would like to highlight that FIFA is committed to investigating the aforesaid allegations brought forward by the SRC as soon as the latter has shared with our independent judicial bodies ([email protected]) all relevant documentation brought before ordinary courts in Zimbabwe and for which we understand no decision has been taken by these courts to date.”
Peter Tanyanyiwa
Online Reporter