It’s the trust that our game lacks

Bothwell Mahlengwe
THE past few weeks have been quite interesting —from the ZIFA strategy planning session to the Delta-sponsored high-profile coaching clinic held by two coaches from the Barcelona Football School, Oriol Guerrero Hernandez and Daniel Bigas Alsina.
It was refreshing to see the sponsor of our Premiership delivering on its promises and showing great faith in its association with our football.
It gave more bragging rights to the Twine Phiri-led PSL board.

And to say the clinic was well-received and appreciated by the local coaches adds more feathers to the board’s hat.
This is the kind of partnerships and working relationships that we are looking for in our national game.

The worrying thing is that while this is happening at PSL, no one seems to be willing to be associated with the main handlers of our football, ZIFA.
Projects like Barcelona’s tiki-taka are not overnight things, but long-term initiatives.

There is need for the philosophy to be infused at an early stage of players’ football development.
This spells out for a vibrant junior football development at national level. And this is what makes the ZIFA strategic planning indaba more interesting.

We are not privileged to the contents of the talk shop yet until the final blue print is made public at some date that was not promised.
We are five months into the Cuthbert Dube-led ZIFA board’s four-year term and we don’t have a committed date when the strategic plan document would be finalised and made public.

This is worrisome to say the least.
Everybody knows that the crafting of a strategy plan needs special attention and time. But what worries me is the lack of timeframe for such an important blueprint to be made available to the stakeholders.

If you can’t commit to a date in the first place how can you commit to the implementation of its letter?
Another question that comes to mind is how this document relates to the one that was handed to Sports Minister Andrew Langa, by the ZIFA president at a hastily-arranged stakeholders’ conference at the ZIFA Village two months ago.

What I’m afraid of, and I might be wrong, is that we seem to be set for another Dube/Mashingaidze four-year show where everyone else, including the board members, will be irrelevant.

Who exactly is ZIFA?
One gets a feeling that it’s Dube and Mashingaidze and others, as and when they are needed, to make up the numbers.
What ZIFA desperately need at the moment is the TRUST of its stakeholders. Trust is the glue that binds people and processes, and ensures long-term success.

Trust is the fundamental building block for any lasting relationship.
It is the key to speed of growth, the one thing that changes everything — in business and in life.

As Marilyn Carlson Nelson puts it, “trust reduces transaction costs; it reduces the need for litigation and speeds commerce: it actually lubricates organisations and societies.”

On the other hand, the lack of trust causes friction.
It creates hidden agendas, politics, and interpersonal conflict, win-lose thinking, defensive and protective communication.
It slows everything — decisions, communication and every relationship.

And this is something, synonymous with ZIFA, at the moment.
“Lack of trust within an organisation saps its energy, fosters a climate of suspicion and second-guessing, completely devastates teamwork and replaces it with internal politics,” commented Koh Boon Hwee.

Now the big question is ‘Can we trust this ZIFA to get us to the Promised Land?’’.
Can we trust Cuthbert Dube to lead us to Nirvana when he failed to do so in the last four-and-half years?

Can we trust ZIFA to give us a vibrant junior football development platform when they got our under-17 and under-20 sides banned from international competitions?
Can we trust this ZIFA to come up with proper HR, corporate governance, financial, legal and communication structures and policies more than two years after they have failed to give Thomas Sweswe and others the Appeal results for the Asiagate penalties that Fifa refused to endorse?

Can we trust Dube to turn ZIFA’s financial fortunes when his leadership presided over the ballooning of the association’s debt from a little over half a million dollars to over US$4 million and US$700 000 spent in 2012 cannot be satisfactorily accounted for?

Can we trust ZIFA on their word when they are the same people who told their councillors that the US$700 000 was an overflow from Nyatanga’s time and, when it was shown that the accounts were from 2011, the story was twisted again to suit the agenda?

Can we trust this ZIFA to improve our game when they go to World Cup and don’t believe that their national coach and the national technical director should also be there because they are key people?

How can there be trust in an organisation led by leaders stalked by accusations of unethical and immoral financial and corporate governance issues?
Can we trust our CEO who has been labelled a ‘blatant liar’ by his own subordinate?

Too many questions, very few answers.
But do we really have a choice?

Dube has everyone that matters, including our media who should be asking some tough questions, in his palm.
For us, mere fans, we can only watch and pray for God to help us.

ZIFA have a huge mountain to climb and they desperately need every stakeholder’s collaboration.
But before stakeholders can do that, ZIFA needs to touch their hearts — through trust.

They urgently need to restore lost trust, for “trust is not a garment to be worn or cast off depending on the situation.”

Bothwell Mahlengwe is a banker and former Premiership footballer and can be contacted, for feedback, on — [email protected]