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their quest to try and defend the Cosafa Senior Challenge Cup which Sunday Chidzambwa and his men won on home soil in 2009.
Two weeks ago, he was scheduled to travel with the Warriors to Guinea for their 2014 World Cup qualifier in Conakry but was part of the group of officials, screened from the travelling delegation, because of complications related to the funding of that trip.
But Khumalo was part of the official Warriors’ delegation that travelled to Egypt in March this year, for a 2014 World Cup qualifier against the Pharaohs in German coach, Klaus Dieter-Pagels’ first competitive assignment in charge of the national team.
His life of flying around the continent and spending days booked in hotels, in camp with the Warriors, is a far cry from where he was, just seven years, as he served an effective eight-month jail term after being found guilty of swindling Zifa.
Khumalo was 39 when he was arrested and dragged to court for converting Z$124 million, which had been paid as affiliation fees by four lower division teams, to his personal use.
Working as an administrator, in the Harare provincial offices of Zifa where part of the responsibilities included running the lower division clubs, Khumalo received Z$124 million from the four clubs, over a period of three months, and rather than banking it into the association’s account he decided to channel it to fund his activities.
Khumalo received Z$42 million from Sports Excel Football Club, Z$32 million from Marlborough Football Club, Z$25 million from KBC Football Club and another Z$25 million from Highfield Chiefs Football Club in affiliation fees.
But while he receipted the cash in the official Zifa receipt book, Khumalo did not take the money to the bank, as he was supposed to have done, but converted it to his personal use.
In May, 2006, Khumalo was dragged to court by Zifa and on the 29th of that month, he was convicted, on his own plea of guilty to theft by conversion, and sentenced to an effective eight months in jail by magistrate Priscilla Chigumba.
Khumalo was initially sentenced to 14 months in prison but three months of the sentence were conditionally suspended and a further three months were set aside on condition that he restituted Zifa the full sum of Z$124 million that the association had been prejudiced.
During mitigation, Khumalo pleaded with the magistrate for a lighter sentence claiming that he used the money to pay school fees for his three children and three orphans that he said he was taking care of at the time.
Prosecutor, Mika Anderson, established that between November 22, 2005, and February 2006, Khumalo received Z$42 million from Sports Excel FC, Z$32 million from Marlborough FC, Z$25 million from KBC FC and another Z$25 million from Highfield Chiefs FC.
All these payments were for the clubs’ affiliation fees for the 2006 domestic football season.
After receiving the cash, Khumalo acknowledged it in the Zifa receipt book and did not move it into the association’s account, then held with Barclays, as per procedure.
Instead, all the money was converted for his personal use to, as he claimed in court, pay for the school fees of his three children and three orphans that were under his guardianship.
The matter came to light when the Zifa provincial board ordered its secretary for Harare province, Cephas Chando, to investigate the fixtures of the teams that were scheduled to take part in the 2006 season, which appeared not in order when tallied with what had been paid in affiliation fees.
“On February 6, this year, I went through all the league’s fixtures and discovered anomalies in Division One fixtures where the four clubs were included,” Chando said in his statement to the police.
This led to Khumalo’s arrest and further investigations established that not even a cent, from the Z$124 million that he had collected from the four clubs, had been deposited into the Zifa Barclays account.
A few months earlier, in 2006, Khumalo had been barred from entering the Zifa headquarters at 53 Livingstone Avenue with the organisation’s chief executive, Jonathan Mashingaidze, only advising the media that he was on an indefinite suspension.
The humiliation of the ordeal was that Zifa placed a notice, on the main entrance into their headquarters, instructing security guards to bar Khumalo from entering the premises until further notice.
But Khumalo appears to be the legendary cat, with nine lives, when it comes to his relationship with Zifa and, despite serving a jail term after pleading guilty to swindling the association, he has found his way, again and again, back into the structures of the same organisation.
He first resurfaced in the Warriors’ structures in October, 2010, during the chaotic scenes that characterised the national team’s preparations for the 2012 Nations Cup qualifier against Cape Verde at the National Sports Stadium.
But with the controversial hiring of Belgian coach Tom Saintfiet and his deportation, for working without a work permit, taking centre stage that week, Khumalo’s new role as the kit manager of the Warriors was pushed into the shadows.
But he disappeared from the Warriors’ structures and Gift Mabvudza was appointed kit manager of the Warriors after that game.
However, this year, when Pagels was appointed coach of the Warriors, Khumalo resurfaced in the national team structures and, this time, it would not be just a one-match association as he became a regular member of the team’s backroom staff.
While there is nothing that can stop Zifa from engaging a reformed ex-convict, into the Warriors’ structures, the association might find it difficult to justify their decision, especially against a background that Khumalo actually committed a crime against the same organisation.
The Zifa constitution bars anyone, convicted of a criminal offence and sentenced to a minimum of six months, either suspended or effective, from holding a portfolio on the board that runs the game in this country.
But Zifa employees are not bound by the same guidelines that apply to the board members although, in a case where someone was convicted of prejudicing the same organisation, there would be an expectation that such a character would be handled with due care rather than being fast-tracked into the Warriors’ backroom staff and given full charge of their kit.
The Zifa board has been preaching the gospel that they want to build their legacy on a foundation of corporate governance and the fast-tracking of Khumalo into the Warriors’ technical staff, against the background of his problems with the same association, would certainly be viewed in some quarters as something that flies into the face of that vision.
A kit manager’s job doesn’t really require technical expertise and there are many people, who have performed this role with Premiership clubs over the years, who will certainly wonder why they can’t break into the national team’s backroom staff.
Online Reporter