Online Reporter
Fungai Muderere
Zimpapers Sports Hub
FOLLOWING the completion of the Confederation of African Football (Caf) Women Instructors Development Programme, the body has encouraged the Zimbabwe Football Association (Zifa) to actively involve instructor Sithethelelwe Sibanda in future education programmes.
CAF said they believe Sibanda, who is a former Mighty Warriors player and at the moment the team’s head coach, has the potential to positively impact the quality of coaching.
Known as Kwinji 15, Sibanda recently completed the CAF Women Instructors Development Programme, an initiative aimed at strengthening the capacity of women football coach educators across the African continent.
The programme commenced online on March 5 and continued through April, followed by an intensive in-person workshop held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from May 5 to 9.
In a letter dated May 28, addressed to Zifa by Caf technical development director Raul Chipenda said, “We are delighted to confirm that Instructor Sithethelelwe Sibanda participated fully both in the online and in person phases of the programme.
“Based on her performance and evaluations conducted by CAF-appointed technical experts, Instructor Sibanda has demonstrated the competence and readiness to teach Caf coaching courses up to Caf B Licence Level and to assist in the delivery of the Caf A Licence course.”
Chipenda added, “CAF remains deeply committed to the empowerment and advancement of women in football. This programme is a testament to our own efforts to elevate female professionals into leadership and technical roles across the Member Associations.
“In light of her successful completion and commendable evaluation, we kindly encourage the Zimbabwe Football Association (Zifa) to actively involve Instructor Sithethelelwe Sibanda in future national and Caf education programmes. We believe her expertise will greatly contribute to the growth and quality of coaching within the federation and the region.”
Not to take anything away from Kwinji and what has been said above. ZIFA should take stock of the drop in standards of the women’s national teams since the departure of Mlauzi. I believe that appoinment to the position of coach of the national teams should be about lifting the national team rather than based on gender bias. Zimbabwe should be competing with best in Africa and had the potential to be the best. We cannot say that today. It is going the other way. We cannot even compete with Malawi, South Africa and Zambia at all levels. Now teams like Botswana, Namibia and Lesotho have become real insurmountable obstacles. However, the return of yesteryear seniors like Neshamba and others is encouraging. How I wish all of them would return because that mighty warriors team used to be the pride of Zimbabwean football. How I wish most of them would also take up coaching, be assisted in getting their CAF licences and badges, and be deployed to coach in state primary and secondary schools. We have lost many talented female players who should have been leaders at different levels of the game. I still do not know how the Zambians started progressing beyond unimaginable levels when we seemed to have caught up with them, while we have been sinking to unbelievable depths. I do not believe the current administration have a turnaround strategy and even if they downloaded one from DeepSeek I doubt very much they would be able to implement it.