Mboma raps double-faced Gumede

Sports Reporter—

ZIMBABWE Soccer Supporters leader Eddie “Mboma” Nyatanga was yesterday seeing red over a move by Highlanders chief executive Ndumiso Gumede to defy his suspension by ZIFA arguing that everyone in football needs to respect the decisions and authority of the mother body.Gumede was on Monday suspended from all football activities for his alleged role in an underhand bid to unseat the ZIFA executive committee led by Philip Chiyangwa.

The Bosso chief executive is being charged with violating the ZIFA constitution and stands accused of writing to FIFA as part of a cartel that included the Lifelong Footballers Trust, which sought to have the world soccer body dissolve Chiyangwa’s board.

Gumede was suspended on the same day with Premier Soccer League chief executive Peter Dube who is facing charges of misconduct emanating from events of the October 29 ZIFA annual meeting in Harare where there was an ugly debate over the relegation and promotion of teams from the top-flight.

Nyatanga said although he would not delve into either the merits, or lack of, related to the charges the pair was facing, he was particularly riled by the stance taken by Gumede to defy authority and publicly announce that “it was business as usual for him”.

The Soccer Supporters leader accused Gumede of double standards on the basis that when he was ZIFA vice-president he was strongly against people who wrote directly to FIFA without exhausting the domestic football remedies for recourse.

“What Gumede has done is bad for football in that whether you feel aggrieved about a suspension or not you have to respect the authority which in this case is ZIFA,” said Nyatanga.

“In the first place Gumede is said to have violated the constitution by trying to unseat an elected board and I remember when he was in ZIFA he was always preaching about the need to go through the local structures.”

“So, Gumede must not have double standards, he must learn to respect the local football laws and in any case this is just a suspension and he will prove his innocence before the disciplinary committee.”

The ZIFA leadership, for which Gumede was vice-president, also suspended regional leaders last year for daring to deal directly with FIFA.

Willard Manyengavana (Northern Region), Piraishe Mabhena (Eastern Region), Musa Mandaza (Southern Region) and Felton Kamambo (Central Region) were part of a group of Councillors who were suspended by that ZIFA Board, last year, for — among other things — directly communicating with FIFA in their attempts to topple the Dube leadership.

“We know what happened when the likes of Manyengavana and company started communicating with FIFA and the reaction from the Dube leadership, for which Gumede was an influential player, was to suspend them,” said Nyatanga.

“What has changed now, if we may ask, because this is the same man, when he was part of the ZIFA leadership last year, who didn’t see anything wrong with the suspension of these people for the same offence that he is alleged to have committed.

“They say what goes around usually comes around and my advise to my old man Gumede is that he should just wait for his day in court and see how things unfold.

“You cannot try to make sure that domestic football become ungovernable and get away with it and we know that they have been living in denial, even up to this day, that their days in office have long passed.”

Nyatanga also backed the move by Chiyangwa to direct members of the previous board to provide within seven days written responses of a Sport and Recreation Commission’s inquiry into the huge ZIFA debt which ballooned to around $7 million.

“It seems that now everybody wants to leave the issue of the $7 million debt to Chiyangwa to resolve and I support him when he says those that were in the previous executive must explain what exactly happened.

“There are some people who served in the previous executive who are still there and they should also explain what was going on.

“And this isn’t just Chiyangwa who is saying that, but it’s the Sports Commission that is demanding answers.

“Why can’t they just provide the answers so that the nation knows how ZIFA came up with such a huge mountain of debt?

“It’s either there is something that they are hiding or they are ashamed that, in the event the figures are made public, some fraudulent dealings will come out.

“This is public office and the problem with the last executive is that they treated ZIFA as their private and personal property and the chickens have now come home to roost.”