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Grace Chingoma Senior Sports Reporter
Lengthens Football Club’s founding member Beadle Musa Gwasira, who is vying for a post as one of ZIFA’s board members, believes the experience he gained during one of the toughest times in the era of local football where clubs struggled for sponsorship cannot go unnoticed and want to reinvest that if elected into office on December 5. Gwasira, is a former director and financier of the now-defunct Lengthens, who played in the Premier Soccer League from 2006 up to the end of 2011 when the team was relegated.
He sat on the inaugural Premier Soccer League board of governors, where he was the board member in charge of fixtures. In 2013, Gwasira was voted as a councillor in the Harare City Council for Ward 7 in which areas such as Avondale, Belgravia, Strathaven and Gunhill are under its jurisdiction.
Having served football when the country’s economic situation was at its lowest and his club, which was nicknamed “The Happy People”, managed to produce some good players such as Gilbert Mapemba who later went on to play in the South African Premiership, Gwasira believes he can help local football to move to another level if voted in as one of ZIFA’s four board members.
The 42-year-old, who will be a year older on Christmas Day, feels he is now ripe to go for a post in the national body. Also being part of the PSL’s board of governors, who came into office in 2010, and managed to turn around their fortunes by getting such sponsors as Delta (Castle Lager) and Mbada Diamonds on board, the businessman believes he has what it takes to bring some positive changes in the ZIFA board.
“The investment that I have made in football during the harshest time when there was no sponsorship has made me realise that I want to come back into local football and have another dance with it. “I also want to bring the joy we had as we were the ‘Happy People’ at Lengthens, people loved our team and I need to reinvest that administration back into the national fold.
“I was in the inaugural PSL board of governors in 2010 as the board member secretary as club owners began to sit on the governors’ board following the dissolution of the management committee. “The PSL had gone for a season without sponsorship and we got the Premiership sponsorship of Castle Lager, they gave their conditions and came on board.
“We approached Mbada Diamonds and we pursued it together with Twine Phiri (the PSL chairperson) and we also approached DStv although they came on board when I had left after our team had been relegated.
“I believe I have learnt a lot and can now play a big role in the national body. Football need to have accountability and transparency with auditors coming in to do books and this is one of the strongest virtues, if pursued, will see the corporate world coming and want to be part of our football,” he said.
Gwasira also believes what he has seen in the Harare City Council can also help transform football “as council is people and football is again people”. “What I have seen at council is that there is a lot of infrastructure which is interlinked with football and City councils are the skeleton and we can bring in ZIFA as the flesh. “Council has the infrastructure which can be incorporated into sport,” he said.
The Harare City councillor also feels he stands a great chance to lobby in council for some of the by-laws which appear to be punitive to the football fraternity such as the exorbitant percentages council charges to rent out their stadiums like the 15 percent off the gross amount that would have been generated in a match.
“I believe since I would be on the ZIFA board I will strongly lobby for the by-laws some of them which were crafted long back to be revised so that everyone is a winner and not let our football suffer.
“I will strongly pursue that matter as well as making sure that the football structures get the needed facelift from the local authorities.
“As you can see councils are slowly becoming more involved with football teams with Harare, Bulawayo and maybe soon Mutare will have a team in the Premiership.
“Councils are sponsored by communities and the same ratepayers are the people who are involved in football so I strongly feel that the two entities closely work together and cannot really be separated.”
Gwasira also said there is need to look into the plight of councillors and assist them in their regions so that they are able to carry out projects in their respective areas with some infrastructure to support the work. “We will also need to have sponsorship that will go directly to the provinces where these councillors are.
“If supported, the councillors will go back to basics as has been the case before and map the way forward, having love for the community and the young generation wanting to go into football,” said Gwasira. At the turn of the new millennium, Gwasira and his friends formed Lengthens which started as a social club and took it to the Area Zone before buying a Division Two franchise in 2002.
The team was promoted into Division One in 2004 and played there for two years before gaining promotion into the top-flight in 2006. Lengthens were then relegated in 2011 but it was not before they had got some achievements.
They won the BancABC Cup in 2010 to book a ticket into the African Safari, where they played the following year and reached the first round of the CAF Confederation Cup having started in the preliminary round where they beat AS Adema of Madagscar. In 2009, they were also the BancABC Cup finalists.
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