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Tadious Manyepo
Sports Reporter
ZIFA Normalisation Committee chairperson Lincoln Mutasa has been urged to resign after he bewilderedly froze before the Parliamentary Committee on Sport, Arts, Culture and Recreation yesterday.
As has been characteristic of his extended one-year tenure at the helm of ZIFA, Mutasa was inconsistent and embarrassingly clueless when responding to pertinent governance issues posed to him by members of the committee. It was a tragi-comedy with the former Dynamos chairman surprisingly appearing out of touch with the very issues his committee is mandated to address.
He even shamelessly revealed that he has never been to any local Premier Soccer League match for the past 13 months he has been leading the out-of-sorts organ.
His committee member Nyasha Sanyamandwe and the association’s chief executive officer Yvonne Manwa-Mapika did not help matters either as they equally displayed ignorance with the latter even failing to name a single player from Northern Region Soccer League top sides Black Rhinos and Scottland after she claimed to have recently watched their game.
Shocked members of the committee led by chairperson Chamu Chiwanza advised Mutasa to consider leaving the post for which FIFA have extended his tenure up to January 2025.
“As a committee there is no better way to describe the catastrophe and disaster we saw today, coming from the ZIFA Normalisation Committee who are clueless to what is football, not even how to run it but they are even clueless of what football is from the secretary-general to the legal director and we are very much concerned as a committee that we are in this situation,” said Chiwanza.
“We all know that Zimbabweans are football-crazy people, they love football and our President is doing massive work to see that our Zimbabweans are happy and we cannot allow people to run down our football or be a side show to the progress that is happening towards Vision 2030 in this country.
“Football is going to play a pivotal role in ensuring that people are living better lives and are happy. So, we cannot allow our football to be run by clueless individuals with selfish agendas in this country.
“We call upon the chairman of the ZIFA Normalisation Committee to put in his resignation with immediate effect. He is not in football, he has never attended a local football match, he said this in front of our committee and he has no idea.
“He has been in football long back when he was in his playing days and none of the committee members except for Rosemary Mugadza who was in women’s football is familiar with what football is.
“We are not going to force him (Mutasa) to resign but we are concerned and it’s a Normalisation Committee, they should normalise our football, they have been in office for more than a year, and degradation and decay in football is getting worse by each day.
“So, they can’t keep holding on to the parameters of football, yet they are destroying our football, and we as parliamentarians can’t just stand aside and watch, we will speak,” added Chiwanza.
Herentals College president and striker, Innocent Benza, who is also a member of the portfolio committee, said it was worrying to see football being led by such ignorant individuals.
“The lack of interest in football from someone claiming to be a ZIFA Normalisation Committee chairman, the lack of knowledge is also worrisome, also the ZIFA committee represented here, lacked the basic knowledge of football,” said Benza.
“This is the reason why we are saying he (Mutasa) must do the noble thing and resign for the good of the game. We are not forcing him to resign but we are saying through his reasoning, he must just hand in his resignation to save Zimbabwean football.
“We are lagging not because we don’t have the facilities or football in Zimbabwe but simply because the person at the front is lacking interest and he expressed clearly in front of everyone that he is too busy to come to even watch football, we don’t know what he will be doing there.” Another member of the committee, who is into football, CAPS United owner and PSL chairman Farai Jere said Mutasa shouldn’t be relying on second-hand information to lead the game.
“It’s disheartening for as a committee when we hear the whole chairman of the ZIFA Normalisation committee openly telling people that he does not even attend Premier League matches,” said Jere.
“So how does he know the progress the sport is making and how our stadiums are if he does not attend or visit the stadiums? He can’t be relying on reports but we feel he should have been proactive in his work.”
Mutasa, whose appointment to head the Normalisation Committee surprised many and was shrouded in some controversy, tried to brag that he was doing his work well as evidenced by the extension he got from FIFA.
“I was approached by the people who wanted me to lead the ZIFA Normalisation Committee and we are working towards achieving the mandate that we were tasked to do we regularly report our progress to FIFA and for us to retain our services means that we are working and they (FIFA) are satisfied with what we are doing,” said Mutasa.
“We might not have managed to finish the work that we were tasked to do in time but I believe we have made progress in achieving that and I have the passion to see how football is transforming from where it was to a better position.”
ZIFA is expected to re-appear before the same committee on a date to be advised after yesterday’s facade failed to reap the desired fruits with Mutasa, Manwa-Mapika, and Sanyamandwe failing to come to the party on the oral evidence session.
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