adminIt is at this meeting that Southern Region boss Gift Banda and his Central Region counterpart Patrick Hokonya who were implicated in the match-fixing scandal will know their fate.
The pending Centralgate, as the saga is now commonly referred to, has contributed to the delay in crowning the region’s champions and Zifa is hard pressed to conclude the matter.
The Castle Lager Premiership season ended last month and winners from other regional leagues are out.
Quelaton are the Southern Region champions with Harare City winning the Northern Region League while Buffaloes are coming into the elite league from the Eastern Region.
Banda and Hokonya have been resolute that they were not involved.
Chronicle Sport has it on good authority that some board members were advocating for the agenda to be widened, saying there were other pressing issues that needed to be expeditiously dealt with.
Zifa chief executive officer Jonathan Mashingaidze was firm that the board would only deal with the Centralgate matter.
“This meeting is meant to deal with one item and that is what transpired in the Central Region. All the board members have been notified and they will attend the meeting.
“There is no way that the agenda could have been widened because in terms of corporate governance a special meeting is meant to address a particular subject. Other matters as of now will have to wait for the next meeting,” said Mashingaidze.
The Centralgate saga took a nasty turn on Saturday when Banda filed criminal defamation charges against former referee Cosmas Nyoni who had fingered him in the scam.
Nyoni is the one who implicated Banda and Hokonya, claiming that Samukeliso Silengane, the Zimbabwe Referees Committee vice chairperson told him that the two “elders” wanted him to fix matches in the Central Region.
There are possibilities that the two could be suspended over the scandal.
Already, Women’s Soccer League boss Silengane and Nyoni have been suspended.
Mashingaidze’s sentiments therefore mean that allegations of vote buying that Banda levelled against Zifa president Cuthbert Dube will not be addressed at this meeting.
Zifa is heavily “indebted” to Dube who has been sacrificing his personal resources to keep the association afloat.
The football mother body owes Dube more than $150 000 which was used to pay the board’s sitting and accommodation allowances, national soccer teams’ trips, paying Zifa staff, councillors’ allowances as well as rentals among other things.
The move though has been criticised in some quarters as it was felt that Dube’s actions will make him untouchable and unchallengeable as he was literally an employer.
Online Reporter