Sack Cuthbert: ministers

Zim World Cup boot ‘final straw’

Sikhumbuzo Moyo Senior Sports Reporter
FIFA yesterday banned Zimbabwe from the 2018 World Cup – and a Cabinet minister believes this is the “smoking gun” that should trigger leadership changes at Zifa.

Information Minister Professor Jonathan Moyo set the tone shortly after Fifa made its announcement – placing the blame for the debacle squarely at the feet of the embattled Zifa boss, Cuthbert Dube.

“This is the smoking gun that should be used to bring the needed change at the helm of Zifa,” Prof Moyo said on Twitter (@ProfJNMoyo).

Prof Moyo, asked if the government could have “done something to avoid this Zifa debacle”, replied: “Valinhos was hired not by the government but Zifa which asserts Zifa protection regarding government interference. First, the Zifa Council must boot out the Zifa board. No boot-out, no bailout.”

Last night, the Deputy Minister of Sports Minister Tabeth Kanengoni-Malinga, who last month was labelled as “crazy” by Zifa CEO Jonathan Mashingaidze after she led calls to have the Zifa board dissolved, said the government would now certainly intervene.

Fifa acted after Zifa failed to meet a 180-day deadline to pay former national team coach, Jose Valinhos, $60,000 owed to him following his sacking in 2008.

Kanengoni-Malinga said the move by Fifa did not come as a surprise “because Zifa has been on a downward spiral for sometime now.”

She said she felt vindicated as Fifa had laid bare that Dube and Mashingaidze were ruining football in Zimbabwe.

“I spoke about it before when I was trying to find a solution, but Mashingaidze and Cuthbert Dube thought they had it under control. It shows now that I’m not ‘crazy’ as Mashingaidze suggested,” said the deputy minister, who spoke after her boss, Andrew Langa, last night told Chronicle Sport that he was “not aware” that Zimbabwe had been banned.

Kanengoni-Malinga, with her previous calls to disband Zifa, drew fire from Fifa at the behest of Mashingaidze. Fifa warned that Zimbabwe would be kicked out of all tournaments, including the World Cup and Africa Cup of Nations, if the government interfered.

The deputy minister said then, as she repeated yesterday, that there was nothing to lose as Dube and his Zifa board were taking the country nowhere.

“There was really nothing to protect then but now that we’re finally banned, we have to do something and that we will do,” she vowed last night.

With the expulsion, Zifa will now have a $300,000 grant due from Fifa for the 2018 World Cup qualifiers withheld by the world football governing body.

The draw for the 2018 World Cup qualifiers will be held on July 25 with the matches kicking off on October 5, 2015.

The expulsion of the senior national team takes to four the number of Zimbabwean football teams to be banned under the present Zifa leadership.

In 2012, Zimbabwe failed to fulfil the second leg of the Under-17 African Youth Championships qualifier away to Congo, three months after the Under-20 had also failed to travel for the Africa Youth Championships qualifiers in Angola.

During the same year, Bulawayo giants Highlanders were banned from participating in Caf competitions after Zifa registered the club in the Confederations Cup without their approval.

When Highlanders said they were not going to take part in the tournament, Caf banned them from international tournaments under their auspices.

Zifa is drowning in debt, with over $4 million owed to creditors, according to a report made to its general meeting last month.

Last week, equipment from a Fifa-funded training centre in Harare was auctioned off to pay former employees. Zifa staved off the auctioning of a second facility in Bulawayo after agreeing a payment plan with CBZ Bank.

Zimbabwe’s decline is a far cry from the 1994 qualifiers when the Warriors eliminated Egypt in a play-off in France and were level with Cameroon going into the last game of the preliminaries before losing out on a spot at the World Cup in the United States.

Zifa have lurched from crisis to crisis since, mostly financial, but in 2012, after several years of investigation, 13 players and officials were banned for life for match fixing. A further 69 were also suspended for shorter periods for their part in fixing friendly internationals that Zimbabwe played in Asia where games were manipulated under the instruction of a Singapore-based betting syndicate.

These bans have not yet been extended worldwide by Fifa, whose investigation into the “Asiagate” affair has stalled recently.