adminTakudzwa Chitsiga Sports Reporter
THE Sports Commission are hopeful that the new Zimbabwe Handball Federation’s executive committee will live up to expectations after they won the ticket to run the sport last weekend.
The federation, which has been for long trying to be vibrant but could not find enough sponsorship, will now be led by its former vice-president Simbiso Mpepereki.
He defeated his former boss Amon Madzvamuse during last weekend’s elective extraordinary meeting at the Sports Commission’s offices in Harare.
But The Herald understands that Madzvamuse is not going down without a fight and he has since declared that last weekend’s extraordinary meeting was unconstitutional and he believes that he still is the legitimate leader of the ZHF.
However, Mpepereki has since promised a transformation at the federation by putting in place a development plan and improve their relations with both the Sports Commission and the Zimbabwe Olympic Committee before anything else.
The Sports Commission, through their director general Charles Nhemachena, wished the new ZHF executive committee all the best and he said they believe that they will follow their constitution in whatever they are going to do.
“We are still to get it from the federation of the new developments there. We wish them all the best in reviving the sport.
“Our aim is to see them continue and improve from where they were and see the sport develop and lay down their strategic plans.
“I believe they have a mandate to run the sport and they should just conform to that and see that it improves from its current state.
“We only like to see continuity from the federation and by that we will be happy, otherwise we wish them all the best,” said Nhemachena.
Mpepereki’s new executive committe will have veteran handball administrator Alphios Magiya as the vice-president while Clemence Tauro will be the secretary-general.
Stewart Sanhewe is the treasurer and the two commissioner generals are Lillian Chiketa and Reginald Tsimba.
But the new ZHF executive committee have a mountain to climb as they seek to revive the sport that has been in the doldrums for the past five years or so.
Handball became one of the major sporting events in Zimbabwe when the country hosted the then All-Africa Games (now African Games) way back in 1995 but there has been a small progress in the development of the sport in this country since then.
The sport has over the past years been mainly played at school level throughout the country with no major league or club system in place.
Last year, the ZHF tried to introduce the Handball Premier League but it met with some teething problems as most teams failed to fulfil their fixtures due to financial constraints, among other things.
A number of stakeholders in the sport were also not happy that the sport was mainly being played at junior or school level whilst there was no proper club system in place which would have seen senior players playing on a regular basis.
At the moment, there’s no senior men’s or women’s team in place and this has seen Zimbabwe not fielding teams in a number of international events such as the African Games qualifiers.
The past few years have seen Zimbabwe participating in major junior international handball events such as the Partille Cup in Sweden and the Interamnia World Cup in Italy while nothing much was being done to promote the sport at senior level.
And it now remains to be seen whether Mpepereki and his new executive committee will revive the ailing sport after he took over the hot seat from Madzvamuse last weekend.
Online Reporter