adminThe endorsement came on Thursday during a meeting called by the SRC board, led by prominent Bulawayo lawyer, Joseph James in which the Cuthbert Dube-led Zifa board gave its report to SRC on many issues like governance and management where the structures and instruments that Zifa employs were explained to the SRC as well as the roles of the board, secretariat and committees.
It was nevertheless the contentious issue of match-fixing that took centre stage.
“The Commission unanimously endorsed the position taken by Zifa to investigate all issues raised about the rot in our game. What we can only urge them to do is to conclude the investigations in as short a time as possible,” said the SRC director general Charles Nhemachena.
He said more time should be spent on turning around the fortunes of the association and not on investigating scandals.
“It could be one of the reasons why the corporate world is shunning our game because these issues obviously tarnish the image of Zifa but showing the zeal to investigate and flush out malcontents shows that as an association Zifa has zero tolerance to such things,” said the director general, speaking in a telephone interview from the capital yesterday.
Nhemachana also said the board raised its concerns about Zifa’s reliance on benevolence of its president, Dube who has now and again bailed out different national teams.
He said while they understood the explanation given by Zifa on that, especially the fact that the association is evidently cash scrapped, they noted that such a scenario was not conducive for good corporate governance.
The soccer mother body owes Dube well over $155 000 in money that Dube, through his Buymore investment, loaned to the association.
“We noted that the association was facing financial constraints partly because of lack of foresight. The examples are entering every competition and agreeing to host international tournaments even if they don’t have the necessary resources to do so,” said Nhemachena.
Early this year Zifa accepted, without SRC approval a last minute request to host the Cosafa Women Championships after the then hosts Reunion pulled out sighting lack of financial resources.
The SRC initially disowned the Games before making a U-turn, ‘in the spirit of sports and in an effort not to embarrass the nation’.
derick.khumalo