adminWeekend Whispers with Dingilizwe Ntuli
PERHAPS the time has come to review the role of the Sports and Recreation Commission (SRC). How relevant is this commission that was created in 1991 by an Act of Parliament?
The SRC board members and secretariat will obviously claim relevance although they would struggle to justify their existence to the sport loving public in the wake of the chaotic state of the domestic football governing body Zifa.
According to its own website, part of the SRC mandate is to facilitate the accessibility of sport and recreation programmes to the people of Zimbabwe and to oversee the general running of sport and recreation programmes by national sports associations.
The recreational aspect is virtually non-existent as most facilities that were in place even before the SRC was constituted now lie derelict. In fact, most former recreational facilities are now no-go areas as they have become havens for criminals at whatever time of the day.
So maybe the commission might want to consider dropping the “R” and solely focus its mandate on just sports.
What difference that would make is for anyone to hazard a guess, but what is apparent is that whereas the SRC has been absent on the country’s recreational platforms, it has been very visible on the sports front, albeit with spectacular multiple failures.
The SRC’s overseer role has frequently been ridiculed by the very national sports associations it is meant to steward. While the defiance happens year after year, the amusing thing is that the SRC always tries to flex its non-existent muscles with the same frequency leaving it appearing more ridiculous with each attempt.
For example, after years of enduring ridicule from Zifa, the SRC tried to exert its authority on the gentleman’s game by attempting to block Zimbabwe Cricket (ZC) from sending the national cricket team to volatile Pakistan for two T20s and three one-day-internationals last month.
It’s needless to mention that ZC ignored the advice or directive and flew to Pakistan, played in the series and returned home safely despite a bomb blast outside the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore during one of the matches.
SRC director-general Charles Nhemachena threatened to take action against the ZC leadership for rejecting its warnings indicating that the commission would give them time to settle before demanding to know why they went ahead with the tour.
It has been close to a month now since Nhemachena issued the threat through a statement but nothing has been done. Maybe ZC took a cue from Zifa that the SRC is not effective beyond the Act that brought it into existence.
Sadly for the SRC, just last week, Nhemachena seemed to bite off more than he could chew when he attempted to intervene in the present Zifa circus by promising the nation that decisive action would definitely be taken against the bungling association this week.
Nhemachena correctly declared that the mayhem at Zifa is symptomatic of the dysfunctional governance, adding that the “glaring inadequacies of our football leadership has become a serious threat to our national interest”.
He said the commission noted and appreciated the anxiety of the nation created by the goings on in Zifa, and the understandable impatience for corrective action to be taken immediately and promised that corrective action would be taken once the official Zifa report on the suspensions had been received.
These strong undertakings flattered the nation as football fans thought the SRC had finally grown teeth to tackle the anarchy at Zifa despite the consequences of a ban by Fifa for alleged government interference. Fans had said there was nothing to lose citing the existing ban for the 2018 World Cup qualifiers imposed on Zimbabwe after Zifa failed to meet a deadline to offset an outstanding debt owed to former Warriors’ Brazilian coach Valinhos.
However, Nhemachena’s threatened critical intervention turned out to be just wind in the form of an inquiry to probe the chaos at Zifa. The inquiry has up to the end of July to present its findings. The mere setting up of an inquiry annuls Nhemachena’s earlier pronouncements that the inadequacies of Zifa boss Cuthbert Dube and his lieutenants “had become a serious threat to our national interest”.
If Nhemachena is indeed serious that Dube’s leadership has become a threat to national interests, then surely leaving him at the helm for an extra five weeks doubles, if not trebles or quadruples that threat.
The SRC has clearly avoided its obligation to provide a lasting solution to the recurrent large-scale erosions of administration at Zifa by relying on an ineffective inquiry.
By their nature, inquiries are a cowardly way of tackling issues as they don’t really achieve much. In most cases, such inquiries merely elaborate ruses aimed at distracting the public and delivering outcomes favourable to a few, and are a waste of resources.
They are often turned into cash cows with members of these inquiries benefiting financially while the real problems they are meant to untangle remain intact.
Even where inquiries have conducted proper investigations, their recommendations have rarely been implemented or their reports made public.
What is needed here is a forensic audit to look into the Zifa financials and not a simple inquiry comprising commissioners from the same SRC that has stood by while our national sport withered.
Football has been shaken to its foundations by the scandalous Zifa leadership and the SRC needs to understand the demands of fans now outweigh their empty rhetoric.
Trust in how sport is governed has never been lower and it seems as if sporting bodies have become synonymous with all that is worst about apathy and corruption.
Governing sport must be simple and if the SRC can’t maintain these basics by preventing the self-interest of well-off individuals from prevailing, then it might as well be dissolved as its existence would be merely to serve its commissioners.
Online Reporter