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THE Sports Commission are hoping to meet with the Zimbabwe Handball Federation and Zimbabwe Boxing Federation stakeholders in two weeks’ time to map the way forward on how they should conduct their elections to elect substantive national executives.
ZHF and ZBF had their executives suspended for two years early this year by the Sports Commission for failing to comply with provisions of the Commission’s Act.
The Zimbabwe Wushu Federation were also suspended for the same reasons.
However, handball and boxing were in May ordered by the Minister of Sport and Recreation Makhosini Hlongwane to hold elections since their terms of office had expired.
The Sports Commission was given the task to assist the two federations, instead of appointing interim committees as had been indicated by the Commission prior to the minister’s order.
Sports Commission acting director-general, Joseph Muchechetere, on Wednesday said they were making progress towards fulfilling the order.
And they have come up with a guideline to be presented at the stakeholders meeting to be held in two weeks’ time.
“We have been involved on the process of assessing their structures from national to club level because at some stage they did not agree in terms of structures that existed at provincial and at district level especially handball.
“From there now we are going to hold a stakeholders meeting, now that we have the correct information about who is who in their structures. We have also drafted a guideline because it’s us now as SRC who is going to be guiding the process.
“So we are going to have a stakeholders meeting for the two associations where we are going to sit down with the provinces and members, that’s those that were not suspended. We should be calling for a stakeholders meeting in two weeks’ time.
“It will be a platform on which we will sit down and agree on what should be done at provincial level going down to the district level to have substantive structures.
“Once we know the composition of each province, we then call for the election of the national executive. The same exercise is being done for boxing,” said Muchechetere.
Muchechetere said the meeting would be a platform to educate the stakeholders on the guidelines so that they map the way forward.
“At this meeting we are tabling the guideline to say how the reorganisation of the elections is going to be done. There is also the roadmap, which will talk about the steps to be taken in restoring order in the national associations.
“It’s different now in that we were looking at their constitutions, the rules and regulation of the association. But now it’s above that because some of the things that were not clear in their constitutions, the SRC Act is superior to their constitutions and we need to agree.
“They should be comfortable on why we are using certain articles of the SRC Act. So it’s also about educating them,” said Muchechetere.
National handball development officer, Daniel Mtandwa, said although there has been some progress to restore order at the federation, the absence of a substantive executive is affecting some of their programmes.
“We are preparing programmes for handball, but there are other things we cannot do because we do not have a board. Some of the events need funding. There is also the IHF funds, it needs a board to be in place.
“We were given the mandate to do everything, but to source funds and hold fundraising events we need the board to be in place because we are preparing for the Zone Six in October,” said Mtandwa.
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