Online Reporter
Guest Writer
THE hallowed halls of Highlanders Football Club, a titan not merely of sport but of Bulawayo’s very soul, resonate with whispers of concern.
As a community-owned institution woven into the fabric of its people through generations of passion, loyalty and shared investment, Bosso recently embarked on the sacred task of seeking a new chief executive.
Yet, a shadow falls across this critical process: the profound, unsettling secrecy surrounding the shortlisted candidates. Why, in the name of transparency and the club’s foundational spirit, do these names remain hidden?
Highlanders are set to interview the ‘top secret’ shortlisted three candidates today.
The call for applications echoed across the land. Qualified individuals, drawn by the immense honour and responsibility of steering this behemoth, stepped forward.
The club, custodians of a public trust, received these submissions. Then, silence.
A curtain descended. The identities of those deemed worthy to vie for one of Zimbabwean football’s most pivotal roles? Concealed. This is not merely questionable practice; it is an abdication of fundamental accountability.
Best practice demands daylight:
Public disclosure of the shortlist
Public interviews (or observers)
Why Bosso must lift the veil — Now:
The arguments for confidentiality, often cited for lower-level roles, ring hollow here.
The CEO of Highlanders operates under intense, unrelenting public gaze. Applicants must expect scrutiny commensurate with the role’s stature and the club’s communal ownership.
Protecting candidates currently employed?
This secrecy is corrosive. It whispers of deals done in shadows, of disconnect between the custodians and the community they serve.
It undermines the very “public entity” status Bosso holds dear. For a club whose strength is drawn from the roar of Barbourfields, this silence is deafening — and damaging.
Highlanders FC stands at a crossroads. Will it cling to opaque practices that erode trust, or will it embrace the luminous
transparency befitting its stature?
The club’s legacy, its present credibility and its future direction demand one path: Publish the shortlist. Hold the interviews in the light.
The Bosso faithful, the true owners of this institution, deserve nothing less than a process as strong, unyielding and transparent as their legendary passion for the black and white. The throne is public. The selection must be too.
Highlanders is a shadow of itself and is fast running into obscurity just like it’s partner Dynamos in Harare. A continued hype about it being a symbol of Bulawayo history is not helping either. Highlanders’s bane is in it’s tribal roots which Dr. JM Nkomo tried to expunge with little success. So the secrecy seen in some of the practices within Highlanders is not surprising. The Highlanders institution must continue to make a concerted effort to rid itself of this tribal tag to enhance transparency in its activities.