adminIT’S probably fair to say that in the last three years, Zifa and ZBC, like Siamese twins, have found themselves confronted by similar challenges and, crucially, looking towards the same set of individuals to provide the solution.Both organisations have struggled to pay their workers, are weighed down by huge debts and had they been private companies, it’s very likely they would have long closed shop by now, swallowed by their liabilities, drowned by their indebtedness.
ZBC have more than US$44 million in debts and Zifa’s debt, which will always have to be an estimate given the association haven’t produced a set of their audited financial statements since the current leadership took over, is said to be around US$6 million and approaching US$7 million.
A lot of focus has been on ZBC in recent weeks, in the wake of the measures that have been put in place to try and arrest the slide there, and the fact that some of the principal characters in the soap that is unfolding at Pockets Hill, Cuthbert Dube and Elliot Kasu, are also principal characters at Zifa House, has been a huge talking point in football circles.
In an era where Facebook and Twitter give the average fan the platform to pour out their thoughts about us, in the times when our stars are shining brightly, illuminated by our achievements or acts of genius, judgment is swift and views – some very kind and others very flattering – come in a flood from all angles.
It’s also the same story, on the occasions when our weaknesses as human beings let us down and we fail to live to the expectations of those who hold us in high esteem and in the process open ourselves to brutal criticism, judgment is also swift and the views – some very scathing and others quite abusive – come in a flood from all angles.
Zifa president, Cuthbert Dube, is a man who is held in high esteem in the corporate world, and there is no doubt that he carried a lot of corporate goodwill when he announced his intention to be the next Zifa president and, indeed, there was a lot of corporate wind blowing in his sail when he assumed the post of leader of our football.
The events at ZBC in the past couple of weeks, including the stunning revelations of the possibility that acts of corporate negligence were rampant at the national broadcaster during Dube’s term as board chairman, have inevitably sent the social media sites into overdrive with questions being asked about why this all happened under his watch.
Given the challenges that Zifa have faced, again under Dube’s watch and guidance, those who feel that the Harare business executive has come short, when it comes to leading their favourite sporting discipline, have been quick to jump onto the bandwagon of criticism, claiming that the state of the two organisations are a reflection of a failed leadership.
I’m not so sure that Amai Jukwa, a fellow Herald blogger, is a football fan but her piece in this newspaper on November 25, 2013, touched on our national game, its leader and the events that were unfolding at ZBC.
“One cannot in good conscience argue that Cuthbert Dube is a management champion. He is not. His failures at Zifa are evidence sufficient of his limited abilities,” wrote Mai Jukwa, hammering the harshest of criticism ever levelled on the Zifa boss.
“MOST SOCCER SUPPORTERS DESPISE HIM AND BELIEVE HE IS DESTROYING THE SPORT BUT HE IS ALLOWED TO CARRY ON IN THAT POSITION.
“It is hardly surprising that he took his peculiar management skills to the ZBC and ran it to the ground. While StarFm and ZiFM are turning profits on the back of a single radio station, the ZBC is failing with four at its disposal and a monopoly in the television sector.”
Amai Jukwa actually used the phrase “hopelessly incompetent” in describing Dube and his board who ran ZBC, and reading through the social media sites in the past few days, it’s a phrase that has been used repeatedly by thousands of football fans and followers to describe the current Zifa leadership which they feel has fallen short of their great expectations.
Dube has already announced that he will run for another term as Zifa president at the elections set for March 26 next year and, in the wake of the drama that has unfolded at ZBC, where his hitherto glossy corporate image has been questioned, there will certainly be those standing in the opposite corner asking if he is the right man to lead the national game.
The Case For Cuthbert Dube
Cuthbert Dube described himself as a Man on a Mission, in his election manifesto, who upon getting the mandate to lead domestic football would dramatically transform the landscape and breathe new life into the national game.
He has shown his passion for the organisation that he leads by pumping in a huge chunk of his fortune into the game, in bailing out the Warriors or paying the salaries of the staff at Zifa House, and he is owed close to US$1 million, which he has sunk into the game, since taking over as the boss.
In a game that has a history of wooing people who come into its administrative ranks to find a way of drawing from its coffers, Dube’s philanthropy has been a breath of fresh air and you have to take a bow to a man who sinks in a million, including putting his house on the line as a guarantee for a loan at a commercial bank all in the name of helping the game, without any guarantees that he will ever get a cent back.
Just keeping Zifa afloat, with his regular injections of cash, at a time when there was a real possibility this organisation would have sunk with its operational costs outweighing its meagre income by a country mile, was a grand effort and that Dube did it on his own, with no one from his board to provide the support, is something that needs to be saluted.
He has also won a lot of friends with the way he has battled relentlessly to clean the game, his fight epitomised by the way he spearheaded the battle against match-fixing with Asiagate and Centralgate scandals all being taken head-on by his board, and taking the scalps of four board members and a chief executive officer along the way.
Dube has also scored highly in the way he has handled the Zifa Goal Projects and that the Zifa Village has finally been completed, when successive administrators kept coming short in this huge project despite drawing the funds for the construction exercise from Fifa, is something that we have to give this man credit for because this is what good administrators should do.
Even if Dube was to lose the next elections, he has left a legacy, and no one can take it away from him because he has left a modern football structure that will be used by generations of football players and officials for years to come.
That is what you want from a leader, someone who leaves a lasting legacy, someone whom people will say, 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now, there was this man, who decided to do something very good for football and rather than divert development funding from Fifa, to the operational costs of the organisation, he ensured that this Zifa Village was completed.
That is the reason why, if you ask true Dynamos fans, they will tell you that Lincoln Mutasa is up there, among the very best if not the very best, of the leaders they have had in their 50 years of existence because, when he was chairman, he had the wisdom to invest in a house for the club, along the same Livingstone Avenue where you find Zifa House, and prime real estate in Waterfalls which, if it hadn’t been sold by people who didn’t care about tomorrow, it would have been worth a fortune for the Glamour Boys today.
It’s fair to say that Cuthbert Dube walked into a storm, when he took over as Zifa president, and that the Premier Soccer League didn’t have any sponsor, in the same year that the PSMAS Group chief executive won the right to lead the national game, puts into perspective the severity of the challenges that were there to be faced by a national game that was on its death bed.
Against that background, it would also be fair to say that Cuthbert Dube needs more than four years, to really impose his management style at Zifa and shape this association into the structure that he really wants, and having spent the last four years fighting the fires, maybe it’s only natural that he should be given another chance to run the organisation for another four years.
The other key point is that Cuthbert Dube was virtually alone, without any support whatsoever, on this Zifa board and, as good as he is, he was likely to be overwhelmed, working in isolation without board members who helped him take the game forward, in his mission to try and deal with the challenges that were weighing the game down.
If we were to carry an audit of what the other board members have contributed to the game, we might find that Mavis Gumbo, the women football chief did a lot in her sector, but when it comes to the men’s side, we will see that virtually all the other board members were just clinging onto Cuthbert Dube’s coattails, waiting for that board meeting where they will draw out an allowance, waiting for that national team game where they would spend a night in a hotel and draw an allowance.
That the allowances were being paid by one of them, Cuthbert Dube himself, and that Zifa were bankrupt, didn’t mean anything to them, and they kept drawing that allowance, until one day the benefactor said enough is enough and we can’t keep milking a car that is on its deathbed.
Maybe, if we help Cuthbert Dube, and give him men of character to sit on his board, not some of those Mickey Mouse characters disguised as football leaders, including those who seem to have been left behind by time when it moved into the new millennium, whom we have seen calling themselves Zifa board members in the past four years, maybe there could be a new beginning.
Cuthbert Dube’s Promise to Football
Cuthbert Dube promised the football fraternity, in his election manifesto, that his mission, once elected Zifa president, would be to lead a board that would:
Secure new premises away from 53 Livingstone Avenue, where a state-of-the-art House of Zifa shall be built, the new premises would exude a new look of the Association.
Strengthen football governance system through training, enforcement of statutes and engagement of competent and committed staff.
(Help) the national team reclaim their status of old days and the board, through partnerships with corporate and Government, ensure that strong national teams are put together through a sound technical system that only sees the best of Zimbabwe’s players donning the national team jersey.
Put together a team to mobilise sponsorship for the Association’s portfolios. This sponsorship will serve development, general administration, marketing, national teams, infrastructural development and the regeneration of the Association.
Re-engage Fifa on the Goal Project whose completion should be done by the end of August 2010 and the village, upon its completion, should house national teams, youth camps, training programmes and general activities of the Association.
Bid to host Caf and Fifa competitions in a bid to rebrand and profile the Association and Zimbabwe in general and work with various service providers in rehabilitating our facilities ahead of such big events.
Enforce, to the letter, a foolproof standardisation programme revolving around formulation of curriculum, duration of courses, mentorship, certification and impact assessment. We shall partner with colleges and universities around the world in running high level courses on a syndicate basis.
Take the game beyond the present realm, as a priority, as we strive to give our game a new face. A Marketing Plan for the Association shall be unveiled and the relevant resources to service it shall be mobilised. An interactive website shall be operationalised to market our products and services locally and internationally.
Publication should be produced to market our products and services, our television rights, which globally are the major revenue stream, shall be astutely administered through our commercial arm.
Unveil awards for the most illustrious and deserving men and women with the association putting together a Hall of Fame where our “Who Is Who” shall be inducted for posterity. Sponsors for the awards are waiting in the wings.
Re-operationalise Zifa (Pvt) Ltd, turning it into an investment vehicle that shall be responsible for Zifa’s movable and immovable assets and the investment drive. THE COMPANY SHALL BE REGISTERED ON THE STOCK EXCHANGE SO AS TO LEVERAGE ITS BUSINESS UNITS. BOARD WILL WORK ON HAVING SELF-HELP UNITS, NAMELY FARMS AND OTHER INVESTMENTS.
The Case Against Cuthbert Dube
The Zifa president will probably see, when he takes another look at the election manifesto that swept him into office, that there are a lot of things that he promised the electorate but didn’t fulfil in the four years that he has been in power.
Zifa remains stuck at 53 Livingstone Avenue, football governance systems remain weak, if not paralysed, no sponsorship has been mobilised for either development or the administration of the game, no Caf or Fifa competitions have been hosted here, in the men’s game, in the last four years and no marketing masterplan has been in force.
The Hall of Fame hasn’t been put in place, even though a process has been started, and for a man who said that “sponsors for the awards are waiting in the wings”, it must have really hurt him to be in that crowd last week, when the people who are organising these awards held a poorly-subscribed fund-raising dinner, and ended up asking people to donate a dollar to football.
Zifa (Pvt) Ltd remains in name only and it hasn’t been turned into an investment vehicle that has made a difference to the Association’s operations and, crucially, the “company hasn’t been registered on the stock exchange so as to leverage its business units.”
Cuthbert Dube fought a good war against corruption but his anti-graft drive remains incomplete with questions dogging the credibility of the exercise and that Fifa haven’t endorsed the Zifa sanctions, more than a year after Dube and his team pronounced judgment on scores of people in the highly-publicised Asiagate case, which is in itself a world record in cases of such a nature, has thrown the entire exercise into question.
Some have said Zifa have no one but themselves to blame for an exercise that ended up being hijacked, by some members on the Zifa board who suddenly found a window of opportunity to settle old scores and silence old voices that had haunted them in the past, and rather than deal with real issues they ended going way overboard.
We are more divided, as a football community, than we have ever been at any stage before, with most of the divisions drawn along tribal lines, which have not been helped by the way Zifa have conducted their affairs.
Surely, how can they explain why they could write a letter to Methembe Ndlovu, advising him that he had completed his two-year ban over Asiagate, a year after the punishments were imposed, and he is now free to resume his football activities, and don’t do the same for Norman Mapeza, who had been banned for six months, when his ban was supposed to end first?
The promise was that the Warriors would be transformed into a better team but they have turned into a punching bag and, this year, they completed their worst World Cup qualifying campaign in history – without a win in six of their matches.
It’s the first Zifa leadership, in the new millennium, that will complete its term with the Warriors never having been crowned champions of the region, it’s the first Zifa board that will complete its term with the Young Warriors never having been crowned champions of the Cosafa Under-20 championship and, for the first time, we had that scenario where the Under-20s and Under-17s failed to fulfil their assignments.
Then, there has been the huge turnover of coaches for the Warriors, a record for any Zifa board, and Zifa were around US$600 000 in debt, when this board took over, and now that debt has blown almost ten-fold and, crucially, for a board that came in promising that it will live up to the highest standards of corporate governance, it’s disastrous that they are yet to produce their audited financial statements.
To God Be The Glory!
Come on United!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Chicharitoooooooooooooooooooooo!
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