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AUSTIN Chishanga was the head of delegation when Dynamos went to Kinshasa in their Champions League tour of duty that ended in painful defeat and a routine premature elimination from the flagship inter-club tournament.
He was also the head of delegation when the Glamour Boys went to Algiers, three years ago, in another farcical tour of duty that ended in a painful defeat, and routine premature elimination from the Champions League, after a 0-3 defeat at the hands of MC Alger.
The men in charge of DeMbare might have changed, with Lloyd Mutasa who was in Algiers passing the baton to Callisto Pasuwa who oversaw the loss in Kinshasa, but the identity of the head of the Glamour Boys delegation hadn’t hanged and it was good old Austin Brian Chishanga.
He was also the head of delegation when DeMbare travelled to Lesotho, for another Champions League date, last year.
He just doesn’t travel with the Glamour Boys only, of course, he was the head of delegation when FC Platinum went to Swaziland for a Champions League assignment in 2012 and was also the head of delegation when Monomotapa were thrashed 0-5 by Heartlands in Nigeria in another Champions League tie.
Others will probably say that, after 17 years in which he has turned himself into the closest thing to a career zifa Councillor possible, maybe Chishanga deserves the regular freebies he has been receiving from the leadership of the association to be head of delegation of a number of teams that have flown across the continent to fly our flag.
But critics will say, with considerable justification, that the tickets for the head of delegations have been abused, in recent years, by the authorities at 53 Livingstone Avenue either as pay back to the councillors for standing in their corner, four years ago when elections were held, or to entice them to remain in their corner when the next elections are held.
That the head of delegation duty assignments, handed out by zifa, have been monopolised in the past four years by a small cartel of individuals, the majority of whom are the provincial leaders who have come under scrutiny after they suddenly pitched up in Harare two weeks ago for a night-time secret meeting where three members of each of the four regions were handed a US$200 payout each in attendance fees, in a country where a civil servant earns twice as much for a month’s work, explains this shadowy operation.
Even where the trips were bungled, there was no censure because these were the jolly good fellows and you don’t want to mess up with them because they were key, when elections were held in 2010, and would be key again when elections are held in 2014.
Owen Chandamale is the chairman of the zifa Harare province and he was head of delegation when the Warriors found themselves stranded in Tanzania in 2011 and, as leader, one would have expected him to stay behind with the boys until the last one left Dar-es-Salaam but he did exactly the opposite as he became the first to jump onto the plane.
He is 73 now, had his first big coaching role at Tabex 42 years ago, credits himself with unearthing the gem that came to be known as Achieford “Chehuchi” Chimutanda in the twilight years of the ‘70s, has been the zifa Harare provincial chairman for the last 14 years and was also there in the Tunisian city of Bizerte when the Glamour Boys slumped to a 0-3 defeat at the hands of CA Bizertin.
Dennis Tshuma is the zifa provincial chairman of Matabeleland North province and was the head of delegation of that farcical trip to Polokwane for their caf Confederation Cup tie against Black Leopards in February 2012, which saw them remain holed up at OR Tambo International Airport for almost the entire day, with their hosts going back on their word to fly them from Johannesburg.
It was, therefore, not a surprise when, against a whirlwind of condemnation of the steep fees that were initially pegged by zifa for the elections, Tshuma did not see anything amiss about the exorbitant nomination fees.
“I have a passion for football and I think if those who want to go for zifa posts are really sincere they will look for that money and send their nomination fees,” Tshuma told our sister newspaper Chronicle last year.
“I am going to look for that US$1 000 and pay in the next two weeks. Surely, chancers will not make it.”
The last time I checked, one head of delegation, who wasn’t given his allowances on a four-day foreign trip by one of our clubs, wrote to zifa that he was owed US$750, and took his share directly from what his province was supposed to pay to zifa in subscription fees, and if you can pocket such nice pickings, from all-expenses-paid-for trips where you do virtually nothing but watch football and enjoy the sights and sounds of foreign lands, US$1 000 isn’t an amount, as Tshuma pointed out, that can make you have sleepless nights.
If you are one of those lucky people who can be paid US$200 for simply attending a one night meeting in Harare, with all your travel expenses having been taken care of, surely US$1 000 in nomination fees means nothing because, you only need just five of such meetings, and suddenly you have enough to pay for your candidature.
Or, as we have been made to believe, you don’t even need to dig into your pocket to pay such outrageous nomination fees because someone, with bigger interests, is always ready to bankroll that assignment for you, of course, in return for that little favour when the time comes for you to also cast your vote in the polls to decide who will become the zifa president and who will be the board members.
Men And Women In The Shadows
Given his lengthy time as a zifa Councillor, Chishanga will be voting in his third or fourth elections, the same, too, can also be said about Chandamale, the same too can also be said about David Mpuli, the zifa provincial chairman for Mashonalnd East.
It’s virtually the same story in the regions, the same old faces that have been there long before Knowledge Musona was born, are still running the strings even though their outdated administrative tactics have long been left behind by a game that has evolved at a pace they could not keep up with.
My old man Mussa Mandaza is back as chairman of Southern Region, almost 30 years to the date he was holding a virtually similar position in his province, and while a good woman whose four years in charge of women’s football revived a game that was on its death bed has just lost the elections, and accepted defeat, some regions and provinces are bringing back dinosaurs in an age when National Geographic tells us these creatures have been extinct for some time now.
Right now the focus is on the battle for the zifa president and since the turn of the millennium, we have had about half-a-dozen men who have been presidents of the association — Leo Mugabe, Charles Westerfall, Vincent Pamire, Rafik Khan, Wellington Nyatanga and Cuthbert Dube — and while there has been considerable rotation, in the hot seat, the composition of the assembly has been familiar.
These are people who don’t usually come out in the newspapers or on television, people you are unlikely to see at football matches, people who are unlikely to be seen at a schools’ football tournament, people who only pop up when it’s time for the elections for the zifa board and presidency and people who only pop up when the call comes through that they are going to this and that country as the head of delegation for this and that team.
When the Young Warriors were stranded in Harare, without money to send them to their assignment in Angola, these people, despite all the power that they wield in deciding who should and who should not be in office at zifa House, were nowhere to be seen and, stuck in the shadows where their murky operations thrive, they just watched from a distance as the team failed to travel to Luanda.
When the Young Warriors were stranded in Harare, without money to send them to their assignment in Congo, these people, despite all the power they wield in deciding who should be and who should not be in office at 53 Livingstone Avenue, were nowhere to be seen and, stuck in the shadows where their obscure operations thrive, they Saw No Evil, Heard No Evil and Spoke No Evil even though the machine they assembled to run the game had suffered a huge malfunction as the team failed to travel to Brazzaville.
When the Mighty Warriors were stranded at the zifa Village, without money to enable them to pay their bus fares for the trip home despite their heroics in knocking out Botswana and were being fed on boiled matemba, muboora and sadza, these people were nowhere to be seen and, in the shadows where they love to operate, they just watched from a distance, as if they were not part of this football constituency, in a reaction that bordered on heartlessness as well as foolishness.
They don’t care about the game because to them, that flight as head of delegation and the allowances that come with the trip, are more important, that US$200 pay cheque for a night meeting is more important and your guess is as good as mine that, if they can earn US$200 for a few hours indaba, how much have they been earning for some of the meetings that we haven’t heard about?
Suddenly they have stepped out of their shadows, where they had been quarantined for the last four years, save for the occasional moment or moments when a phone call comes from 53 Livingstone Avenue to advise them that they will be the head of delegation for this and that trip, and they can’t wait for their big job of giving us the next zifa board and its president.
Suddenly, these men and women have become very important and where they could not find time, during the day, to try and address the challenges that were facing both the Young Warriors and the Mighty Warriors, they suddenly find time, during the night, to converge in Harare, some travelling from the borders of the country, to discuss the zifa elections and pocket a US$200 payout for their troubles.
And when some of them are confirming, in the Chronicle, that they were paid for attending that secret meeting, no one is raising an issue with that, including the docile and lifeless Sports Commission, even when it’s clear that it goes against the spirit of keeping these elections above board.
Is This Any Different From Trinidad?
In May 2011, in the countdown to the Fifa presidential elections, some Caribbean, North and Central American Federation delegates met in Trinidad and Tobago, at a secret meeting called by one of the candidates in the race for the leadership of world football, Mohamed Bin Hammam.
Chuck Blazer, an American Fifa executive member who was the secretary-general of Concacaf, turned into a whistleblower when he told the world football governing body that delegates who attended that meeting, who were all going to cast a vote in the fifa presidential elections, had found envelopes of US$40 000 on each desk.
The bribes were meant to sway the voters to cast their votes for Bin Hammam, something that the then Fifa vice-president denied.
A report by the Fifa Ethics Committee, which was obtained by Britain’s Press Association, said there was “comprehensive, convincing and overwhelming” evidence against Bin Hammam, who was the head of the Asian Football Confederation, and Jack Warner, who was the Concacaf president and fifa vice-president, was “an accessory to corruption.”
The report of the Ethics Committee, which provisionally suspended Warner and Bin Hammam on May 29, 2011, said there was “prima facie” evidence that bribes had been paid to officials to support Bin Hammam’s campaign for the Fifa presidency and Warner had played the role of facilitator in this web of corruption.
Bin Hammam withdrew as a candidate of the fifa presidency on the day of his Ethics Committee hearing on May 29.
The report said there was “compelling” evidence Bin Hammam and Warner arranged a special secret meeting of the 25 members of the Caribbean Football Union on May 10-11 in Trinidad and that, with their knowledge, cash gifts were handed over.
Statements from witnesses, whose credibility was accepted by the Ethics Committee, said CFU members were handed brown envelopes each containing US$40 000.
One of the witnesses, Fred Lunn from the Bahamas, photographed the cash before returning it. The Ethics Committee report said:
“On the occasion of this meeting it seems Mr Bin Hammam offered, at least indirectly and under the pledge of secrecy, to each of the member associations an envelope containing US$40 000.
“The committee is also of the opinion that the respective money gifts can probably only be explained if they are associated with the fifa presidential elections of 1 June 2011.
Therefore it appears rather compelling to consider the actions of Mr Bin Hammam constitute prima facie an act of bribery, or at least, an attempt to commit bribery.
“It appears prima facie impossible, in the opinion of the fifa Ethics Committee, that the accused (Warner) could have considered the money distributed . . . as legally or ethically proper and without any connection to the upcoming FIFA presidential election.
Bin Hammam has since been banned for life from football by Fifa, for his role in that secret meeting in Trinidad and Tobago, Warner has since resigned from Fifa, and a number of officials were caught up in the purge.
I’m not saying that Fifa are angels but, at least, they have the muscle to deal with rotten systems because , as their Ethics Committee, ruled in their report, there was everything wrong with a fifa presidential candidate meeting voters in secret and handing them cash gifts.
Fifa sets the example, for everyone in world football to follow, and why is it that what the people in Zurich find offensive, in as far as what the relationship between the candidates and voters should be, we seem to embrace it as if we live on our isolated island detached from the ethics that should govern elections throughout the Fifa family?
Strange Election, No Manifestos, No Campaigning
You know that you have an obscure election when the zifa Electoral Committee leaves itself with just one week between announcing the candidates, who have passed the verification exercise for the presidential poll, and the date that the elections should be held.
Seriously, today the Electoral Committee are scheduled to release the names of the candidates who passed the verification process and the elections are set for next Saturday, that is if the High Court doesn’t rule that they can’t be held in the current environment where allegations have been flying that the constitution and Electoral Code have been violated.
That means the candidates have only one week to campaign and present their vision to the delegates and, if you ask me, that is too little a timeframe and that also adds weight to fears that this whole process has been manipulated so much that even those who are running it feel there is no need to give the candidates more time to campaign.
But, then, what should we expect from an Electoral Committee whose leader, Tendai Madzorera, on the day this committee was unveiled by zifa president Cuthbert Dube in November last year, said:
“The schedule is tight because next month elections must start and by the end of March we should have a FULL ZIFA ASSEMBLY IN PLACE BEING LED BY A PRESIDENT AND, HOPEFULLY, IT WILL BE LED BY PRESIDENT DUBE.”
This, coming from someone who should be an independent voice, because that’s what an Electoral Committee should be, telling us, on the very first day in office, his choice to be the leader when the entire process comes to an end in March, should have raised eyebrows everywhere.
Not in Zimbabwe football, of course, and no wonder this has all ended up in the High Court.
To God Be The Glory!
Come on Warriors !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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