adminBothwell Mahlengwe
LAST week was a real bad one for me. I lost my grandmother on Thursday and may her dear soul rest in eternal peace.
We laid her to rest on Saturday, the same day the Zifa elections were held. When I heard the results, I felt as if we had buried our beautiful game as well.
It got me thinking about the players, coaches, administrators and the like. I went back to the days when I was in primary school when my mother would warn me about concentrating too much on football at the expense of education.
My father, who was always tough, would tell me to keep my grades up if I wanted to continue football.
I had to balance the two.
Years later, I experienced first-hand what many people think about football people.
To my surprise, even the football people themselves, would classify themselves in this category.
In short, they all felt that football was for the poor and uneducated, the dunderheads. Stories I heard at the training ground were of people who would go to school during the second term only, just to play football.
Everything else didn’t matter.
Unfortunately, this decision would always come back to haunt them later in life. The sad part is it doesn’t affect them alone but their families, their communities and the nation at large.
I know players who would sign contracts with more than one club only to get themselves into trouble and heard about players who didn’t know the contents of the contracts they signed.
Then you will listen to their interviews in English and you wish Shona and Ndebele were international languages.
I feel this is a subject worth a whole article so I will end here.
Then the coaches are worse.
It’s not surprising to have a coach who would train a team for a year without contract. And then you have a classic one where one is trying to turn a team into a community side. A very small team for that matter.
To make matters worse, in a very small community.
One that was solely dependent on a company that has now decided not to sponsor that same club.
Is it intelligence and courage or ego and lack of foresight? This is worth an article as well. It can wait for another day.
Then came Saturday, 29 March 2014.
The day a group of 34, then 44, dunderheads decided to go against reason and gave Dube another four years of running our football.
Why, is the big question being posed by everyone?
H-Metro said, “no amount of make-up would beautify this frog.” One thing that you cannot run away from is that these people are probably insane.
Insanity, as defined by Albert Einstein, is “doing the same thing and expecting a different result.”
How on earth do you vote for someone who has such a rich history of failure football-wise like Dube?
Where is his Buymore Football Club? What one positive thing did he do in the last four years that he has been Zifa President?
Are we so comfortable with mediocrity to such an extent?
Even Professor Jonathan Moyo lamented the results of the election saying, “the outcome of these elections was indecent and defied all rationality and purpose.”
Some might say it’s sour grapes because my preferred candidates didn’t only lose but even failed to get a single vote. Don’t worry Nigel Munyati that zero you got, in such a poll of grave irregularities, was golden because it told us everything horrible about this system.
How people who could not only nominate but second you could decide to cast their vote elsewhere was a huge story on its own.
In his last term, Dube presided over the worst Zifa board since independence; junior teams failed to compete in Caf competitions, Asiagate was turned into a witch-hunt and not handled properly, the senior team didn’t qualify for any major tournament, debt ballooned to around US$6 million, teams had to travel by bus to as far as Malawi, Botswana and Zambia.
The Mighty Warriors, one of the few bright spots, were neglected at the end by the Zifa board and given substandard food before and after crucial matches in the last few months.
The Zifa chief executive was accused of lying by Ian Gorowa and Gerald Maguranyanga and many others.
Are we so daft that we see all this, and say it’s all normal, and we go ahead and retain the same person to run our football for the next four years?
Professor Moyo questioned the notion of continuity by asking, “continuity of what else besides naked and embarrassing failure?”
Another conspiracy theory is that there was vote buying.
If this theory is correct then our football people showed their selfishness. How much money would you accept to give your family poison?
It is the same thing if the councillors received money, as is being claimed, to vote in a certain way.
It shows how short-sighted and self-centred Zimbabwe’s football people are.
What about the future of our football — the future of multitudes of talented youngsters we have everywhere in this country? All destroyed because of a paltry amount that won’t even last for a month.
This Zifa election showed how shallow football people are. No wonder why the likes of Lloyd Hove no longer want to be associated with our football — it stinks.
No wonder for an entire country there were just five candidates for four Zifa board members, including two who have been there before.
I have read with interest most footballers’ profiles.
It seems fashionable for them to say, “I was good in school but I didn’t bother to collect my O’ Level results.” Really?
And what would you expect from such a person when he becomes a councillor?
My suggestion is players should go through college if they are to play professionally.
It’s working in the United States with basketball, baseball and American football players required to go through the college system for them to be eligible play in the professional leagues.
I think we can cry the whole year but the fact remains the same — we shot ourselves in the foot, and Innocent Mpofu said in his classic cartoon, we scored an own goal.
We showed the nation we are a bunch of dunderheads, a community of fools, a people so unreasonable, shallow, selfish and short sighted.
I wouldn’t know if it is consolation that the other board members seem to be reasonable people.
It is my hope that these guys would put checks and balances on Dube to perform.
Otherwise our beautiful game is doomed.
It would be decent for me to congratulate Dr Dube but I won’t — kupembedza nánga neinobata mai.
No, I can’t.
Bothwell Mahlengwe is a banker and former Premiership footballer and can be contacted, for feedback, on [email protected]
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