Will Warriors rise from ashes?

you do that? You stand and mostly you gape.
“This was the goaltender,” a security guard says. “Efford Chabala. Oh, Chabala, he was very good. Very, very good.”
You stare at the black-and-white picture of Chabala that is attached to a thin wooden stick behind one of the mounds. A head shot. You read the printing underneath the picture, his name and the fact that he lived from 1960 to 1993 and played for the Mufulira Wanderers and for Zambia. You squint to read the smaller writing, maybe from a half-dozen hands, messages that have been scribbled in pencil or ballpoint pen, messages of condolence, messages of farewell. “You have left us alone,” one of them says. “What are we to do now?”
You look at all the pictures, one picture behind each of the 30 mounds. Many of the faces are so young, faces that could be from a yearbook, from a college football programme on a Saturday afternoon, 18 soccer players and then the coaches and the trainer and then the officials of the Zambia national team and then the crew of the de Havilland DHC-5 Buffalo airplane that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean just before midnight on 27 April 1993 off the coast of the tiny African country of Gabon. How can this be? All these people?”
This was the writing of a journalist, Leigh Montville, in his article, Triumph on sacred ground, which talks about how the Zambian national soccer team perished in a plane crash and the rising of a new team to bring hope to a troubled nation.
After the disaster, the Zambians never looked back, they fought gallantly in honour of their departed brothers led by King Kalusha Bwalya, and slowly, new stars emerged, the KK XI, as the national team was known after veteran nationalist Kenneth Kaunda, slowly became a force to reckon with on the continent.
In fact, the Zambians have dazzled many and won the hearts of many neutrals in the ongoing 2012 Africa Cup of Nations in Gabon and Equatorial Guinea on their way to the quarter-finals. They have indeed arisen from the ashes and look strong and determined to go even further than the last eight.
While the Zambian scenario was not man-made, so touching and painful than you can ever imagine, we find ourselves in a typical graveyard where we see graves of our beloved Warriors.
We see the tombstones and the script of all those who took part in the trips to Asia where they willingly or unwillingly took part in match fixing. You feel sorry for fans who paid their money to watch a match whose outcome had been decided long back. You feel sorry for the fans back home who were waiting with bated breath to get the results of the Warriors on tour, unknowing that the boys were playing mind games.
How it had to happen to our beloved Warriors and become one of the greatest sporting disappointments since time immemorial in the country and region nobody knows. The issue has become topical, more than before after Zifa announced the suspension from national duty of about 80 players who took turns to go to Asia. And the arrest of former Zifa CEO Henrietta Rushwaya for her alleged role in the whole Asiagate fiasco just can’t get people tired of talking about match fixing and the Warriors, and most importantly, which way now?
Soccer fans just can’t get their heads around it. How did it happen? What would be the consequences? And most importantly would Zimbabwean football ever recover from it?
While there were conflicting statements during the week on the number of players who have been suspended, Zifa president Cuthbert Dube clarified the issue on Thursday in a press statement, saying all players fingered had been suspended from national duty until they are cleared by the committee appointed to deal with the issue.
Nonetheless, the blanket suspension on players, which followed the suspension of board members who also travelled to Asia during the questionable times, does not seem just, taking into account that a number of coaches were fingered in the report compiled by the Ndumiso Gumede led committee and some actually confirmed coaching to lose matches, but they have not been affected by the suspension. It appears like selective application of justice to some extent.
The meeting that resolved to act on Asiagate was held in Harare on 31 January chaired by president Dube with Board Member Finance Brigadier General Elliot Kasu, Board Member Competitions Bennedict Moyo,Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Mashingaidze and Warriors coach Norman Mapeza.
The meeting resolved that: 1. The head coach should come up with a consolidated report for the 2012 campaign, which will review Afcon 2012, Cosafa Women and Cosafa Under-20.
2. The head coach was given benchmarks which he should achieve for the Afcon 2013 and World Cup 2014.
3. The board directed the head coach to exclude from future call-ups all players fingered in the Asiagate scandal until they have been cleared by the Independent Ad-hoc Investigations Committee. The committee will make the decision to either suspend, ban or use the law enforcement to punish those found guilty. Those who own up and are cleared will be able to play for the national team if called up.
4. The board members asked the head coach to organise for the friendlies, in February, June, August and November. The first two dates are taken up by competitive games so those can be disregarded but the other two need fixtures.
5. It was resolved that any player called to play for the national team should be playing actively for their clubs, wearing first team jerseys.
6. The review of the technical teams will be done this week.
What it means is that the coaches will exclude the best players in the preliminary qualifiers for the 2013 Afcon against Burundi at the end of the month. The likes of Thomas Sweswe, Ovidy Karuru, Khama Billiart, Edward Sadomba, Gilbert Mapemba, Willard Katsande, Daniel Vheremu, Cuthbert Malajila, Method Mwanjali, Zhaimu Jambo, Oscar Machapa, Energy Murambadoro and Kingstone Nkata are all not eligible for selection, leaving the country basically with no ‘Warriors’.
While that can be argued, some believe the same players failed to qualify for the 2012 Afcon finals, so their suspension will give room to new and committed players who might take us to the finals in South Africa next year, but that remains to be seen. Germany-based Knowledge Musona and the likes of Vusa Nyoni, Noel Kaseke, Tapuwa Kapini and Onesimore Bhasera remain just a few of the seasoned campaigners who can be called into the Warriors squad to try and reignite the fire.
However, one thing for sure, something had to be done as remedial action and punishment for those who participated in match fixing, pocketed the money and never bothered to report such things to anyone back home. The players obviously had little room to revolt as they were enjoying the rewards and “doing national duty”, but they should have at least whispered to some authority somewhere that they are forced to lose games while on national duty so that they do not become accomplices to the crime being allegedly committed by Zifa officials and coaches.
Did Zifa rush their decision to suspend the players before the Ethics committee got down into business? Will we rise from the ashes? How long will that take us if all the players are banned from the national team set up? These are some of the pertinent questions that are dominating the football debate.
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