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Robson Sharuko Senior Sports Editor
ZIFA chief executive Jonathan Mashingaidze has launched a witch hunt using familiar tactics to try and intimidated his bosses after a group of disgruntled board members savaged the way he has been running the association’s key secretariat portfolio in the past year.An explosive memorandum drafted by some concerned board members, was highly critical of Mashingaidze and exposed the rot that has crept into a national organisation they claim was being weighed down by poor governance systems, lack of transparency and serious divisions within its leadership.
The memorandum was sent to ZIFA president Cuthbert Dube and his deputy, Omega Sibanda, last week and claimed the country’s national football leadership has been split into camps and noted, “with growing concern, the poor governance, lack of transparency, lack of unity of purpose and double standards that prevail in the running of the ZIFA board”.
They claimed that a number of board members had been reduced into mere stooges, since they were elected into office in March last year, and were being sidelined from everything related to the administration of the game.
Mashingaidze claimed the board members had been allowed by the presidium to usurp the powers of the board and dress himself in their robes without their approval, and to “freely manipulate football statues to settle undeclared, and often imagined, personal vendettas against board members.”
The memorandum was leaked to The Herald at the weekend and its publication, in this newspaper on Wednesday, bringing to the public the challenges that are weighing down ZIFA, appears to have angered Mashingaidze who responded with familiar bulldozing tactics to try and intimidate the board members.
The ZIFA chief executive wrote an e-mail to the board members, which they have again been leaked to The Herald, on Wednesday.
“The Zimbabwe Football Association saw an article in ‘The Herald’ of Wednesday 21st January 2015, titled ‘Is This The Worst Football Association In The World?” written by Mr Robson Sharuko and attributed to the ZIFA Board,” Mashingaidze wrote in his email.
“Kindly confirm if you are part to the article to enable the Association to appraise the ZIFA President, Assembly and FIFA. “
Why Mashingaidze brings FIFA, in what is clearly an internal issue that has nothing to do with the world governing body, exposes his tactics of always trying to use the Zurich-based organisation to intimidate and silence his critics.
Mashingaidze, though, did not launch a similar witch hunt, among the ZIFA board members, when a circular he prepared on January 1 this year, was also leaked and published in this newspaper on Tuesday.
The ZIFA chief executive used that circular, circulated to the ZIFA board members, to label Francis Zimunya and his group, who are fiercely lobbying for the dissolution of the association’s dysfunctional leadership, as a bunch of “vampires and criminals.”
But, what is interesting, from the two correspondences penned by Mashingaidze is that they use, or rather abuse FIFA, a favourite weapon of the ZIFA chief executive when he feels that he has been pushed against the wall.
“It is sad to note that some individuals with criminal records have conspired to lead a relentless campaign to unseat a democratically elected football leadership under Dr Cuthbert Dube,” Mashingaidze wrote in his circular.
“The group, led by Mr Francis Nyamutsamba (Zimunya), is pushing for the removal of the current Board and Assembly and are pressurising a number of offices to come to their aid.
“A petition was put together last December and ghost (petitioners) were put on the document. This group of sycophants has also been colluding with some members of the family of football and FIFA are currently monitoring the development from a distance.”
A ZIFA board member yesterday told The Herald that it was interesting that Mashingaidze, rather than addressing issues raised in the memorandum, if he saw a copy given that it wasn’t addressed to him, was trying to use the good name of Fifa to intimidate those who had questioned his management style.
“Why would Fifa be interested in issues between an association and its employee and you can see that there is no mention of Cosafa, or Caf, that they are also watching the developments because the tactic is to bring in Fifa and strike fear and, in the process, frighten some of us and discredit the issues that were raised?” said a ZIFA board member, who preferred not to be named.
“By bringing in Fifa’s name, the message he is trying to send is that remember the last time when there were issues here, about 10 or so years ago, there were some people like Zimunya who ended up being suspended but even that suspension was an endorsement, by Fifa, of a decision that was taken here at national level.
“There is a huge difference in the issues at play because we are not fighting to take control of the association but to highlight some issues to our two leaders.
“That is why we clearly said that this was not a petition but a memorandum and those issues have to be addressed, whether they have found their way into the public domain, or they had remained within our corridors.
“Surely, when you ask for a board meeting, to be held in the early part of February to address some concerns, you can’t be deemed to be violating football statutes, to the extent that the ZIFA CEO threatens us with possible Fifa sanctions, because these are issues about governance and even Fifa and Caf hold their executive meetings.
“We are not part of the Zimunya group and we are also disappointed that they are being given so much attention when we, the people who were duly elected to run football in this country, are not getting such attention despite all the concerns that we have on the table.
“The interesting thing is that while our CEO is busy trying to ask board members whether they were part of the memorandum, which was not even directed to him, it’s a document whose contents have already been discussed between some of the board members and the people whom that correspondence was addressed to, which is our leadership.”
The ZIFA board member said it was also interesting that while a number of documents have been leaked, and found their way into the local media in the past, Mashingaidze didn’t react the way he did when the memorandum, which was very critical of him, found itself into the public domain.
“Only on Tuesday we had his circular being published in The Herald, where he called some people vampires, criminals and sycophants, but because it was generally favourable to his agenda, he didn’t go around asking us how this ended up in the newspaper,” said the ZIFA board member.
“We don’t agree with Zimunya and his group but that kind of language, calling them criminals, vampires and sycophants, was not what you expect from a high-ranking employee of a public organisation like ours.
“We have had our challenges, however, we feel Zimunya and his group are not the right people who can question us but, even then, there is a diplomatic way of saying it without sounding like we are an organisation that has no responsibility to prospective sponsors who will look at that language and say how can we be partners of such people.”
Online Reporter