Zifa to present paper at match-fixing workshop

The event starts on Friday evening and ends on Sunday.

This was confirmed last night by Nhemachena.

“It’s an honour to be invited to the Integrity in Sport Workshop which will be the first one to be held within Southern Africa. It is being co-ordinated by Cosafa and Interpol. Obviously we will share our experiences from Asiagate with our colleagues, we hope to tap in from what they have gone through too,” said Nhemachena.

The weekend workshop is for English speaking countries under Cosafa which are Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. It is part of the Interpol/Fifa Training, Education and Prevention initiative.

Michael Ragg, head of Interpol’s Integrity in Sport unit, Ralf Mutschke, the director of Fifa’s security division and Detlev Zenglein from the international body’s Early Warning System programme will all attend the workshop.

Among the participants will be players’ representatives, referees, betting regulators and law enforcement agents. The whole idea behind the workshop is to improve awareness and understanding of corruption in football, the strategies used by its perpetrators and the methods to recognise, resist and report them.

Nhemachena said they were excited about travelling to SA where they would get a global view of match-fixing and an insight on how syndicates operate.

Zimbabwe was chosen to present a paper as they became the first country in Southern Africa to be publicly embroiled in match-fixing allegations in 2007. This was after this paper published a story on allegations that players were being paid to lose matches in Asia and Europe.

It was not until 2010 that the SRC eventually forced the new Cuthbert Dube administration to act. An investigation committee was put in place and discovered that more than 100 players and officials had undertaken trips to Asia and Europe in matches allegedly organised by betting syndicates.
Zifa is alleged to have been prejudiced of over $1,2 million from the matches.

The country’s ratings on the Fifa/Coca-Cola rankings plummeted which meant the Warriors could not get opportunities to play the continent’s top countries in friendly matches even for World Cup preparatory matches.

Although South Africa is one of Zimbabwe’s neihgbouring countries, the Warriors played just one friendly match against South Africa and another against Zambia.

Former Zifa chief executive officer Henrietta Rushwaya and several other employees who include programmes officer Jonathan Musavengana were fired after being fingered in the scandal.

Zifa’s chief executive officer Jonathan Mashingaidze welcomed the country’s invitation to present a paper on match-fixing.

“We have had this problem going on for five years. Investigations are on-going, the sooner this chapter is closed the better. Football lost big time and we hope soon it will be a closed chapter.

“Obviously with first hand experience, we have something to share with the region. We will also learn a thing or two from their experiences,” said Mashingaidze.

Zimbabwe was the most affected with national teams and Monomotapa suspected to have been involved in match-fixing.

Zifa will be represented by Mashingaidze, board member responsible for finance Elliot Kasu, legal representative Ralph Maganga, vice-president Ndumiso Gumede and PSL chief executive officer Kennedy Ndebele.