Dear Acting Director General,
Your Sunday beatitudes are surely in order following your appropriately worded cautionary letter to Zifa and indeed all football stakeholders.
See now, even hitherto silent and uninterested main stream media have woken from their measured sleep.
It is important to always hit the right codes, and you did just that.
Matters of constitutional pluralism are high street end products whose value should never be measured in metronomes of emotion.
For that reason, your voice advocating for respect of statutes was brave and correct. Those who have cut corners and slices of rules are now cringing in their hallowed corners.
However, we need to look at crucials first. The constitution is clear that the life of Zimbabwe Football Association Congress is four years and that all affiliates should renew their mandates before expiry in line with their cycle, culminating in the elective Congress at which the executive committee of six including President and his vice are elected. The six will be joined by the chairpersons of Premier Soccer League and Women’s Football to have an eight member executive committee according to the Zifa constitution.
But now the problem is all affiliates have not renewed their status and therefore have lost both their mandate and legitimacy to represent their constituencies.
According to the constitution all affiliates have to subject themselves to vote before the expiry of their terms, something these can not do now because their terms have expired.
In such circumstances, the AGM called for Saturday has no delegates eligible to attend, meaning the meeting can not be properly constituted to deliberate. And SRC must step in with their legal instruments to map the way forward and that is legal.
The failure by Zifa to have an AGM in 2017 further complicated issues because the executive committee too, needed to have subjected themselves to an election before expiry of their term, meaning they too have lost legitimacy to meet. All this can not be done in retrospect, it can only be done before, as the PSL sort to do on March 4.
The PSL too have constitutional problems in their midst. The statutes provides for a 16 team league, yet in 2017, they ran a league of 18. For that to be legal, they needed to have the constitution amended, whose amendment was not done. That too is an illegality and Congress is not clothed with powers of waiver. It has to be done according to to the statutes, which says they have to notify SRC and Fifa on the sections or articles to be amended, why and copies of the proposed amendments.
That will then be subjected to scrutiny with the process involving stakeholders, taking eight months before the amendments can be okayed. Only then can Congress meet to ratify that. And you’re aware, no such notice reached your desk for action and the Fifa Legal Division confirmed no proposal for such an amendment was ever received. So as it stands, the PSL has 16 teams, not 18. This is not my opinion but that is what the constitution says. In football nothing is done in retrospect.
As SRC there is also a matter involving the Nash, Naph and Tertiary who are not members or affiliates of Zifa but sit in assembly by your Act since they’re a multi disciplines organisation by virtue of their existence. Why should they have a casting vote in football mother body, when they can do the same in basketball or netball? Are they not a convenient source of votes for the corrupt? They do not submit to Zifa CEO with regards to catalogue of expectations as do all other affiliates.
As you sit down to map way forward, clear all the hurdles and misinformation that had grown to be the norm. And who should attend the Saturday AGM if there’s need? Will it be delegates of the last elective AGM of March 29 or the Dec 5, 2015? Who will pass the minutes as a true record of proceedings from the 2014 or 2015 because the latter had a different agenda from the former? This is a clear case of withered legitimacy.
Yours in Sport
Hope Chizuzu
