By Jefferson Ndhlovu

The Zimbabwe national team that flew into the Zambian capital Lusaka, on Sunday  for the week two match in group H against Zambia’s Chipolopolo have been found in an embarrassing storm of suspected ritual/voodoo activities during the match against Botswana.

The Warriors play Zambia at the National Heroes Stadium on the 19th of November at 6pm Zambian time.

But its the events on the evening of 15th November at the National Sports Stadium in Harare that many observed and have been confirmed by players who have opted to remain anonymous for fear of victimization.

Prior to the match, as per the norm. The dressing rooms for both playing teams are supposed to be accessible to accredited officials. Strange, the visitors tors were welcoming to have their dressing room to be accessed. It is the host nation that blocked access to the stadium.

It has since been included in match report has been sent to CAF by the match commissioner and referee.

This scandal did not end in the dressing room as the archaic, or is it stone age theories rared its ugly face in the course of the match. As tye ritual continued to performed throughout the match.

Even the respected national newspaper, The Herald that generally should be protecting the national association could not hide its displeasure as the respected Sports Editor of the Herald Robson Sharuko went all out to splash the story on the back pages of the national newspaper.

Players who spoke to this writer say, there was a strange activity even before the team arrived at the stadium. But this were so openly done that the voodoo man did his thing that was meant to ensure Zimbabwe scored and won the match and Botswana was meant never to score.

Seemingly, it worked half-way and could not work the other way. True to the wish Botswana could not find the net. But so did the host nation.

Coach Joey Antipas, who is supposed to be the head of that technical bench just pretended like it was business as usual.

Clearly, this kind of action is unacceptable as it kills the mindset of players who are suppose to perform to their abilities. Could this be reason why a section of the contingent of British based boys who the association fought hard to get passports for was stopped from coming. That decision of stopping the was arrived at immediately after the Zimbabwean government had acceded to the demands of Zifa.

We hope the authorities will look into this unsportsmanship behavior by the technical team of Zimbabwe national team.