Hope Chizuzu
High court judge, Justice Tawanda Chitapi heard Walter Magaya’s appeal application against Zifa election disqualification, last week and reserved the ruling to January 23, effectively pausing the election, and crucially altering the ultimate decisions by the councillors, The Page argues.
Chitapi determination was made easy by monumental failures by both Advocate Thabani Mpofu, for the applicant and Prof Lovemore Madhuku, for the defendant, whose performances in court were high sounding nothing, leaving the issue of strategic ambiguity, as expressed in the five O levels or its equivalence poser, unexplored and untouched.
I find it scholarly and entertaining that Madhuku equates the issue of equivalence to ECD or G4 when the matter is clearly the lack of clarity on the clause. He feared to dare the pistol of the football genre.
Mpofu on the other hand thinks Zifa is an SRC affiliate which it is not, smartly evading the poison pool. Such comfortable frivolity and strategic ambiguity, creates a content lack that is not there.
When legal dinosaurs collide, in the public arena, as it was in court on Friday, it is often the debri that has better evidence of the reason for the fight. Was there much on Friday?
We were left with enough of nothing.
What was clear was that both sets of lawyers, thoroughly learned and experienced as Adv Mpofu and Prof Madhuku, the football arena belongs to a special species, where lawyers are merely, stewards of tenancy and tenets.
The Page has it on good authority that Justice Chitapi was left no wiser by the submissions and that a decision would be handed, one that cures the disease of clause ambiguity.
But that too, will be coming in the face of developments such as that the sports economics determines.
The Page understands that Magaya and Temba Mliswa will get the relief sought.
Behind the scenes negotiations involving the NC, FIFA and football legal experts have made headway that sees elections moved to next month with all candidates involved.
Calls and meetings over the same have been progressively positive, while the Gift Banda and Benjani CAS case, awaits determination.
The Page has established that while all this is playing out, the Zifa assembly members, have rightfully made a decision on the president, who, crucially will not be Magaya.
“Magaya presidency is now a difficult proposition for football. We have discovered that while he was a good and strong candidate, he has too much baggage and enemies, that our football don’t need at this transitional period.
“Football is bigger and more important than individuals and all this election noise is simply because haasikudiwa.
“And we can’t pretend otherwise. As football, for now, we have parked that bus,” an influential football councillor told The Page.
The new dynamics, following changes to the electoral dates and circumstances have effectively reduced this election to a selection pavilion, in which the staid Phelimon Machana and newbie Nqobile Magwizi, are front runners.
Benjani and Twine Phiri are bright darkhorses for the presidency. The changed circumstances in which councillors have been instrumental is such that they require a credible election, whose results mirror what they want for football at this difficult time post FIFA suspension.
Mliswa, while not as distant as Makwinji Soma in appeal, who is just on course to getting no single vote, and Martin Kweza, a certified Gupta, are certainly in the clay category for the presidency.
No miracle is expected there.
The vice presidency will be disrupted decisively by the return of Banda, whose disqualification had given the councillors headaches as none of Peter Dube, Omega Sibanda and Kenny Ndebele have average acceptance rates.
If there is an agreement about the three vice president candidates, it is that, given an other option, not already available, the councillors will not vote for them.
Banda is a definite shoe-in for vice president, but until Tuesday, this remains a supermarket of ideas. Mavis Gumbo and Wadza Mukura in the women category, are protagonists.
In all this the councillors remains KEY, while the FIFA will cough extra fees for Lincoln Mutasa and co at NC for the deliberately invidious situation, in which January 31 closes, before elections are held.
When you see a person eating aerial yams,(kutanha dzemumuti) know that he is allowing for pumpkins to cool and sit.
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