Hope Chizuzu
The Normalization Committee will today handover the reins to the Nqobile Magwizi and his executive, to begin the rebuilding of the football walls of Jerusalem, amidst the resistance of predictable murmurs from the Sanballat and Tobiah brigade, The Page reports.
Lincoln Mutasa, not the best of governors of the football kingdom, and his Rose Mugadza and Nyasha Sanyamandwe team, today close their chapter, marked with all sorts of shoot and miss episodes, which began in July 2023.
But that is not important because the football Nehemiah, and his cohorts of Kenny Ndebele, Thomas Marambanyika, Wadza Mukura, Brighton Ushendibaba, Tafadzwa Benza, Kudzi Kadzombe and Alice Zeuru (ummm) have Jerusalem to rebuild.
The Sanballat and Tobiah brigade, fronted by Twine Phiri and Phelimon Machana whose application to CAS, seeks to torpedo the builders of the walls of football Jerusalem.
Wheeling in Wicknell Chivhayo and Tino Machakaire with claims they may have influenced the Saturday election, is a message pregnant with attempts to nullify the decision of the assembly, which decision was clear that the football MPs, want a departure from the desolating sacrilege, that hamstrung the game since 2018.
The application, high on emotions and low on detail, assumes that Chivhayo’s promise to buy Magwizi a top of the range car and moola in USD10m spread for four years – (the duration of the term), “stole” the election from them.
Phiri and Machana, believe without Chivhayo’s promised benevolence, they could have both been elected Zifa president.
That is solid marketplace madness, but then again, The Page, is not CAS, who will listen to the application.
The facts of the matter is a road side water melon.
It is neither tasty not succulent as Chivhayo is not a member of Zifa nor is he, by extension, a person clothed with any authority to legally affect football arithmetic.
While FIFA hold a member association accountable for anything football that happens in a member association, the FA can not surely predict or control what private citizens, like Chivhayo, do with their money or thoughts.
Magwizi, a smart football newbie, who will experience for the first time, levers of power tomorrow, could not have known what Machakaire wants to do with his money or thoughts.
Machakaire is not government. He is not even a sports minister and to try and drag himself into a blood bath election, the world witnessed on Saturday, is pure smoke and mirrors stuff, which must not be tolerated in the very least.
Whilst Phiri and Machana saw the smoke of election influence by Chivhayo and Machakaire, who were never anywhere near the playing field, they chose to ignore what Walter Magaya did on the eve of the election.
Magaya, a robust and passionate football person, a run away favourite for the post, before his disqualification, had 72 of the 78 councillors at his Yadah hotel, to thank them for showing confidence and encouraging them to back Magwizi in the Saturday poll.
He was open, if it can be assumed, that the councillors back Magwizi for the president’s position.
If such an open call, with all the influence he wielded on the councillors, was not considered an invitation to vote for Magwizi, which 61 of them did, how then are Chivhayo and Machakaire culpable?
Well, this is clearly not a serious matter meriting our attention. It is something else, more so when Machana, to his credit, was the first one to congratulate Magwizi on his landslide approval, post election.
So, what changed between Saturday and now? Is it the fear that indeed Chivhayo will avail the executive car to Magwizi and offer several other vehicles for FA use and the USD10m to boot?
Or that Machakaire loves football enough that he could encourage others of his ilk, to support the Magwizi vision for football renaissance, and in the process oil football and complete the rebuilding of the collapsed walls, as in the times of Nehemiah?
Off course, the post war or election period, always offer such kind of palatial madness and barbs.
Zimbabwe has seen enough of that even in the national polls with Nelson Chamisa prominent with utopian applications to High Court, disputing election results.
We have seen enough debates by lawyers, some brought to prominence for their dramatic verbosity in court, yet others lost any lingering doubts about their competence or lack of it.
But this application to CAS made ahead of today handover takeover, is just hollow and snobbish.
Yet, Magwizi must take the opportunity today to extinguish any lingering doubts that he is the Nehemiah of the game and that councillors, from the 2018 assembly, should indeed to be allowed all the time they lost to COVID-19🦠😷, suspension and NC tenancy, to continue for the duration of the Exco.
The FIFA, were brilliant in deciding that the Exco be subjected to an election as they can’t operate with the coat of authority from the assembly.
In fact, the Exco aren’t members of assembly and are ordinarily elected at the end, to enable them to seek authority to act on behalf of the FA.
Whether or not the NC talks about the issue or may announce FIFA’s position in respect of that, Magwizi has to lay the marker and get to serious business. Today.
The secretariat needs fixing. Too many square pegs in round holes. National teams needs the guidance of the general managers. The referees require hammer and nails.
The medical team require mid wifery. These and other issues can not be deflected away from the top of to-do-lists, by a frivolous CAS application that can’t cure the cancer of collapse of the football ecosystem.
No matter how large the fingers are, they can never be bigger than the nostrils.
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