Zimpapers Logo

Mgcini Nkolomi

Sikhumbuzo Moyo Senior Sports Reporter
HIGHLANDERS Football Club life members meet at the clubhouse in Bulawayo today to discuss the club’s ballooning debt. The indaba has been convened following a poor attendance at the club’s mid-year extraordinary general meeting a fortnight ago where no meaningful survival methods were proffered.

Executive chairman Peter Dube, who leads the club on a day to day basis, told a press conference on Thursday that the club’s debt was just over $500 000 while board chairman Mgcini Nkolomi told the same gathering last Friday that the debt was now close to $1 million.

Last week, Nkolomi bemoaned the poor attendance at the mid-year meeting which failed to come up with any meaningful survival methods.

“Our EGM was poorly attended and yet it was meant to define the future of Highlanders football club. The decisions which were supposed to be taken there meant either we survive or we die; we live or we perish but the debate was kind of shallow, it wasn’t engaging,” said Nkolomi.

The meeting agreed to slash membership fees to $5 per year so as to capitalise on numbers.

“We are approaching probably the $1 million mark in terms of our debt, how many of those people will pay the $5? But you have to understand that it is the will of the people, we will engage them, we will not go ahead of their interest (but) we know that this club can wind up anytime if people don’t become serious about this whole thing,” said Nkolomi.

Finance committee chairman Davies Sibanda said Bosso’s survival was now dependent on the magnanimity of its creditors. “We are simply saying to them (life members) it can no longer be business as usual.

We will not mislead them into believing that ayisoze ibulawe, we had great teams like Zimbabwe Saints and many others that fell by the way side and Highlanders has reached such crisis (but) we cannot allow it to fall on our watch,” said Sibanda.

He said painful decisions might have to be taken and that can include decisions that have previously been said to be taboo at Highlanders.

“If they (decisions) are the ones to save Highlanders and keep the family together we might have to do it,” Sibanda said.

This publication is reliably informed that part of the painful decisions involve the floating of shares which the Elkannah Dube led constitutional review committee had said was not an option to consider.

“We agreed as a committee that no one person should own Bosso, even a percentage of it because once that is agreed, it becomes difficult to hedge against cash moguls coming and taking over Highlanders,” Dube said after the mid-year meeting.

Meanwhile, some board members have distanced themselves from today’s meeting.

Board members who spoke on condition of anonymity said it was strange that a meeting to discuss the club’s debt could be convened barely two weeks after a constitutionally arranged gathering was called where issues of such importance could have been discussed.

“Personally I find it strange that someone can have the energy to call for such a meeting when members met and agreed on how the club should move. Surely if things were so grave, the masterminds of this unconstitutional meeting should have raised these issues during the mid-year meeting, I wonder whose idea really this was,” said a board member.

Another board member said he saw no use in convening a meeting whose resolutions would be of no legal value to the club.