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Caroline Magenga Harare Bureau
SPORTS, Arts and Culture Minister Andrew Langa is slowly losing patience with the manner in which football is being administered in the country and has warned misfiring Zifa to shape up or face drastic action in 2015.Despite a year that promised so much with the Warriors finishing fourth at the African Nations Championships tournament in Cape Town, Zifa went on a slumber and crashed from one controversy to another with the association’s poor performance highlighted by the senior team’s failure to qualify for the 2015 African Cup of Nations.

While a number of previous Warriors teams had failed to qualify for the Nations Cup, Ian Gorowa’s class of 2014 hit a new low by falling at the preliminary stage following their 3-2 aggregate defeat by lowly Tanzania.

While the Warriors were crashing out of the Nations Cup, Zifa were also weighed down by mounting litigations and where football stakeholders were meant to be regular visitors at Zifa House on 53 Livingstone Avenue, it was the Messenger of Court who became a familiar face as he continued to attach property. Zifa responded to the embarrassing Nations Cup exit by dissolving the Warriors and indicating that they would rebuild the national team using an Under-23 squad.

But it appears the coterie of boobs and blunders, which compromised the governance of football, did not escape Langa’s attention and the Minister has warned that he will act to stop the rot at Zifa in the New Year.

Members of the Chan squad are also still owed money although they had been promised a share of the $250,000 they earned from the competition that was won by Libya.

Langa said he was also not particularly happy to note that there was disharmony within Zifa, arguing that despite the association facing financial challenges, some strides should still have been made to develop the country’s biggest sport.

The Minister gave his stern warning to Zifa while reviewing the 2014 season in which he lauded Sportsperson of the Year and World Boxing Council welterweight champion Charles Manyuchi for his exploits in the ring and pointed to the successful staging of the African Union Sports Council Region 5 Under-20 Youth Games as one of the major highlights of 2014.

Langa has however, been often accused of being  “too lenient’’ with the Zifa board but the Minister maintained that he had taken the right approach in which he gave the association’s leadership, which was elected in March, some time to settle and work closely with the Sport and Recreation Commission to address some of their challenges.

“For this year the major achievements we can boast of include the successful hosting of the Region 5 Games where the country came second and of course the refurbishments that were done in Bulawayo at the sporting facilities which will continue to be used by sportspersons for years to come.

“In boxing we were also made proud by Charles Manyuchi who won the WBC Welterweight championship and other achievements by individuals who represented the country well internationally,’’ Langa said.

Langa however remained hopeful that while they had not recorded as many successes as they would have liked in 2014, with cricket and rugby also among the long list of poorly performing disciplines, the New Year would reap better fortunes.

But the Minister acknowledged that government has not done enough to invest in sport and lamented the small allocation that his Ministry received from Treasury, which he felt hamstrung the operations of the national associations.

“It should be worth noting though that we were working on a shoe-string budget because only $100,000 was earmarked for associations in the ministry and it was too small a cake to share across the associations.

“On the shortcomings I’d say our biggest disappointment has been Zifa . . . we didn’t do well particularly our national soccer team that failed to make any mark at all this year.

“To say the least I’m very worried and concerned about the squabbles taking place there (at Zifa) because they’re not developmental or healthy to the growth of soccer in the country. Though financial constraints were also key to some of these issues there’re also developments that should still have taken place,” said Langa.

Zifa chief executive Jonathan Mashingaidze has been in the eye of the storm all year for varying reasons.

If he was not engaging in nasty fallout with some board members notably association vice-president Omega Sibanda, board member finance Bernard Gwarada and Women’s Soccer League boss Miriam Sibanda, Mashingaidze was being blamed for misleading his board and the country on a doomed 2017 Nations Cup bid.

Zifa also saw Fifa equipment being attached by the Messenger of Court after former communications manager Nicolette Dhlamini-Moyo secured a writ to attach property at both the Zifa Village and Zifa House after winning a Labour Court case against the association. Apart from warning of drastic action against Zifa, Langa also reiterated his threat to revamp the Sports Commission by appointing a new board which he reckoned would revamp the supreme sports body.

“I want to ensure that we reconstitute our boards like the SRC and we usher in a new vibrant board that will deliver.

“In the case of Zifa when they were elected we gave them our directives and expectations and through the SRC we’ll review if they’ve adhered to these . . . if not then certainly action will be taken because if they’re failing to deliver then there’s no reason why they should remain there.

“I don’t want to pre-empt much save to say that 2015 will definitely be a different year for the country in as far as sports are concerned,” Langa said.

Whether Langa lives up to his word remains to be seen as the Minister had in June also announced that he had fired the SRC board led by Joseph James only for the leadership to be granted another day in office. James however, later resigned on his own volition and veteran athletics administrator Edward Siwela who had been his deputy took over as Sports Commission chairman.

The current Commission board was appointed in February 2013 by former Education, Sport, Arts and Culture Minister David Coltart.