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Nhlanhla Dube

Allen Khumalo, Sports Reporter
HIGHLANDERS FC officially unveiled Nhlanhla Dube as the club’s substantive chief executive officer at a press conference held at the club’s offices yesterday.

Dube replaces veteran Ndumiso Gumede, who was initially suspended from all football activities by Zifa in November 2016 before his sanction was lifted and he subsequently retired. Secretary-general Emmett Ndlovu has been acting CEO since Gumede’s banishment.

Highlanders acting chairman Modern Ngwenya said Dube had been engaged on a two-year renewable contract.

“He has great experience in football and his history with the club proves that. We believe he is the best person to lead us to Zion. He is not new to the Bosso family and we believe his addition to the club will make a huge difference,” said Ngwenya.

Dube’s duties include the general administration of the club, branding, merchandise design, player and staff contracts, sponsorship sourcing, marketing activities, merchandise sales and fundraising, customer care and public relations, stadium management, creditors and debtor management and staff appointment after making recommendations to the executive committee through the chairman.

Ngwenya scoffed at reports that the Highlanders’ board forced his executive to hire Dube, saying the appointment was done above board.

“May I hasten to say this appointment was done above board. As the acting chairman of Highlanders, I’m responsible for the day-to-day running of the club and I do it in accordance with the constitution governing us. According to Article 22.1 of our constitution, there shall be a CEO who shall be appointed by the executive committee in consultation with the board of directors, who then shall be a full time administrator of the club. So whether we appointed him by head hunting, interviews or by looking at CVs it doesn’t matter. What matters is that we have appointed a new CEO in the form of Dube. We have got the mandate according to the constitution to appoint and we did that accordingly,” said Ngwenya.

“When you are hiring, you don’t give the job to the cheapest, but to the best and in this case we believe and trust that the human resources committee recommended the best candidate considering the qualities of those that had applied. We are not saying that other candidates were not qualified, but we stand guided by the HR committee’s decision and we have no doubt they did a very good job,” he said.

Dube said he was under no illusion that he faces a difficult task at Bosso, as he will be expected to extinguish the club’s ballooning debt hovering close to $1 million.

“I’m very humbled to be appointed CEO of such a big club and I am aware of the task ahead of me. I will do my level best to live up to what I have been appointed to do and ensure that Highlanders as a club is a force to reckon with. Remember that my position as CEO has football content in it. I understand what we want to achieve and that’s creating an academy, making sure that our facilities are user friendly and that we have adequate playing staff,” Dube said.

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