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Miriam Sibanda

Sikhumbuzo Moyo Senior Sports Reporter
NEWLY elected Zimbabwe Women Football boss Mirriam Sibanda says her board is keen to know what happened to the lucrative Marange Resources sponsorship package for women’s football.There have been concerns over the $3 million package that the diamonds mining company unveiled during a ceremony that was also attended by the chief patron of the Mighty Warriors, President Mugabe, in 2012.

The package, according to details then, would see the diamond company funding the national league, the Under-20 national team and the Mighty Warriors.

However, two years down the line, there is a veil of secrecy on how the money was used by the previous executive led by disposed boss Mavis Gumbo whose tenure was characterised by total devotion to the Mighty Warriors while ignoring the local league which provided those players.

Speaking at the unveiling ceremony in 2012, Marange Resources chief executive officer Obert Moyo said: “As part of our corporate social responsibility we have decided to sponsor the Mighty Warriors, the Under-20 team, women’s national league, cricket which has returned to test cricket and a golf tournament as well as two other sporting disciplines which we are yet to identify.

“There was no need to sponsor starting from the top where there is nothing to feed, so we decided to sponsor the Under-20 national team and the national league so that they feed the national team.”

While clubs played and completed their league games in 2012, the leadership failed to award them the prize money and last season, the whole year ended without a ball being kicked despite numerous regional and international trips by the Mighty Warriors.

It is against this background that Sibanda feels there is a need to get clarity if women football has to regain the confidence of the corporate world.

“We are still waiting for the Zifa chief executive officer to arrange for the hand-over take-over ceremony and during that occasion, we will naturally be keen to get answers as to what happened to the Marange Resources deal,” said Sibanda during an interview with Chronicle Sport at her offices in Harare on Monday afternoon.

She added: “Corporate backing is very important in sport but the institutions need to get value in return for their backing and until we create such an environment it will be hard for the corporate world to come on-board.”

Sibanda said her board was not going after the previous executive but was simply doing what would be best for the girl child.
“It’s not a case of going after the bygones but just corporate governance”, she said.

Sibanda said her immediate plan now was to make sure there is a running national league which will inturn be a feeder to the Mighty Warriors.

“After our extraordinary meeting with clubs from provinces and national league, we will then be in a position to draw our action plan. There is the NetOne Charity Shield remember which is already running, we need to finish it,” said Sibanda who polled 22 votes to Gumbo’s 20 during last Saturday’s election at the Zifa Village.

Meanwhile, the new women football boss has described as “unfortunate and an insult” claims by her predecessor Gumbo that there were no football structures to talk of when she (Gumbo) came into office in 2010.

“Its really, really not fair to those people who had teams to run and to those people who were in office. There was some activity going on and to start claiming there was nothing is rather an insult. Even as I come in, there were things that did not go right but for me to say there was totally nothing will be unfair to Gumbo,” said the Harare-based businesswoman and journalist.