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Sikhumbuzo Moyo, Senior Sports Reporter
SUSPENDED Zifa vice-president Gift Banda has torn into his colleagues’ attempt to shut him out of the system by embarking on what he calls an exercise in futility.

In his sworn affidavit to the Zifa Appeals Committee at Friday’s condonation application by the national association, Banda said he was puzzled Zifa didn’t know its judicial bodies operated as a court and there was no provision for an application to be made after the committee has already made a pronouncement.

He said the move by Zifa to appeal an Appeals Committee ruling was just another example of clutching at straws.

Banda has twice won his case and twice Zifa has refused to abide by the rulings that have cleared him.

He said the condonation application was therefore an incompetent and futile attempt by the association to continue enjoying the attention of the Appeals Committee.

Through his lawyer Munyaradzi Nzarayapenga of Dube-Banda, Nzarayapenga and Partners, Banda also rubbished a resolution by the Zifa executive committee that appointed chief executive officer Joseph Mamutse as its representative in the matter which it says was reached on June 6, 2020.

Banda said since he had been cleared by the disciplinary committee, he was therefore supposed to be part of the executive committee resolution in terms of Article 33 of the Zifa constitution.

“I am unaware of the 21-day notice given for such a meeting. Most notably I never exercised my right to vote on this subject as I ought to have. This resolution is therefore defective and of no consequence and the meeting on which this application is based is therefore a nullity,” said Banda.

He said as far as he was concerned, in his capacity as the second in charge at Zifa and based on the disciplinary committee’s ruling, he was not part of the meeting that appointed Mamutse to represent the association in the matter.

He also argued that the authority to represent Zifa on the strength of a resolution purporting to be from the executive committee was defective and his exclusion from the purported meeting renders it a legal nullity.

Banda also challenged the association’s defence that it could not avail proof of appeal fees payment because the receipt was in possession of its accountant, Liberty Mateveke, who could not get into town because of the national lockdown as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We are expected to understand that of all the applicant’s employees, this one failed to get into town from his home. We are further expected to understand that he goes to his home with receipts, including appeal fees receipts, particularly the one in question. We are also expected to understand that if anything should require that he is not present, from either home or office, the totality of proof of monetary receipts will go missing, crucially together with him.

“It’s even more stranger that there is no word from Liberty Mateveke himself. There is nothing to even suggest that this Liberty Mateveke exists. It is just Joseph Mamutse’s word against reason. Unless this Liberty Mateveke is still trying to make it into the CBD then nothing explains the absence of a supporting affidavit from him,” noted Banda.

He said the Appeals Committee had therefore before it, a spurious document purporting to be a receipt, a person purporting to be the custodian of receipts, who also purportedly failed to get into town from an unknown location where it mattered most.

There was also no explanation, argued Banda, as to what he was doing with the receipt at home and why he is the only person allowed to be in custody of the receipts.

Stung by the defendant’s outline, the Zifa lawyer, who last week survived sacking from the association on accusations of siding with Banda, requested for a postponement of the hearing so that he could prepare his own response.

The Appeals Committee, headed by Stead Kachere, granted his request and postponed the matter to July 6.