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Sikhumbuzo Moyo, Senior Sports Reporter
A convicted match fixer has made sensational claims that the scourge is still rampant in Africa due to poverty and has called for the protection of whistleblowers for it to be curtailed.

Zambian footballer Nchimunya Mweetwa, who was convicted for match fixing in Finland and banned by Fifa for three years, told Chronicle Sport that match fixing was like cancer and usually starts on a small scale through players receiving “small tokens” of appreciation.

Mweetwa is now an ambassador for Safe Sport, a movement trying to make football safe for every athlete.

“In Africa, because of poverty we are vulnerable to such vices and all we need to do is try and educate our players that you can still say no and excel in your career. We should not rush to get rich,” said Mweetwa.

“Match fixing is more like cancer; the only way to reduce it is to put in place policies that will help reduce or probably end it. Increase awareness campaigns and then try to stop it because it is happening and we cannot run away from it; it is happening in our sport.

“It’s just a matter of time before one is caught. It starts from little things like stealing a few coins from your mum’s purse, but one day you will get caught, that’s how match fixing is,” he said.

He called on African football federations to emulate their European counterparts by setting up structures that make it easy to detect and eliminate match manipulation.

“It has not been totally eradicated in Africa. If you look at what the Europeans are doing, they have gathered resources to try and combat match fixing, but in Africa we shy away from the fact that it’s happening and people who blow the whistle lose their jobs. We are not doing enough as Africans, but we can do it, we can stop this vice, we need to protect whistleblowers,” said Mweetwa.

Fifa has a zero-tolerance approach towards match manipulation. Fifa’s Early Warning System (EWS) was founded in 2005 with the aim of ensuring the integrity of football worldwide.

This state-of-the-art system helps monitor Fifa competitions by identifying irregular activity on the sports betting market and exposing potential match manipulation.

In addition, the Fifa Integrity Initiative, launched in 2012, supports all 211 member associations and focuses on five main areas: prevention, detection, intelligence-gathering, investigation and sanctions.

Fifa has an expert, in-house match integrity team that analyses and assists member associations and confederations on request, and helps them to establish structures and processes for fighting match manipulation. — @skhumoyo2000.