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THE biggest challenge in leading big organisations is pleasing everyone, yet doing the right thing is always the best option. The story of the week was undoubtedly the announcement by Highlanders that they had settled for 49-year-old Bongani Mafu as their man to lead the technical team and therefore start the process of taking the country’s oldest football club back to its place among the stars.

Mafu was never at any point the frontrunner for the hot seat, as some 63 year-old Scottish national based in the UK, Desmond Donaldson Bulpin, who we gather was even engaged by the club and had committed himself to the Bulawayo giants.

However, it is said that Mafu was still to play a role even if Bulpin was to come down from his base in the UK, as he was earmarked for the assistant coach post, but things took a dramatic turn when the board came in and after deliberations with the executive, it was felt hiring an expatriate would be expensive for the club.

It is when you follow such processes at the club closely that you realise Highlanders are lucky to have a magnanimous chairman. Those in the know claim chairman Peter Dube and his executive were of the feeling that Mafu would start as assistant and understudy Bulpin, but were convinced otherwise by the board but never at any time did we get the executive showing any sign of discomfort in announcing Mafu as their main man.

There was no reason to feel defeated for Dube and his executive because Highlanders are a community club where collective decisions carry the day, and to me, that was no sign of weakness, but a sign of strong leadership with a clear conscience that decisions are made for the betterment of the club and not for individual glory.

I have heard word on the streets that the board, led by chairman Mgcini Nkolomi bullied the executive into settling for Mafu, something which Dube, nonetheless, dispelled at the unveiling of the former Zimbabwe Saints coach last week. But then, on the other hand, you then realise that there are issues that Highlanders members have to sort out, issues of clear cut roles of the board and executive so that no one runs into the lane of the other, and if that running into the lane of the other happens more often, it then means there is one body that is not necessary in the organisation.

You then go further to interrogate why an executive that is voted in by club members, answerable for the results on the field of play and the balance sheet come end of the financial year, has to be “whipped into line” as it were, by a board that is appointed by the same executive, but that is a story for another day.

I raise these issues not because I think there is something wrong with the choice of the head coach, no. In fact, If I had my own team, I would have hired the guy a long time ago because I believe he has the qualities to compete competitively in the Premiership, but I raise the issues so that those who are truly Highlanders at heart can take a closer look at the organisational management structure of the club, which in some instances, seems to present two centres of power.

I had an informative chat with a club life member who to me, appeared happy with the scenario of having the board and executive, and is his words he said; “People used to complain that the board is not doing anything when the executive gets out of line and then some people had to tell the board that it is constitutionally empowered to whip the executive into line and that was when the board started acting tough and getting involved more seriously than before when it was just ceremonial. Now we get some people complaining that the board is causing confusion, so what do people really want?”

Ideally, the executive runs the club on daily basis and the board “supervises” or plays an advisory role, but the demands of football keep changing as the game gets modernised by each passing day and that would suggest Highlanders need to fine tune their organisational structure to meet the demands and trends of today’s football business model.

After everything has been said and done, it is now time for the Highlanders family to close the chapter of a bad season, close the chapter of hunting for a coach and start marching forward as a united body.

In the next few days, the assistants and team manager will be announced, as the executive said it would give the coach a chance to come up with names as well, and the duty of club members and supporters, including former players, is to rally behind who ever has been given a chance to lead the club.

There are over a thousand former players at Highlanders and surely not all of them can have an active role at the club in as far as coaching is concerned, but they all have a role in being club ambassadors and preaching the gospel of oneness, and like the days when they were playing football, supporting the man with the ball, who in this case would be Mafu and his assistants.

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