Acting Zimbabwe Football Association (ZIFA) president Gift Banda said that all stakeholders should be involved in finding lasting solutions to the challenges bedevilling local football.
Banda was recently installed as the interim chairman after the Sports and Recreation Commission (SRC) suspended ZIFA president Felton Kamambo and some members of his board.
Speaking to The Herald on Monday, Banda said ZIFA had been turned into a fiefdom by a few elite administrators who were shutting out other football stakeholders to protect their selfish interests. Said, Banda:
It’s high time we include everyone in our football. There are some people who felt they were being shut out of our football so we would want everyone to have a say going forward.
Former players, administrators, supporters and all the other key stakeholders should come together for this purpose.
Everyone agrees that there is something wrong with the way our football was being run. We need to get our football back to the factory settings.
It’s not about just playing football without addressing the fundamentals because we will never go anywhere. It doesn’t help to play in tournaments and lose continuously.
We need to address issues via continuous engagements with all the stakeholders so that we become competitive again.
If we involve everyone and push in one direction, we can succeed.
Probably the only people who are afraid to have people around are the ones who are afraid are the ones who know they have been doing things wrongly.
But this board is saying we want inclusivity. We can’t have a situation where we want good and cordial relations with the Government and SRC only when we want money. That’s unfair.