Bosso urged to 'Reform or die!'

HIGHLANDERS members tomorrow meet at their club house to fulfil a constitutional requirement to hold  an annual general meeting. But their  agenda uses  the same template year in and year out.

Members will listen to the chairman and treasurer's reports as well as that of the board chairman, deliberate on it briefly and then adopt it. In between the reports there will be other issues that will be discussed but unlike in previous years, these deliberations have of late been reduced to mere talk shows.

The club faces imminent collapse if it does not change the way it does things given the changing football environment.

Members who will attend tomorrow's meeting need to deliberate and come up with concrete resolutions that help the club grow and move with the changing times.

Tomorrow's meeting must tackle in detail the issue of the proposed "new look Highlanders" that was left hanging last year. The new look Highlanders was in line with the Caf and Fifa endorsed club licensing system which Bosso needs to embrace. Members will recall that a committee was put in place and it was chaired by board member Elkannah Dube to come up with a new document, more of a constitutional review document that embraced the new global traits.

The committee did its work and produced what is believed to be a working document which sources say was then presented to the board.

It must be remembered that when Dube addressed members at the mid season review meeting last year, he made it clear that their thrust was to have all positions contested for this year in line with the club licensing system.

In order to have a proper document, Dube's committee asked for an extension of a month to spruce up the document before members deliberated on it.

This publication understands that Dube's committee met its end of the bargain and presented their document to the relevant club board members who were then supposed to call for an extra ordinary review meeting as per agreement so that members would then go through the document, make changes where necessary and then endorse it.

Dube made it clear that if endorsed, all five executive committee positions will become contestable this year which would have seen members voting for chairperson, vice chairperson and four other members of the board who would occupy various portfolios in the executive committee.

This was being done in line with club licensing which literally does away with the issue of secretary general, treasurer and things like that because most of the duties will be done by a qualified secretariat headed by a chief executive officer.

It is sad to note that despite the Dube committee doing its work as mandated, some people in the board deliberately sat on the draft document and chose not to call for the meeting that would have then discussed the document and perhaps endorsed it.

The reasons for that are very clear, some board members fear losing their positions.

A snippet of the proposed document has a cultural body which it called the Heritage and Legacy Council, the body which shall consist of the club president and six other elders over 65 years of age and with proven 30 plus years' membership and service to the club.

"The Heritage and Legacy Council shall be responsible for the passing on of the club's values and ethos to the next generation of club administrators. After every congress, the club president assisted by members of the Heritage and Legacy Council shall swear in the newly elected club directorate.

"The club directorate is enjoined to meet the Heritage and Legacy Council at least once every year to brief the council about their plans and to receive moral guidance on the same," reads part of the new document.

It is clear therefore that had the proposed changes been effected, a number of present board members could have left the executive.

When members meet tomorrow, they must unequivocally demand to know why that meeting was not called because members had resolved to meet after a month in July last year. Who from the executive or board sat on the document and denied members the opportunity to map the way forward on how Highlanders should be led?

The other key issue that has to be tackled tomorrow is the requirement by football motherbody Zifa that all office bearers must have a minimum of five years proven football experience. This is so because for one to sit in the Zifa executive committee, that requirement is a must and naturally it must cascade downwards to its members.

Hate it or love it, this is the way to go and Highlanders must reform its structures to meet those requirements now or face the humiliation of not having a representation at the highest level of football administration. No amount of anger against the requirement will stop the wheels of change. Bosso must move with the times, painfully as it might be, or face imminent isolation and eventually death.

This business of turning annual general meetings into mere talk shows must stop. People need to articulate issues of importance as the very survival of this great club is at stake.