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Fifa to name new Zifa Committee

by Staff reporter
22 Jun 2024 at 06:25hrs | Views
FIFA is set to replace the current leadership of the Zimbabwe Football Association (ZIFA), led by Lincoln Mutasa, with a new Normalisation Committee due to dissatisfaction with the reform process.

The new committee will be unveiled on July 2 and will have a nine-month tenure to complete tasks started by the outgoing team.

ZIFA's chief executive, Yvonne Manwa, stated that they have not received official communication from FIFA yet.

Sources close to ZIFA reveal that FIFA, represented by Solomon Mudege and Gelson Fernandes, is finalizing the new committee's members, with Harare banker Nigel Chanakira possibly being considered to lead.

The outgoing committee, appointed in July 2023, has been criticized for failing to achieve significant progress, leaving ZIFA unprepared for elections and further reforms.


At the time of their appointment their terms of reference included:

 Running the daily affairs of ZIFA

 To restructure the ZIFA administration

 To establish with the help of FIFA, a collaboration agreement between the Ministry of Sport/the SRC and ZIFA, which will define the responsibilities and objectives of each party, including (but not exclusively) on the topic of sexual harassment

 To review the ZIFA statutes and electoral code to ensure their compliance with the FIFA statutes and ensure their adoption by the ZIFA Congress

 To act as an electoral committee in order to organise and conduct elections of a new ZIFA board based on the newly aligned ZIFA Statutes and electoral code and to ensure a proper financial handover to the new ZIFA board''.

The Sports and Recreation Commission have maintained that they are still to sign any MOU with ZIFA as there are still some grey areas, which the country's sport regulatory body will be hoping to iron out with Fernandes and Mudege.

  That the Normalisation Committee are coming to the end of their tenure without having convened an extraordinary meeting with the ZIFA Congress, suggests that a lasting solution to the Zimbabwe crisis remains a pipedream.

FIFA had emphasised the significance of involving Congress in the reform process but somehow, between July 2023 and June 2024, Mutasa found a way to avoid engaging the councillors and instead tried without success to set up a parallel structure fronted by a group that calls itself the Zimbabwe Football Stakeholders forum.


Source - The Herald