SUSPENDED Zifa board member, Solomon Mugavazi, insists he is innocent but has ruled out appealing against the ban imposed on him, over the Asiagate saga, arguing that it would be hypocritical to fight a process he actually started when initiating a probe into match-fixing three years ago.
The Zifa Northern Region chairman and Monomotapa director, who insists he is clean, was slapped with a five-year ban for his club’s alleged involvement in match-fixing in Malaysia in 2009 where the Premiership side masqueraded as the Warriors on that tour.
Although he initiated the probe into allegations of match-fixing, and even engaged the police on the matter after his team’s trip to Tunisia for a Champions League assignment, the same year, Mugavazi still found himself being slapped with severe sanctions by his fellow board members over the Asiagate scam.
Mugavazi was then serving under the Wellington Nyatanga leadership when he tried to get Zifa to dig deeper into allegations of match-fixing but claimed his club had found no support from the association.
He also sat on the four-member committee led by former Zifa treasurer Gladmore Muzambi which tried to investigate allegations of match-fixing and why the national teams had been travelling to some Asian countries without clearance from the Sport and Recreation Commission.
There had been hope, within the small but closely-knit Monoz family, that their director would be spared of the Zifa sanctions.
A number of the Zifa board’s critics also found it ironic that Mugavazi was handed a lengthy ban, in line with the Justice Ebrahim recommendations, while those that had been found guilty such TP Mazembe forward Darryl Nyandoro (life ban), Ernest Sibanda and Joey Antipas (five years each) had their recommended sanctions downgraded and suspended.
The critics believe that although the brave fight against match-fixing was highly commendable, some of the final pronouncements of punishments by the Zifa board last month seemed to have been influenced by those seeking to settle personal scores.
Despite recommending a five-year ban on him, the Ebrahim committee also acknowledged that Mugavazi’s efforts had helped them a lot in their investigations and for trying to uplift the standards of the game in Zimbabwe through his club.