Zifa boss lashing out a Caf, Fifa is probably not the cleverest idea

Zimbabwe Football Association (Zifa) Acting President Gift Banda has come out guns blazing against the Confederation of African Football (Caf).

This is after football’s governing body told Zifa they did not recognise him and his executive. They further told Banda and his executive not to use its funds in the local body’s bank accounts for as long as the country remained banned by the world governing body Fifa.

Zimbabwe were banned by Fifa after the government, through the Sports and Recreation Commission(SRC), unilaterally suspended Felton Kamambo. Kamambo would later be recalled by the Zifa Council, in an election that Caf says it will not recognise.

After saying he desired no confrontation with Caf, Banda was quoted by the Standard Sport newspaper as saying, “For CAF to respond to a letter, which was not written to them in the manner that they did means they have already taken sides.”

And then to Fifa, he sent a missive, “We are still waiting for a response from FIFA, but we also feel that FIFA should stop engaging people who are constitutionally removed from Zimbabwe football.”

If you sit on the side where he stands, it may sound correct, but given there were no ifs, buts and maybes outside the conditions of readmission for Zimbabwe, having a go at the people from whom you are seeking favour.

It reminds us of when Youth, Sport, Arts and Recreation Minister Kirsty Coventry would say all sorts of things to Fifa, the Council of Southern Africa Football Associations (Cosafa) and the International Cricket Council (ICC) from her Twitter count.

Banda, like Coventry, in getting himself on record for such performative accusations and prescriptions gives him very little room for deniability. Such pronouncements should be limited to activists, and as the man heading what Fifa sees as an illegal setup, he is best served to do his diplomacy in the background.

Fifa does not need Zimbabwe to be involved in the game. While they would like it back because every market must be cornered, Cosafa, Caf and Fifa are moving forward with the global agenda without Zimbabwe. Other nations will move past Zimbabwe and become more important partners for its development, while the teapot-shaped country continues to engage in obsessive navel-gazing.

Perhaps it is the late President Robert Mugabe’s effect on many of us. He tended to do a lot of his negotiations on podiums. Back then, it got Zimbabwe disengaged from the international community.

And now the result is the same for football as Zimbabwe fiddles, under the misguided believe it has all the time in the world.

And in case they accuse us of siding with Kamambo, well, the Zdravko Logarusic affair alone was enough to have him fired like normal countries do.

Without a strongman to force the hands of peoople.