THE Zimbabwe senior national football team, The Warriors, are on the cusp of qualifying for the Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) finals next year in Morocco.
With only two matches left to play in their qualifying group, the team only needs a point to make the finals. This is a major achievement for a team forced to play all its three home fixtures away from home because Zimbabwe does not have a single stadium that meets requirements set by the Confederation of African Football (Caf) and Federation of International Football (Fifa).
This is a national disgrace. The fact that there is hardly any audible national outcry about this outrage shows the passive acquiescence of a people who have come to terms with the destruction and squalor that surrounds them.
Football infrastructure has been allowed to decay leaving only decrepit stadiums with primitive facilities. If the national teams and top clubs cannot play international fixtures at home because of ancient stadiums and poor facilities, the situation in schools and communities can only be imagined.
Zimbabweans have been through hell as the economy, and all else, have been degraded. That there is not a single stadium in a country of international standard is only one example of utter failure of a ruling elite with a pathological sense of entitlement.
Football is the most popular sport in Zimbabwe and the rest of the world. One of the few joys left in Zimbabwe is football fans watching their national team compete against other African nations. There is a callous indifference to the misery being inflicted on millions of football fans.
This indifference is not surprising. The ruling elite does not care because there is no political price to pay. Therein lies the problem. In a democracy politicians are responsive to the needs and wants of citizens to win votes in elections.
There are no free and fair elections in Zimbabwe. The ruling party believes its mandate is derived from the liberation struggle. Remember the words of the late President Robert Mugabe in 2008 when he said, “What was won by a bullet cannot be erased by a pen”.
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The so-called Second Republic fully subscribes to this doctrine of the primacy of the bullet over the pen. In the first election of the current regime in 2018 six innocent souls were gunned down by soldiers in Harare city centre. The presence of international media and election observers did not deter the regime from sending a strong message about its source of legitimacy.
The election in 2023 – the worst ever held in terms of electoral malpractice- put paid to any lingering forlorn hopes of a new dawn.
The Warriors have become a team of homeless nomads. In three qualifying home matches for AfCon 2025 and Fifa World Cup in 2026 they played Cameroon in Kenya, Lesotho in South Africa and Nigeria in Rwanda.
There are many more matches in November and in 2025 in which The Warriors will play on foreign soil away from their adoring fans. They will fly the national flag and sing the anthem in empty foreign stadiums. It is not difficult to imagine how dispiriting this is .The optics of it all are awful.
Yet despite all the adversity the national team is expected to deliver. Coaches and players pay the price for failure. Most of those who govern the nation have never played sport at any serious level.
They do not understand that teams use home advantage to win most of the points required to qualify for tournaments. They do not think about the financial implications of not playing at home. The loss of gate receipts at stadiums and sponsorships.
This is not the first time those in authority have acted to undermine football in Zimbabwe. Not long ago Zimbabwe was suspended by Fifer from competing in club and national international matches for political interference in the running of the Zimbabwe Football Association (Zifa).
There is a Fifer rule that national associations like Zia must be run by officials elected by enfranchised members of its affiliates. The powers that be in Harare opted for defiance. As a result, The Warriors were not able to play in qualifying matches for Falcon finals played early this year in Ivory Coast.
This defiance was needless. There was the usual posturing by some politicians and bureaucrats as if defying Fifer was part of a revolutionary struggle against western imperialism.
That livelihoods and careers of players and coaches were at stake was of no concern to these reprobates, who live off the state. Fans were denied the pleasure of watching not only the national team, but clubs play in continental competitions.
There is also another example of how politicians are indifferent to the interests of football loving Zimbabweans. In 2000 Caf awarded Zimbabwe the rights to host AfCon finals. Nations awarded rights to host big sports tournaments are required to submit written guarantees in a prescribed format on matters pertaining to, among others, finance, security and accessibility of event to people from all nations.
The late President Robert Mugabe refused to accede to this request. He deemed it beneath his dignity to grant a request made by the then president of Caf, Issa Hayatoo, who was not a head of state. The tournament was held in Nigeria.
If truth be told, those who have ruled Zimbabwe for 44 years have never invested in sport. They have not done anything substantive to build sport infrastructure in communities and schools where development begins. As a result Zimbabwe has massively underachieved in sport.
Two examples of this underachievement suffice to make the point. Zimbabwe football senior and junior national teams have never won any Caf tournaments. The same goes at club level. No black athlete has won a medal at the Olympic Games since 1980.
The only exception was the late Hope Mandizha, who was in the women’s hockey team that remarkably worn gold in Moscow in 1980.
Surely the regime cannot claim any credit for that. The current Minister of Sport, Kirsty Coventry, the most decorated Olympian in Africa, achieved this feat through individual endeavour.
If this government wants to change course and do something substantive for sport, the first thing it must do is build stadiums. Bring The Warriors back home.
Dumbutshena, a dual citizen of Zimbabwe and South Africa, was a political journalist when Zimbabwe attained independence in 1980. He worked as deputy editor of the Zimbabwe Times, which was banned by the internal settlement government led by the late Bishop Abel Muzorewa in 1979. He worked for the South African Morning Newspaper Group whose titles included the now defunct Rand Daily Mail and Sunday Times. He was at that time a stringer for the BBC programme Focus on Africa.
