Those who wear the smart green Zifa blazer and dozens of players are among those who are said to have walked the crooked path in Asia in return for wads of the greenback. Match-fixing is a sin in football – it is unforgivable. It is a betrayal to the nation and it is taking for granted the fans, who sing their voices hoarse at stadiums.
It is commendable that the architects of the Asiagate scandal have decided to group the players and administrators that travelled to those tainted games into passive, active and hyperactive participants. They all walked the crooked path but their punishment should be different.There is already talk of a life ban if found guilty — a sound bite to take the heat off. If this is true, we feel sorry for the young players whose careers are likely to end before they begin.
We feel sorry for young players such as Ovidy Karuru, Hardlife Mafundi, Cliff Sekete, Rex Mabeza, Augustine Mbara, Khama Billiat and Willard Katsande. The football authorities should send a clear message to the would-be offenders, but should mete out different punishment to those implicated, in the event they are found guilty.
If it is possible to feel anything beyond contempt for the protagonists of a betting scandal that hit the country like the Chiadzwa diamond rush, then Billiat is the tragic figure at the heart of the tale.
At the age of 20, Billiat has managed to defy his poor background growing up in Mufakose and used talents to earn a living and put bread and butter on his father Mustaff’s table. We also feel sorry for Milton Makopa, growing up in Gweru’s hard ghetto of Mtapa and managing to be signed by Dynamos. Just when you thought his career was blooming, comes Asiagate.
Khama signed for South Africa’s Ajax Cape Town just three months after arriving at CAPS United from Aces Academy. Here, we thought, was a young man destined for greatness. We look forward to a decade or more in his presence and imagine his feats to come.
If the allegations are proven —and it is hard to imagine any other outcome — at the very least, his reputation would be in shreds before the end of his career. And this shows the degree of malevolence at the heart of professional football in Zimbabwe. They did this to him in months, not years.
They got their hooks into him as a baby, at a time when he would have had few confidants in the dressing room, few colleagues he could have gone to for guidance. These men, his team-mates, were meant to look after him; instead they corrupted him, blackened his soul and diminished his talent. These men should be banned.
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