According to reports from South Africa, Hlungwane is set to appear before a Safa review committee for erratic refereeing and could be put in the freezer for no less than three weeks.
The news that the 35-year-old whistleman is about to be tossed over hot coals for bad refereeing in a league match between Orlando Pirates and Jomo Cosmos is a sad indictment on Zifa, who decided to dump the local referees for foreign ones.
The dumping of local referees in the Diamonds Cup will probably rank in domestic football history as one of the worst betrayals by Zifa on its referees. It was an ill-advised move by the men who wear green blazers as it is based on mere allegations.
While there has been many allegations over the years of referees receiving money to throw away matches, not a single referee has been caught on the wrong side.
Considering the concept that was used by Zifa to deny the 68 men who sit on the referees panel a chance to make a living, Hlungwane should not have handled the Mbada Diamonds Cup semi-final duel.
This is a clear indication of double standards by Zifa. a simple check by the football association, would have revealed that Hlungwane is facing bad officiating allegations just as the Zimbabwean referees.
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This means that the foreign referees are not whiter than white and they should have solved the problem by suspending the local referees suspected of throwing away matches.
The move to freeze out all the local referees from the Mbada Diamonds Cup semi finals was a wrong move as referees are professionals who, like every worker, have a right to make a living out of their skills.
The sooner that Zifa knows there is nothing special about foreign referees, the better as it will go a long way in protecting our football and our match officials in particular.
And Hlungwane — Zifa’s choice to referee for the Mbada Diamonds Cup semi-final, could be in trouble after he incorrectly awarded Orlando Pirates a penalty against Jomo Cosmos a fortnight ago.
Buccaneers ace Rudolph Bester successfully duped the match official after going down unchallenged in the Ezenkosi area, with Julio Leal’s men successfully converting from the spot to earn a draw in Port Elizabeth.
The contact had looked minimal at best, and video replays clearly showed alleged suspect Lehlohonolo Nonyane had not touched the Pirates man. It is understood that Hlungwane is set to appear before a Safa review committee as the football association crackdown on rotten apples in their game.
We are not saying that our local referees are the best under the sun as there are also bad apples, which should be removed, but to impose a blanket ban on all of them was wrong. The move by Zifa does not augur well with Fifa’s tenets of fair play.
Cup matches come with a lot for money for the referees assigned to handle them than league matches and to deny the local referees a chance to put bread on their tables was inhuman of Zifa.
We will not bother you with Hlungwane’s red card farce at Barbourfields when he red carded Daniel Veremu, only to overturn it later after realising that it was a first yellow card. We will also not bother you with several complaints against the referee in the South Africa premiership.
This illustrates that there are no perfect referees. We applaud the local referees for rescinding their decision to down whistles over the unfair labour practice by Zifa and deciding to handle the Castle Lager matches on Wednesday.
However, the opera ain’t over until the fat lady sings and we urge the 68 referees to fight against the importation of labour. We also urge Ngoni Bouyd — the boss of the referees — to descend hard on the bad referees in the association.
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