THE Zimbabwe Football Association (Zifa) says it will disclose this week evidence showing how last year’s Africa Cup of Nations qualifier between Zimbabwe and Angola was fixed.
BY MICHAEL MADYIRA
The move is likely to open a fresh chapter of another match-fixing scandal and would see the association detailing how match fixers infiltrated the national team as well as naming players who are alleged to have been paid to throw the match.
Zimbabwe surrendered a seemingly healthy 3-1 home lead to succumb to a 2-0 defeat in Luanda and failed to qualify for the just-ended continental football contest in South Africa.
The match was settled in the opening six minutes with lanky forward Manucho grabbing a brace in a space of three minutes to kill the Warriors’ Afcon dream.
Immediately after the Angola debacle, Zifa president Cuthbert Dube made sensational claims that the match was fixed but was quickly dismissed by some as an attempt to divert attention from the association’s problems.
Dube on Wednesday said they were aware of how a man from Botswana went to Zifa headquarters in Harare and managed to secure a seat in the chartered plane to Angola.
The man is said to have had unlimited access to the team on the plane to Luanda and approached certain players whom he bribed to lose the match.
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Dube could not divulge the identity of the man and players involved but promised to reveal more details this week.
“The Angola match had already been played the day before its scheduled kick-off,” said Dube.
“We know that this man who bribed our players came from Botswana and went to our house of horror (Zifa offices) and purchased a ticket for that trip. The guy was in the same plane as our players and that is where everything happened,” Dube said.
Prior to the Luanda trip, players had been promised US$10 000 each on top of residential stands in Harare’s leafy northern suburbs as incentives for qualifying for the tournament.
“I wonder what amount of money these players were given that could beat the housing stands we had promised them,” Dube said.
The Zifa boss christened Singaporean bookmaker Wilson Raj Perumal, who is believed to be the mastermind of the Asiagate match-fixing scam, as “Raj the Rat.”
Dube conceded they were still battling to conclude their drive to clean up the local game blighted by match-fixing.
