Are our referees being bought to swing matches in favour of certain clubs or that they are just not good enough?
Yes, it has been rumoured that referees have always been deciding results in the Zifa Northern Region and that the likes of Monomotapa, Gunners, Douglas Warriors, Lengthens, Herentals, and even Simba Bhora, owe their promotion into the Premiership partly to the referees.
The only clubs from the region said to have been genuinely promoted — over the years — without assistance from referees are Zimbabwe National Army sides Black Rhinos, and Cranborne Bullets as well as Chegutu Pirates.
In fact, it was Harare United director Regis Dzenga who in 2002 sounded a warning of the corruption involving referees after he threatened to withdraw his team from the region following open activities of match fixing.
These activities in the Northern Region have like - a tradition - been passed over from one generation of referees to the other and events in the fight for the championship between MWOS and Scottland bear testimony that the trend is continuing.
Although there is no proof whatsoever that matches are being bought or sold in the Premiership, it would be dishonest to dismiss the fact that what started off as 'small' in the Northern Region has blown far beyond estimations.
What, however, we do not know is whether it was a genuine mistake that Cecil Gwezera awarded Simba Bhora a penalty for an incident that happened outside the penalty area against Highlanders?
We also do not know whether Gwezera's suspension by the Zimbabwe Soccer Referees Committee was because he made a mistake or that he deliberately awarded that penalty.
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Neither do we know whether it was true that referee Matthew Dingo was really hit hard by missiles that he could not continue the remaining two minutes of the game between Karoi United and Scottland that was at 1-1.
What we know for sure is that Karoi United accused the referee of faking injury in order to blame them for the abandonment of the game so that Scottland would be awarded the match and the three points.
What all this tells is that we have a problem within our soccer referee system and that problem is not as minor as we see it but big enough to destroy the Zimbabwean game.
Surely, we might lie to ourselves that our refereeing standards have gone down but the truth is that our referees know exactly what they are supposed to do but have been blinded by their penchant for bribery money.
Unless - of course - somebody wants to tell us that the training that our referees are receiving is different from that of those from Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa, Malawi, Namibia, and Zambia, and then, we can agree, that their standards have lowered.
After all, all the Cosafa region referees receive the same training manual from Felix Tangawarima, a Zimbabwean who heads the Fifa referees office in southern Africa and nobody can say Zimbabwe referees are so dull to understand what is in the books.
However, we cannot paint every Zimbabwean referee with the same brush because we still have a few who live by the book and those need to be protected by removing the wolves from amongst them.
What we need is to face the corruption problem whose route is so woven and complicated to the extent that we need to dismantle the whole system from the appointing authority down to the referees themselves.
All those who have been in authority for too many years need to go or be reassigned while at the same time the system of delegating duties needs to be changed or re-looked at.
Surely, referees should not be married to clubs because that is where corruption starts and instead match officials should not be allowed to handle notable matches involving the same team.
There has been suggestions that referees should also not handle matches within their area or close by but should be made to travel longer distances to officiate for example from Kariba to Zvishavane.
Those assigned matches too should not be announced long in advance but instead should be informed the morning of match day or the evening before.
The starting point, though, should be for the Zifa Normalisation Committee to institute a thorough investigation on what exactly is going on behind the scenes in their own referees department.
All senior officials and referees implicated should be banned for life while members of Zifa involved must be exposed - We know they are there in the circle.
* For your comments, views, and suggestions mkariati@gmail.com or WhatsApp on 071 0774 596.
