By Simbarashe Namusi
There comes a point when excuses expire.
Zimbabwe’s latest AFCON exit has already been wrapped in familiar language: “bad luck”, “transition”, “learning curves”. It is the same vocabulary that resurfaces every time the Warriors fall short. Convenient. Comforting. And fundamentally dishonest.
Because when failure becomes patterned rather than accidental, responsibility can no longer be deflected downward. And in Zimbabwean football, the buck stops with Zimbabwe Football Association.
The current ZIFA leadership assumed office on a reformist ticket. Transparency. Professionalism. A clean break from the rot that once consumed the game. After Asiagate, supporters were told, this time would be different.
What followed was not renewal but repetition.
Campaign promises spoke of order and modern governance. Delivery has been characterised by inconsistency, opacity, and an absence of institutional memory. Decisions feel ad hoc. Accountability remains selective. Long-term planning is more slogan than strategy. Hope won the election. Inconsistency has defined the administration since.
Nothing symbolises that drift more starkly than the fact that Zimbabwe still has no locally available stadium certified by either Confederation of African Football or FIFA.
The Warriors are perpetual tenants, exiled from home advantage and disconnected from their own supporters. This is not a temporary inconvenience. It is a long-standing failure of football infrastructure stewardship. Home advantage is not cosmetic. It is competitive equity. ZIFA has failed to secure it.
The same lack of conviction is evident in the handling of the national team technical setup. Coaches do not appoint themselves. They are selected, resourced, protected or exposed by the federation.
In the Warriors’ case, the process has often appeared muddled. Selection criteria unclear. Performance benchmarks inconsistently applied. Football philosophy conspicuously absent. When results dip, the coach becomes the lightning rod, often without the protection of institutional clarity. Serious football nations build continuity. Zimbabwe keeps pressing reset.
Perhaps the most corrosive failure, however, has been the relationship between ZIFA and its players.
Allegations of victimisation have become recurrent talking points rather than isolated incidents. From the Munetsi impasse to the Fusire episode, players have increasingly felt that national team selection is conditional rather than professional.
The handling of Tawanda Maswanhise only deepened those concerns. At one point, his passport was reportedly misplaced while he was under national team arrangements, resulting in him missing a crucial qualifier. That is not misfortune. It is administrative negligence. When players feel unsafe professionally, trust collapses.
Compounding this are persistent perceptions and allegations of cliques within camp. National teams thrive on unity. Zimbabwe’s has too often been clouded by whispers of factions, preferential treatment, and inner circles that fracture rather than bind. Whether formally acknowledged or not, these perceptions matter. When players believe the environment is politicised, effort becomes conditional and performance suffers.
Those internal tensions are worsened by ZIFA’s communication culture.
Engagement with stakeholders has been slow, defensive, and frequently dismissive. Statements arrive late, usually after public pressure has already peaked. When they do arrive, they read less like explanations and more like reprimands. Silence has become a tactic. Explanation, when it comes, feels like an afterthought.
Players feel unheard. Supporters feel disrespected. Journalists and partners feel managed rather than engaged. In modern football, communication is not public relations. It is governance. ZIFA has repeatedly misunderstood the difference.
Beyond the senior team, the structural weaknesses deepen. Junior football operates without a clearly defined national pathway. Age-group sides are assembled sporadically, often just ahead of tournaments, with little continuity or long-term tracking of talent.
Women’s football remains episodically supported. Investment surges before competitions and evaporates afterwards. Structures restart instead of maturing. You cannot sustain elite performance on bursts of attention.
By the time the Warriors step onto the pitch, they are often already battling distractions that have nothing to do with football: logistical confusion, welfare uncertainty, internal tension, and avoidable controversy. These are not unlucky coincidences. They are administrative failures. The pitch merely exposes what has already gone wrong off it.
This AFCON exit should not trigger another round of selective scapegoating. Not the coach alone. Not individual players. Not vague appeals to “rebuilding”.
ZIFA must accept primary institutional responsibility. Leadership is not about press statements or campaign slogans. It is about systems that protect players, build unity, communicate honestly, and plan beyond the next fixture.
Until that changes, Zimbabwean football will remain trapped in a familiar loop: hope before tournaments, heartbreak after them, and excuses in between.
The buck has nowhere else to go.
It stops with ZIFA.
Simbarashe Namusi is a peace, leadership and governance scholar as well as media expert. He writes in his personal capacity.