MUKWIMA CHILALA writes
TUESDAY 19, 2019 marked exactly three years since Energy Consultant cum soccer administrator Andrew Ndanga Kamanga was elected FAZ president but only declared in early hours of Sunday march 20 to unseat football legend Kalusha Bwalya in a tightly contested election only separated by about 10 votes.
Prior to the election of March 19, 2016, Kamanga was considered an underdog to the mammoth task of defeating Kalu considered to be a legend in the game he has played all his entire life having been introduced to the Zambian soccer scene at very tender age in his teen, playing 30 years as a player and close to two decades in administration.
Kamanga’s soccer administration fully came to the limelight when factions of the football family which attempted to impeach he then FAZ president Kalusha Bwalya, elected him(Kamanga) interim chairman of what was supposed to be an interim FAZ on November 30, 2010 at Inter-Continental Hotel.
However, he received resentment from soccer icon Kalusha and it had to take the intervention of world soccer governing body FIFA who recognized Kalusha as the legitimate FAZ president.
Between November 2010 and March 2016, Kamanga became a regular figure in the media as one to offer alternative leadership and checks and balances to the Kalusha Bwalya led executive forging forces with his long-time ally in veteran soccer administrator Simataa Simataa.
However, he withdrew from the 2012 FAZ election which came in the aftermath of Zambia winning its first and only AfCON trophy a month earlier.
Kamanga could only return to the fore in mid-2015 when he unofficially launched his campaign with a horde of drunken looking slogan chanting supporters clad in his campaign T-shirts during a league game at Woodlands Stadium.
He would later on formally launch his campaign in the same year in which he signalled his intention to stand as FAZ president and mounted a spirited campaign based on a slogan he coined as “SCORE” (Structure of the league, Coaches education, Organisation of the FAZ, Referee education, everything else) which he espoused in his country-wide campaigns.
He promised accountability, transparency and the intention to share part of the proceeds of FIFA’s annual grant with FAZ affiliates.
Kamanga further pledged to introduce a league independent from the FAZ and to restore what he termed as ‘Zambia’s football reputation’.
With the odds heavily stacked against him, Kamanga somehow emerged the winner in what turned out to be a very tight race, getting 163 votes against Bwalya’s 156.
In his victory speech, Kamanga spoke of turning a new page in the Zambia’s soccer history against the backdrop of change and reforms at the world stage and that Zambia would not be spared from these changes.
“My administration will not practice retribution. It will not use this victory to turn our heroes, especially our icon (Kalusha Bwalya) into a villain. That we are promising you, but we are here to uphold and promote FAZ Constitution and FIFA regulations and most of all respect the law of the land, Zambia.
“Ladies and gentlemen, my administration and I take this challenge with a contrived spirit being fully aware of the huge responsibilities that lie on our shoulders. The task ahead is mammoth and requires the collective effort of all those that are involved in this beautiful sport to come forward and develop the football dispensation.
“I therefore invite all stakeholders in football to come forward and join hands with us for one common purpose; to develop and elevate the Zambian football. In the build-up to this election, we traversed this great nation and saw the challenges that beset our football on a daily basis,” Kamanga said.
Three years down the line, having served three quarters of his term, Kamanga has come under scrutiny from his cynics who feel the FAZ president has not really lived up to expectation with Zambia’s back to back failure of qualifying to the Africa Cup of Nations being one of the failures highlighted among some cynics.
But to his credit, Zambia U-20 emerged victorious on the African continent when it successfully hosted the 2017 U-20 AfCON but could however not defend the same title two years later as it failed to qualify to the tournament.
In the three years of Kamanga some coaches have bemoaned the lack of capacity building as there has not been any CAF training for coaches.
But Kamanga boasts of having attained a good number of targets from his score slogan where he is on course to de-linking the Zambia super league slated for August 2019 and has been preaching transparency where he has gone on to invite FIFA forensic auditors to audit Football House books between 2012 and 2017.
It is however the engagement of expatriate Sven Vandebroek where the FAZ chief received a backlash having promised a 5- star coach in his campaigns only to engage what has been termed a “rookie” coach whose separation from FAZ ended in a bitter exchange of words.
The Zambian FA chief has also come under fire for what some of nemesis have accused him of using the association’s ethics committee to thwart what his supposedly opponents with bans and expulsions having banned administrators such as his once upon a time ally, Simataa Simataa, former vice president Richard Kazala with his town mate Blackwell Siwale and further invited censuring Kitwe-based AfriSports proprietor Gabriel Kaunda.
Going into Kamanga’s final year before the elective AGM, only Chingola-based administrators Blackwell Siwale and Konkola Mine police president Gideon Mwenya have shown intention to challenge Kamanga with the former facing an expulsion from football which he continues to contest.
Kamanga’s three years of being at the rudder of FAZ has seen more of explanations and theories than action as can be evidenced in his numerous pronouncements that are yet to come to fruition, such as Chipolopolo bonds, qualification to the AfCON and World Cup tournaments, FAZ transparent audits and hiring of world class coach which all remain to be achieved in one year.