Africa-Press – Namibia. MTC spokesperson Tim Ekandjo has added fuel to a raging fire with his recent remarks on the state of football in the country, says Hilda Basson Namundjebo who chaired the defunct Fifa Normalisation Committee for Namibia.
Also, former Brave Warriors coach Ricardo Mannetti, arguably Namibia’s most successful national side gaffer, was not fired by the Normalisation Committee (NC) as Ekandjo stated in his speech at Saturday’s Namibia Annual Sport Awards, chiefly made possible by MTC.
While she “agreed with the sum of his argument” regarding the poor football leadership in the country, Ekandjo should have been more tactful in his approach to the issue, which has the football fraternity divided, she said.
“I texted Tim and told him that some of the statements were grandiose and incorrect. It appeared very much like he was positioning an agenda. The speech was clear as daylight about his preferences,” Basson Namundjebo said in an exclusive interview with The Namibian Sport yesterday.
“I don’t think it’s appropriate to use that platform to raise the issues he did in the manner that he did. If he really wants to help, he has enough traction through being part of a committed sponsor to call a meeting with the parties involved and try to find a solution,” she advised.
“All he succeeded in doing was add fuel to the fire. There’s no solution, just more animosity.”
Ekandjo said the nation is “hurt and grossly disappointed by the rotten developments in our football” which have left the Namibian game lagging about 15 years behind its contemporaries.
He lambasted the current Namibia Football Association (NFA) leadership under the unsteady stewardship of Ranga Haikali, a misfit conduit for the infamous ‘progressive forces’, for the absence of topflight football for nearly two years.
Haikali is engaged in a power struggle with secretary general Franco Cosmos, who has the backing of half the NFA executive. Cosmos was Basson Namundjebo’s deputy on the remedial NC but has since been retained by Haikali.
Ekandjo said the NFA has no plan for the advancement of the country’s most popular code and that their competence was questionable. “It is as if you are allergic to excellence and have become the worst enemy of the game which we all love,” Ekandjo said.
“After almost two years of no football, the so-called ‘progressive forces’ came to the fore with no manifesto and no plan for the game.
“Winning the election was more important to you than winning the game, and hearts and minds of the fans. You have all been toying with the lives of our soccer playing youth, and enough is enough,” Ekandjo charged. FIFA INTERVENTION
Ekandjo has close ties to Johnny Johnson Doëseb, the former chairman of the NFA-expelled Namibia Premier League. He publicised his manifesto at a swanky do before comprehensibly losing at the polls to Haikali last year.
Doëseb is mooted to be plotting a second assault at the coveted NFA presidency seat. “What if these were your own children? We therefore have only one message for you and we hope you act accordingly and stop hiding behind Fifa statutes and regulations when it suits you,” said Ekandjo.
For ease of reference, there was football, albeit briefly, until national Covid-19 regulations forced it into recess. While the MTC NFA Cup resumed and concluded two weeks ago, the Namibia Premier Football League has not.
There are reportedly no funds to do so, with the remaining funds from Fifa originally designated for Covid-19 relief being used to plug costly international assignment deficits and admin costs.
The NFA, which still has no substantive discernible income generating avenue in its 32 years of existence, is forced to host Namibia’s home matches in neighbouring South Africa because of substandard stadiums on home soil.
The facility issue is not an NFA problem as the disintegrating structures traditionally used for international matches – the Sam Nujoma Stadium and Independence Stadium – belong to the City of Windhoek and government respectively.
The current incoherence is very much a recurring NFA Achilles heel. However, it has roots in the previous dysfunctional regime, a fact which Basson Namundjebo said Ekandjo neglected to address.
She rejected suggestions that the NC is to blame for the prevailing conditions. Fifa tasked the NC with transforming the NFA into a structured sustainable organisation and coordinate the electoral process, she said.
“The NC fulfilled its function,” Basson Namundjebo maintains.
She believes that given the unwillingness of the warring factions to iron out their differences “like adults”, another Fifa intervention is necessary.
“Before this thing goes completely of the rails, Fifa should come in. People don’t want to talk to each other. They are angry. It’s unhealthy,” she said. NOT FIRED Regarding Mannetti’s departure, Basson Namundjebo said he opted not stay on despite being offered a new deal.
Mannetti delivered Namibia’s first senior international trophy when winning the 2015 Cosafa Cup. He followed that up with qualification to the 2018 African Nations Championship in Morocco (Chan), where they reached the quarter-finals before bowing out to the hosts. Mannetti then qualified the team to the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations in Egypt before stepping down after the Warriors failed to get past the group phase.
“Mannetti was not fired. His contract came to an end. We made him an offer. He did not want to stay. So, for Tim to say we fired him [Mannetti] is completely false,” she said.
“We had to make a plan for Chan and so we approached Collin Benjamin who had been his [Mannetti’s] assistant. Collin also said he didn’t want the job, which is how we turned to Bobby [Samaria]”.
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