18 Jan 2024

Almost two weeks after the domestic football was meant to be back from the festive break, there still seems to be little in sight to that effect as the Botswana Football League (BFL) and Botswana Football Association (BFA) continue to be at loggerheads, with each convinced in its actions such that trying to make head or tail of the situation is complex.

The interim chairman of BFL, Tebogo Sebego traces the beginning of the conflict to sometime after formation of the BFL.

He said that the entity was meant to be autonomous from the BFA and be allowed to run its own affairs, not on behalf of BFA as the latter often states.

“The formation of BFL was to make it an independent company with shareholders that could take decision independently from the BFA,” he said.

To further clarify the relationship between the two, Sebego liked BFL to a son who had matured and left his parents’ home, in this case BFA, to establish his own.

“When he is at his home, he runs its affairs without the dictates of his parents. He is not like that son who still has a room at his parents’ home,” Sebego said.

He pointed out that last year BFA signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) with the chairman of the board, Nicholas Zakhem to reduce teams in the elite league from 16 to 12, but that the agreement did not pass through the shareholders as was supposed to be.

He said that this therefore meant that in signing the agreement, the two overstepped their authority.

 “The MoA was later presented by Zakhem at the AGM last year and the motion was rejected, but he insisted on implementing it, and that is where all the problems started,” he said.

He said that the insistence of the chairman despite the resolution of the assembly raised concerns that he was not driving the interests of the company.

He said that the shareholders then decided to call a special meeting, whose agenda was to remove him and revoke the decision to reduce the teams, but said that the meeting failed because it did not comply with requirements.

“The shareholders went back and reorganized and the second meeting succeeded, but then Zakhem and another board director, Jagdish Shah went to the courts and interdicted the resolutions, which meant that we could not implement them yet until the case was heard,” he said.

Sebego said that while still awaiting the hearing of the case, the directors of the BFL suspended Zakhem and Shah for taking matters of football to the courts of law.

“This effectively meant that Zakhem could no longer be recognised as the chairman, but we were surprised to find that BFA continued to invite him to meetings despite the directors having informed them of his suspension,” he said.

Sebego said that one of the meetings called by BFA to iron out the differences between it, the shareholders and the directors did not go accordingly because they had invited Zakhem as the chairman.

The meeting, he explained, continued between BFA and BFL, but nothing was resolved, which then led to the shareholders deciding to continue with their meeting in Palapye this Saturday.

“The shareholders then decided to stay the league until after the Palapye meeting, and after that meeting we will inform the BFA of resolutions taken.

How they take the decisions, we will see from here,” he said, and concluded that the football mother body seemed to not understand the meaning of autonomy of the BFL.

Efforts to engage BFA president, Maclean Letshwiti failed, but the association on Wednesday evening wrote a press release to indicate that it had provisionally suspended the BFL at an emergency meeting.

The release indicated that by suspending the elite and first division leagues, BFL had gravely violated both the BFA and its own constitutions, which obliged it to run the league on behalf of the BFA.

“The BFL were forewarned on 12 January 2024 that their refusal to reinstate the league may lead to sanctions in terms of the BFA constitution, and the BFL’s refusal to abide by this was in violation of the BFA’s constitution, which expressly requires it to comply with all the decisions and directives of the BFA,” the statement reads in part.

It further indicated that the provisional suspension would continue pending further investigations, and that in the meantime, the BFA and the BFL secretariat would work together to normalise the situation as soon as possible. ENDS