CONGRATULATIONS, again, to All Africa Games bronze medallist Ben Muziyo for winning an Amateur International Boxing Association (AIBA) scholarship at the World Boxing Academy in Talgar, Kazakhastan.
This puts him in good stead to achieve his Olympic dream next year if he excels at the Africa and World championships in Cameroun and Qatar respectively, the remaining qualifiers.
Muziyo was the only boxer out of seven to redeem boxing at the just-ended Congo Brazzaville All Africa Games (AAG). Before the contingent left, national team coach Kennedy Kanyanta was quite upbeat about his charges’ chances of reaping at least three Gold.
But alas, they fell woefully short of expectations. But were they realistically expected to produce podium performances? The answer depends on one’s understanding of what it entails to win the ultimate prize.
On June 20, 15, a piece titled “Does SCZ bear ZBF grudge?” published in this column highlighted the poor funding of programmes to the ZBF.
According to sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, there appeared to be a stand-off between the top brass at the SCZ and ZBF which was hurting boxing and needed urgent intervention by the Sports Minister.
The sources claimed that the ZBF was allegedly being denied funding by the SCZ despite paying the annual affiliation fees to the mother body. “The nation must know the truth because the current situation cannot and should not be allowed to continue,” the sources said.
They said despite showing commitment to develop the sport of boxing, “we still face critical challenges as a result of personal hatred; no support has been rendered to boxing for a very long time…”
They claimed that they were “restricted from using facilities which government bought for boxing like computer scoring machines, two big screens, a laptop and a desk computer.
“These have never been surrendered to the boxers and we do not know where they are since 2012. No viable reason has been given (by SCZ) to date. ZBF is the only federation using manual hand-outs so far.”
Oriental Quarries Boxing Promotions of Lusaka “has since been bailing out ZBF (by paying) K5000.00 annual affiliation fees to SCZ…”
“This is really outrageous (when) you look at the sports budget; boxers do not benefit, though (it) is one among top sports disciplines earmarked for support as medal hopefuls for Zambia at almost every competition they attend,” the sources said.
They wondered why ZBF was being denied grants by SCZ when “government disburses monthly grants to SCZ. We need to interrogate which criteria they (SCZ) use. If ZBF has been paying annual fees to NSCZ since 2012 when the present executive was ushered into office, why does SCZ ignore all requests coming from ZBF?”
The sources further said ZBF had missed important training programmes aimed to upgrade boxers’ skills ahead of the AAG and for previous AIBA boxing ratings, but there was allegedly no support from SCZ.
Another piece titled “SCZ should pull up socks” published on July 25, 2015 focused on the plight of Kanyanta and his team of eight boxers who earlier minted medals at an AAG preparatory tournament in Mozambique who, due to a lack of transport, spent a night in the cold on a bus in Chililabombwe enroute to the Democratic Republic of Congo for another tournament.
According to media reports, ZBF had a beef with the SCZ which had allegedly not done enough, if anything, to arrange transport for the contingent, forcing ZBF to book the boxers on Sonwemo Bus Services of Chingola.
Kanyanta bemoaned the “very cruel” treatment his boxers were subjected to and threatened to resign his position in future because enough was enough. “…the health of these boxers and my own health comes first…it is very cold here.
The boys are complaining…they are psychologically affected by this,” Kanyanta said.
The boxers were expected to fight at 19.00 hours and “here we are, 10:00 hours, clearing at the border.” SCZ general secretary Innocent Chalabesa told journalists then that the bus that was reserved to take the boxers to Lubumbanshi developed a fault before it left Lusaka.
It is clear from the foregoing that the authorities need to urgently address critical matters objectively to reverse the worrisome trend otherwise our boxers will continue to be more of statistics and less of competitors.
Surely, doing things the same way and expecting different results is always going to be a pipe dream.
Comments – mwale.simon@yahoo.co.uk 0966755574/0953