FAZ president Andrew Kamanga has disclosed that FIFA will be sending a delegation to Zambia on a fact finding mission in the aftermath of aborted annual general meeting on April 27, 2024.
Featuring on Supersport’s flagship show, Soccer Africa on Thursday night, Kamanga said FIFA had indicated that they would head to Zambia to assess the situation that led to the indefinite postponement of the annual general meeting after two non-members obtained an injunction to halt the congress.
“As we speak today, the injunction has since been taken out of court and FIFA indicated last week, they are sending a mission to come on a fact finding mission to understand exactly what happened,” Kamanga said.
The FAZ chief said he would not answer for FIFA whether Zambia was closer to having a Normalisation Committee or not but was confident that the circumstances were different from where such punishments were imposed.
“In this case, it is quite a new phenomenon because we are dealing with third parties. It is almost like we are now moving away from your typical government interference to now get to a point where now even a guy on the street as long as they have got the capacity can go and stop a congress. I think the same happened in Kenya, these are non-government officials,” he said.
“As far as government is concerned, they are not the ones involved, it is third parties, so this is where now this is becoming more interesting, we will see how it will play out.”
He added: “I can’t answer for FIFA, but what I know from my experience sitting on the FIFA Governance, Audit and Compliance Committee we are the ones who obviously evaluate these types of cases. But what typically motivates the installation of the Normalisation Committee is when there is failure by the executive to function, unlike in our case which obviously is a third party issue, so there is always a difference.”
Kamanga said the inability to hold the AGM as directed by FIFA remained problematic for Zambia.
“The underlying issues still remain the directive and the violation that we did not proceed with the congress,” he said.
Kamanga said that he never imagined that he would ever be arrested on a football matter for alleged criminal offences.
“A lot has happened in Zambia in the last one month in Zambia. We had two interesting cases, one is a criminal one where myself, the general secretary (Reuben Kamanga) and two club officials who had gone to the Africa Cup were jointly arrested,” he said.
“That is why the matter is yet to come up in court so beyond that I won’t be able to comment otherwise I will be cited for contempt.”
Kamanga says his biggest legacy has been constitutional reforms that have revolutionized Zambian football.
He said that the FAZ constitution had been aligned with the FIFA statutes including slashing tenure of office from a limitless format to three terms.
