Motsepe reveals the truth about the removal of the Zambian reform proposal from the CAF Congress agenda

August 11 - CAF President Patrice Motsepe has claimed the Zambian FA withdrew a proposal to restructure the confederation's executive committee and cut operational costs after reform plans were not met. on the agenda of the general assembly in Arusha, Tanzania.

“There was a notice that was put out by Zambia,” Motsepe said. "Some of the issues that Kamanga (Andrew Kamanga, president of the Zambia Federation) was raising there were very good issues because those are issues that I talked about: the need to cut costs, and in his paper he talks about the need to restructure the exco. It is our duty to engage on these issues."

The Football Association of Zambia (FAZ) and Kamanga had formulated a proposal to reform the CAF executive committee with the aim of reducing the confederation's operational costs and providing CAF with a leadership more representative of the Africa as a whole.

However, the proposal was removed from the agenda by the body's general secretary, Veron Mosengo-Omba. At first, the proposal was included in the draft agenda.

Motsepe's claim that the Zambians withdrew their agenda item from the CAF Congress is actually a liberal version of the sequence of events as the Zambians repeatedly attempted to include their proposal, even writing directly to Motsepe asking him to reinstate the agenda item and bring the debate to the CAF Congress last week.

It is at this point that Motsepe seems to have stepped in wielding the iron fist of democracy.

“I asked the President of Zambia to come to me. They came to me and we all agreed that we were going to withdraw this article,” Motsepe said.

See: African FIFA apparatchiks block CAF reform proposal from being circulated to member associations

Kamanga's proposal was to reduce the number of CAF executive committee members as well as rethink the composition with a more equal representation of the six zonal unions in Africa. FAZ wrote a letter to Motsepe after the proposal was not circulated to CAF members, saying the CAF secretariat 'has exceeded its mandate by excluding our mandate'. Motsepe did not respond to the letter.

"CAF sought legal advice because the advice from our lawyers was that if you want to change CAF's statutes, you have to go through the process," Motsepe explained. This goes against Zambia's claim that their proposal was well within the time frame and scope of submitting an agenda item, and even quoted the statutes in doing so.

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"I thought what they wanted to do was have a discussion and not necessarily ask for the bylaws to be changed. I have no doubt in my mind that many articles of the CAF statutes."

The Zambian letter to Motsepe made it clear that this was a point for debate, although the obvious outcome of this debate could have been a decision by the African football body to push for reform. Motsepe and the CAF secretariat have clearly denied this opportunity to African football.

CAF insiders, who asked not to be named for fear of recrimination, say the concerns of the CAF secretariat had very little to do with the impact on the statutes but rather with the recomposition of the CAF. political hierarchy in Africa and the greater representation - and most likely unity - through the African confederation that the proposal brought as it struggled to put football for the whole continent ahead of power and privilege for a few.

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