Excerpts of Fani's speech at the BFA general assembly

| Friday September 17, 2010 00:00

We have several meetings with the Botswana National Sports Council and the Minister of Youth, Sport and Culture. The NEC was concerned that besides the negative effect the constituency tournament was having on mainstream football, FIFA could take steps against BFA for what is perceived as violation of the FIFA statutes. Government differed with BFA as to whether the constituency tournament programme violated the BFA statutes.

The NEC submitted a paper setting out its proposal of how constituency football could be restructured. The main thrust of the proposal was the constituency tournament should be handed to BFA and used as a development league under the Regional Football Association. The NEC further proposed that, to achieve the progamme's objective of identifying and nurturing talent, youth in relation to the programme, should be defined in sport context.

You might be aware that the constituency tournament has now been extended to include volleyball and netball. Initially, other sports codes, such as netball, were keen to have constituency football extended... Since the introduction of constituency tournaments, both volleyball and netball have realised the negative impact that the programme was having on their efforts to develop their respective games. Together with netball, volleyball and with the assistance of BNSC, the NEC is involved in discussion with government to pursue the restructuring of the constituency football tournaments.

I would like to add that, in the intervening period, FIFA has pronounced that the constituency tournaments breaches FIFA statutes. The view of FIFA has been communicated to government. The NEC is fearful that if the matter is not resolved quickly, FIFA might impose sanctions against BFA. In fact the latest correspondence from FIFA leaves the NEC in no doubt that FIFA will take action against the BFA if the situation is not resolved.