MBABANE: The much loved soccer team, Mbabane Swallows is back to Square One. Efforts to seek a financial rescue by transferring the club back to the company registered by its late director, Victor Gamedze have been rebuffed. Princess Lungile, the widow of Gamedze on whom club supporters were banking on to rescue the club from financial pressure declined to accept it back.
The Princess says she will only accept the team if it is debt free. This put paid to hopes that peace and stability would quickly return to the League Defending Champions who only a few weeks sailed at the top of the log and looked almost certain to retain the MTN Cup. Even so, they are still a favourite second place at the top of the first round MTN log.
Speaking ahead of a crisis meeting summoned by the Premier League of Eswatini (PLE), Princess told the Sports Show on Radio Eswatini that she had tried to help the club before and was disappointed. She said after the death of her husband, she had responded to pleas to rescue the club that her had incorporated into a company. She said when she checked the club’s registration status, she discovered it was no longer recognized as a company but had been re-registered at the Premier League as an association. Despite that, she had raised money to clear the club’s debts and institute management arrangements that steered the club to win the League, the Ngwenyama Cup and proceed to the Group stages of the CAF tournament that year.
Also see https://today.co.sz/2024/11/21/mbabane-swallows-reins-transfer-to-princess-lungile-today/
But Mbabane Swallows is a people’s club, one of the major national soccer legends and one of the oldest in the Eswatini Soccer League. Managing the balance of internal rivalries within clubs that are run as loose associations is an art that requires time and flair for that kind of politics. The Princess had stepped out of the club’s management after the usual rivalries emerged, with factions demanding the club was restored to its good old ways.
But soccer is an expensive game. It costs money, lots of it to keep a soccer club running. Princess Lungile estimated that it cost a minimum of E8 million a year just to keep the club running. Investment to buy new players requires the club to dip into its pocket for extra money. Managing money is also a specialist skill. When she first came to the club, she says found only E1000 in the club bank account with expenses running at E45,000 per month and a debt of E600,000 for the club’s earlier campaign in CAF tournaments.
The financial troubles that first brought her into the club have since returned and hounded the new management. The Club has not been able to pay its players who have taken it to arbitrators. But money troubles appear to be just one of the club’s troubles. Renewed internal rivalries also wreak havoc, with competing factions said to have extended their reach – some factions even interfering with players, influencing them to boycott games. On Monday afternoon the club President Absalom Ngwenya called on detractors to stop disturbing the players.
However, once Princess Lungile declined to accept responsibility for the Club, Swallows flew into limbo. That, made it a national issue and a major concern to the Premier Soccer League which has contractual obligations to manage a successful season to the satisfaction of its sponsors. The PLE quickly stepped in to avert crisis. On Monday it brought the Mbabane Swallows management committee which had tried unsuccessfully to hand over the club. It also called the Princess Lungile section which had declined to accept the club to an emergency meeting to offer the peace pipe.
At the end of that meeting, it was announced that Swallows management would revert to the management committee under acting President Absalom Ngwenya. Mduduzi Hlophe who represented Princess Lungile at the meeting was however conciliatory, describing the talks as fruitful in tones that typify the disagreements at Swallows as a family dispute to which all family members are committed to resolve.
Club President Mr. Ngwenya and Club Chairman Welile Mabuza accepted to resume management of the club while PLE chairman, Polycarp Dlamini was satisfied with a very happy outcome.
While the club’s management continues to talk, focus now reverts to the field where Swallows postponed a date Royal Leopard and prepare to meet with Nsingizini Hotspurs this week. Jm/today/4.12.20
