Zimbabwe: Referee hailed for rejecting a bribe

The Zimbabwean football association (ZIFA), commended the nation’s top referee, Norman Matemera for turning down a (USD) $10 000 bribe from Equatorial Guinea’s Desportivo Niefang. The club was working the Togolese match commissioner, Lawson Mawume to reach out to the Zimbabwean referee delegation led by Norman Matemera to influence the result of their decisive CAF Confederation play-off tie against Williamsville Athletic Club of Ivory Coast. The match eventually ended with Desportivo winning 2-1 but failing to progress as they lost 2-0 in the reverse encounter. After the match, the match commissioner and Desportivo dumped the vigilant referees to pay for their meals and transport themselves to the airport.

The 35-year-old Zimbabwean Matemera reported the attempted bribery case to CAF who are expected to take appropriate action to bring the accused to book. Matemera is one of the top officials in Southern Africa (COSAFA) to resist a bribe after South Africa’s Victor Gomes did the same. Here is what the ZIFA official had to say about the issue:

"You must recognize that there are attempts to fix a match, you must resist those attempts and you must report those attempts. In this regard, we feel proud that our referees did just that. It is quite unfortunate that in this case, it involved a match commissioner and it is a situation which makes you wonder who is going to guard the guard when those entrusted to guard are the guilty ones because the match commissioner was the one being used as the go-between in the home team's bribery attempts.But really what Matemera did speaks volumes of our honesty as a country on such issues.The referee reported the matter to CAF and I believe CAF are already seized with it. We believe CAF have adequate machinery to deal with such issues.”  - Gladmore Muzambi, ZIFA Referees Committee Vice-Chairman