Fresh elections, fifteen years of financial records and the small matter of fixing a national federation. As one of the administrators who was actually in the room when this started, I should probably explain ourselves.
There are certain situations in which having two of something is objectively better than having one. Two kidneys are useful. Two pilots on an international flight are reassuring. Two referees are generally better than one, particularly when one of them has just missed the most obvious travelling violation since James Harden discovered creative accounting with his feet.
Presidents, however, are usually issued one at a time.
Zimbabwean basketball decided to test this theory.
I should probably declare my conflict of interest immediately, because it would be deeply unfair of me to spend the next few thousand words making fun of the people responsible for this mess without mentioning that I am, inconveniently, one of the people responsible for this mess. I am the President of the Matabeleland North Basketball Association, which means I sit in the structures of the Basketball Union of Zimbabwe, and I was physically present at the elective Congress on 15 November 2025 when we somehow managed to begin the day looking for one president and end it with two.
I objected to the eventual arrangement. I said at the meeting that I did not believe what we were doing was constitutional. I raised concerns about aspects of the electoral process itself. I would therefore love to present myself here as the lonely voice of reason, a principled constitutional scholar trapped among barbarians.
Unfortunately, that would be nonsense.
I was still in the room. We collectively allowed it to happen. Nobody handcuffed me to a chair. I did not dramatically resign and walk into the sunset while the national anthem played. I raised my concerns, the meeting continued, we eventually found ourselves with two presidents, and I went home.
So, yes, I was there when we did the stupid thing.
This week the Sports and Recreation Commission effectively told us to go back and do it again, only properly this time.
The SRC has ordered the Basketball Union of Zimbabwe to conduct fresh elections for the presidency. More significantly, it has also announced an independent audit into BUZ’s financial and operational affairs stretching back fifteen years. According to the Commission, the current arrangement of sharing the presidential term is neither supported by the BUZ constitution nor conducive to the long-term development of the association.
On the first point, I agree with them.
On the second, somebody is about to ask Zimbabwean basketball for fifteen years’ worth of receipts.
Godspeed to everyone involved.
The Election That Would Not End
The Basketball Union of Zimbabwe sits above the country’s provincial basketball associations. Those provincial structures participate in Congress and elect the national executive. David Pick came into the 2025 election as President of the Harare Basketball Association. Johnson Shumba came in as one of Zimbabwe basketball’s most experienced administrators. The outgoing national president was Joe Mujuru.
The presidential contest eventually narrowed to Pick and Shumba.
There were ten provincial votes.
The result was 5-5.
So we voted again.
Still 5-5.
Then we voted again.
And again.
I genuinely cannot remember exactly how many times we voted, and I suspect that is partly because human memory has mechanisms for protecting us from traumatic events. What I do remember is that we kept reaching the same result with the determination of a malfunctioning calculator.
Five for Pick. Five for Shumba.
At some point you stop recounting ballots and start wondering whether the number five has developed a personal interest in basketball administration.
There were also concerns among several of us about aspects of the electoral process. One of the issues was the participation of Mashonaland West, which some of us did not believe was in good standing and therefore should not have been allowed to vote. I was part of those who felt that this should not simply be waved through, particularly in an election that was poised repeatedly ending 5-5. When the entire presidency is hanging on one vote, the question of whether every voting member was properly eligible is not an administrative footnote. It is the plot.
There were also eligibility concerns around other positions. I personally did not support Ignatious Yesaya standing for Secretary General because I did not believe he met the requirements that had been clearly communicated before the election. I do not want to go into the detail of that discussion because much of it took place behind closed doors, and I think some respect for the integrity of those meetings is important. I also want to be clear that this does not diminish the respect I have for Yesaya as a basketball administrator. You can respect someone and still believe that, on a particular day, they did not meet the requirements for a particular office. Zimbabwean sports politics would probably improve overnight if we rediscovered that distinction.
The broader point is that there were procedural concerns in the room before we even got to the problem of the presidency. Some of us were uncomfortable with aspects of how eligibility and participation were being handled, and once the presidential vote began repeatedly landing at 5-5, those concerns stopped looking theoretical. They became potentially decisive.
After Several Failed Votes, We Discovered Constitutional Jazz
Eventually, Congress faced the obvious problem.
We had two candidates.
We had ten votes.
We had a constitution.
What we did not have was a winner.
The constitution did not give us an obvious mechanism capable of getting us out of the deadlock. Congress therefore did what human beings often do when the rules stop providing convenient answers.
We improvised.
The solution was that David Pick and Johnson Shumba would become co-presidents.
It was peaceful. It avoided a damaging winner-takes-all confrontation. Both camps could leave with something. Nobody needed to overturn tables.
There was just one irritating detail.
The BUZ constitution did not have a co-president.
I was part of those who thought this was a problem.
A fairly significant one.
You cannot ordinarily solve a constitutional problem by inventing an office the constitution forgot to invent.
Otherwise constitutions become less “supreme governing document” and more “helpful suggestions until everyone gets tired.”
I understand why the compromise happened. That is important. People in that room were trying to prevent the organisation from collapsing into an immediate leadership crisis. It was not, in my view, a sinister conspiracy conceived in a candlelit room by men stroking cats.
It was probably worse.
It was well-intentioned improvisation.
Those are often the decisions that come back months later carrying correspondence from regulators.
FIBA Also Had Some Questions
The international basketball body was not entirely enthusiastic about Zimbabwe’s contribution to constitutional theory.
FIBA initially declined to recognise the co-presidency arrangement. Eventually, a second compromise emerged in which the presidential term would effectively be divided between the two men, with Johnson Shumba serving first and David Pick taking over later.
This was undeniably tidier.
Instead of having two presidents at once, we would have them consecutively.
Progress.
We had moved from presidential polygamy to presidential timeshare.
The problem was that the bigger governance question remained unresolved. A national federation does not simply require somebody to occupy the office of president. It requires a clear mandate and a development programme that can survive long enough to produce results.
That is where I have always struggled with the arrangement.
Two Years Here, Two Years There, and Somehow We Will Develop Basketball
As President of Matabeleland North, my interest in who leads BUZ is not primarily about who gets called “President” at meetings.
I care about what national leadership means for basketball in Victoria Falls, Hwange, Binga and the rest of our province.
Where is the junior pathway? How do we develop coaches? What are we doing with referees? How do provincial leagues connect to the national system? How does a talented child somewhere far from Harare or Bulawayo progress into national-team consideration? What is our plan for women’s basketball? What exactly are we building?
Those questions require continuity.
Suppose one president enters office with a particular four-year development strategy. Two years later, another person takes over. Perhaps they agree completely. Perhaps they do not. Perhaps priorities shift. Perhaps appointments change. Perhaps programmes that were halfway through suddenly acquire a new philosophical parent.
You can make such an arrangement work, but the fact that it can work is not the same thing as designing a system that makes sense.
National development should not depend upon two administrators maintaining perfect alignment while taking turns with the steering wheel.
The SRC’s directive reaches the same basic conclusion. The Commission says the shared term is unsupported by BUZ’s constitution and does not support the association’s long-term development pathways.
That latter point is the one I find most compelling.
Constitutions matter because they create stable institutions.
Stable institutions matter because we are supposed to be developing basketball.
Somewhere along the way, those two sentences appear to have become separated.
The SRC Enters the Chat
This is probably a useful moment to explain the Sports and Recreation Commission, because discussions about the SRC often begin approximately thirty seconds before somebody shouts “government interference.”
The SRC is Zimbabwe’s statutory sports regulator. Its authority comes from the Sports and Recreation Commission Act [Chapter 25:15].
Section 19 includes among its objectives ensuring the proper administration of organisations responsible for sport and recreation. Section 20 gives it responsibility to advise, assist and supervise registered national associations.
Those are precisely the provisions the SRC cited when explaining its intervention in BUZ.
The SRC has now directed that a fresh presidential election must comply with the BUZ constitution, proper notices must be given and the position must be open to all candidates who satisfy the eligibility requirements. The successful president will serve a term concurrent with the rest of the executive committee.
The Commission even addressed the question everybody in Zimbabwean basketball is now afraid to ask.
What if it is 5-5 again?
Its answer is that Congress must use the broad powers provided under the BUZ constitution to make an appropriate resolution.
This is bureaucratic language for something I strongly suspect they wanted to phrase differently:
Whatever happens, please do not invent another president.
Haven’t We Done This Before?
Yes.
Sort of.
And this is where I need to correct something I previously thought about the 2022 election after going back to the contemporary reporting.
The January 2022 election involved outgoing president Joe Mujuru seeking another term against David Pick and Allen Mavunga. After the first stage, the contest between Mujuru and Pick reached a 5-5 tie. Unlike 2025, however, the deadlock did not repeat endlessly. A tiebreaker was conducted and Mujuru defeated Pick 6-5.
The SRC later nullified the entire election after finding serious procedural irregularities. Among the issues it identified were voting rights for bodies that were not entitled to vote under the registered constitution, financial statements circulated only two days before Congress that were unsigned and unaudited, failures around AGM requirements and other procedural problems. The SRC concluded that these issues materially affected the election and called for fresh polls.
That history is particularly relevant now.
It shows that the SRC ordering fresh BUZ elections is not some unprecedented constitutional nuclear weapon newly discovered in 2026.
We have been here before.
Different election.
Different problems.
Same uncomfortable sentence:
Could you people please conduct this election again?
Zimbabwean basketball, if nothing else, believes strongly in recycling.
Then Came the Fifteen-Year Audit
If the election directive were the whole story, it would already be significant.
It isn’t.
The SRC has also announced an independent audit into BUZ’s financial and operational affairs over the past fifteen years, following what it describes as several allegations and concerns received from stakeholders.
Fifteen years is an extraordinary period.
That is not an audit of one president.
It is not an audit of one secretary-general.
It is not an audit of one executive.
Fifteen years means multiple administrations, office bearers, national teams, competitions, funding arrangements, sponsorships and financial systems.
Which is why the exercise should not become political theatre.
Audit BUZ.
Follow the records.
Where the evidence goes, follow it.
If someone managed money properly, establish that.
If systems were weak, establish that.
If documentation is missing, establish that.
If wrongdoing occurred, establish that too.
The audit should not begin with a villain already selected and then spend fifteen years of records trying to build the story backwards.
That would not be forensic accounting.
That would be Netflix.
So What Is a Forensic Audit Anyway?
The phrase sounds much more exciting than accounting traditionally has any right to sound.
“Forensic audit” suggests a group of people entering BUZ headquarters wearing blue gloves while somebody whispers, “Nobody touch the filing cabinet.”
The reality is less CSI and more devastatingly patient accountant.
A normal audit broadly considers whether an organisation’s financial statements fairly present its position according to applicable standards. A forensic examination goes looking through individual transactions, supporting documents, bank records, authorisations, contracts and financial controls where particular concerns need to be tested.
Let us imagine BUZ received funding for a national team.
A forensic auditor does not simply ask whether a spreadsheet says the money existed.
They ask which account received it. Who controlled that account? Who authorised spending? What was purchased? Where are the invoices? Who supplied the service? Was the service actually delivered? Did the amount paid match the invoice? Do the bank records agree? Was the expenditure permitted? Is there supporting documentation?
Then repeat that exercise across national-team travel, accommodation, grants, sponsorships, equipment, competitions, administration and development projects.
Then repeat it across fifteen years.
Somewhere in Zimbabwe, a filing cabinet has just started sweating.
Allen Mavunga Is an Interesting Person to Have at the SRC Right Now
The man now leading the SRC is also worth discussing, because Allen Takudzwa Mavunga is not approaching basketball as somebody who recently discovered that a hoop is ten feet high.
He became SRC Director-General on 1 June 2026 and brings both professional management experience and a substantial sporting background. He has an accounting degree, an IOC qualification in sports management and experience in sports administration. He also represented Zimbabwe as an athlete and has a direct history with basketball, including playing for Zimbabwe’s national basketball team and later working in basketball administration.
Personally, I welcome that.
Sport in Zimbabwe has spent enough time being administered by systems in which the people making decisions can sometimes feel several kilometres removed from the people actually playing.
Having an SRC Director-General who understands basketball not simply as a file on his desk but as a sport he has played and administered is potentially a very good thing.
His stated priorities at the SRC include governance, infrastructure, digitisation and commercialisation, while he has also spoken extensively about grassroots development and creating better pathways for young athletes.
Those are conversations Zimbabwean basketball desperately needs.
For me, the interesting opportunity is that the regulator is currently headed by somebody who genuinely understands what basketball could become.
I would rather engage with that positively than treat every SRC letter as an invading army.
Where I Stand
I support fresh presidential elections.
That should surprise absolutely nobody who has survived this far into the article.
I believed the co-presidency was constitutionally problematic when we created it. I was among those who believed parts of the election process required greater scrutiny. I do not believe dividing a four-year presidency between two administrators gives BUZ the stability required for long-term development.
But supporting fresh elections is not the same thing as endorsing a candidate.
The next president should be determined by a properly constituted Congress, with every eligible candidate free to contest and every eligible voting structure clearly established before the first ballot is cast.
That last part is essential.
Before we meet again, we should know who is in good standing. We should know who is entitled to vote. We should know what documentation candidates require. We should know what happens if nobody wins.
These things should be boringly clear.
If eligibility becomes an argument after the ballot papers have already been printed, we have learned nothing.
If we reach 5-5 again and begin looking around the room for imaginative compromises, please confiscate our stationery.
Can We Please Get Back to Basketball?
The danger in all this is that administrators become the main characters in a sport that does not exist for us. Nobody bought their first basketball because they dreamed of attending a constitutional Congress. Kids do not spend afternoons shooting at bent rims because one day they hope to become chairperson of an electoral commission.
The sport exists because people want to play it.
In Matabeleland North, my concerns are painfully practical. How do we build sustainable competitions? How do we connect schools to clubs? How do we train coaches? How do we produce more referees? How do we create opportunities for women and girls? How does a child playing basketball in Hwange or Victoria Falls see a believable pathway towards representing Zimbabwe?
Those should eventually become the arguments we are having.
Not whether one president becomes two presidents before becoming one president again.
A national association should make basketball easier to develop throughout the country. Provincial associations should know what the national development framework is. Clubs should see meaningful competitions. Players should understand the pathway. Coaches and officials should receive development opportunities. National teams should operate within programmes instead of appearing periodically like emergency construction projects.
The presidency matters because somebody has to be accountable for building those systems.
That is why one president with one clear mandate is preferable to an elaborate succession agreement designed primarily to solve an electoral stalemate.
