A Blissful Ignorance investigation into selective scrutiny, basketball politics, the LaSigma kit questions and the curious habit of overlooking development until somebody decides it is controversial.
There is something peculiar about Zimbabwean basketball.
You can spend years complaining about the state of the game, the quality of administration, the absence of reliable information, the lack of development structures and the apparent inability of some provinces to move forward. You can demand accountability from those entrusted with running the sport. You can insist that associations must become more professional, transparent and accessible.
But the moment somebody attempts to do something differently, the questions begin.
Who approved it?
Who benefits?
What is the real agenda?
And perhaps the most revealing question of all: who gave you permission to do things we did not authorise?
Welcome to the politics of patronage in Zimbabwean basketball, where sometimes the greatest offence is not failing to develop the game, but attempting to develop it outside the established networks of influence.
In this republic, you can organise tournaments, sustain a league, train coaches, develop referees, pay transport costs for struggling clubs, send players to national trials and spend years attempting to revive basketball in a province that has been neglected for far too long.
You can do all of that, and nobody will find it sufficiently interesting to write about.
But launch a website to publish fixtures and results, and suddenly the investigative machinery starts warming up.
Apparently, in Zimbabwean basketball, the real scandal is not that some provinces have struggled for years. It is that one of them has started keeping records.
THE LASIGMA QUESTION THAT WON’T GO AWAY
Let us begin with the matter that, in my view, deserves far more attention than a provincial basketball website.
The LaSigma Under-18 national team kit arrangement.
Johnson Shumba, the president in the middle Zimbabwean basketball’s current leadership dispute, is associated with LaSigma, the company understood to have supplied or secured the arrangement to provide kits for the national Under-18 team.
That raises legitimate questions about the procurement or selection process.
How was LaSigma selected?
Was there a formal process for identifying a supplier? Were alternative suppliers considered? Were quotations obtained? Who made the final decision? What were the terms of the arrangement? Were any potential conflicts of interest declared and properly managed?
These are not allegations of guilt. They are basic questions about transparency, process and accountability whenever a company is involved in supplying a national sporting team.
The answers should be obtainable from the relevant records.
If the process was entirely above board, documentation and clear explanations should help settle the matter. If there were shortcomings, the appropriate response is to examine them and establish what happened.
What should not happen is for legitimate questions to be dismissed simply because they are uncomfortable.
I have been one of the voices raising questions about the LaSigma arrangement. I have spoken about it because I believe national basketball deserves transparency, particularly when decisions concern national teams and the resources, sponsorships or commercial relationships associated with them.
I have also had a personal interaction with Johnson Shumba in which he approached me and asked for my vote. In the wider context of basketball’s politics, that encounter reinforced my concern about how relationships and influence operate within the sport. It does not, by itself, prove anything about the LaSigma arrangement, and I will not pretend that it does.
But it does make me more determined to ask questions about governance rather than accept that everything should be left to established personalities and their networks.
The point is simple: national basketball belongs to the players, clubs, coaches, officials, provinces, supporters and wider basketball community. It is not the private property of a handful of people who have been around long enough to assume that their decisions are beyond scrutiny.
And that brings us to a rather interesting development.
Instead of a sustained public conversation about the questions surrounding the kit arrangement, we find ourselves discussing Matabeleland North’s website.
Coincidence?
Perhaps.
But I am not convinced.
As someone who has repeatedly raised the LaSigma questions, I believe the timing and effect of Sani Mbofana’s article warrant serious scrutiny. In my view, the piece shifted attention away from the kit issue and towards a story about Mat North that, as far as I can establish, was not supported by the basic groundwork responsible reporting requires.
I cannot prove what was in the journalist’s mind. I will not pretend to possess evidence of a private agreement or hidden instruction. But I can explain what I observed, what I told him, what was subsequently published and why I believe the resulting coverage redirected attention from a more consequential issue.
And I can ask why a provincial website attracted this level of suspicion while the questions I had been raising about the national kit arrangement remained unanswered.
If the objective is accountability, let us apply it consistently.
If the objective is transparency, let us begin with the questions that concern the national team and the governance of the sport.
And if the objective is journalism, let us do the work.
JOHNSON SHUMBA, THE SRC AND THE NATIONAL EMBARRASSMENT
There is another national issue that deserves to be placed in its proper context.
Johnson Shumba has taken the Sports and Recreation Commission to court in a bid to retain his position amid the dispute over the presidency of the Basketball Union of Zimbabwe.
The background is hardly a minor administrative disagreement. The November 2025 BUZ congress ended in a deadlock, with Shumba and David Pick each receiving five votes from the ten provincial delegates. An unusual co-presidency arrangement emerged, and the dispute subsequently attracted the attention of the SRC and FIBA.
In October 2026, the matter escalated further. Shumba secured a provisional court order suspending the SRC’s directive for fresh elections while the legal proceedings continue. The order is not a final determination of the dispute, and the legal process must be allowed to run its course.
Taking a matter to court is not, in itself, proof of wrongdoing. People are entitled to seek legal remedies, including when they disagree with decisions made by regulatory bodies.
But we must also be honest about the consequences.
As president of Matabeleland North Basketball Association and subsequently a member of the BUZ Central Board, I find the public spectacle deeply concerning. Basketball is already fighting for greater recognition, stronger competitions, improved administration, adequate resources and confidence from potential sponsors.
Instead, the national conversation is dominated by questions about who is entitled to occupy the top office, whether the leadership arrangement is constitutionally sound, what the regulator has directed and how the courts will respond.
That is not the image of a sport confidently building its future.
It is the image of an institution struggling to settle its own governance questions.
The damage is not confined to the people contesting for office. It reaches the provincial associations trying to organise leagues, the coaches developing young players, the officials giving their time, the parents paying for transport and the athletes who want to represent their country.
Every time national basketball becomes consumed by leadership disputes, those people are left wondering when the focus will return to the game.
And yet, when a provincial association attempts to build something useful at grassroots level, the scrutiny can suddenly become very enthusiastic.
This is where the question of patronage becomes unavoidable.
Who gets examined closely? Who gets the benefit of the doubt? Whose decisions are treated as matters of national importance, and whose achievements are treated as though they barely exist?
We cannot demand accountability only when it suits our relationships, our preferred personalities or our position in the basketball hierarchy.
Accountability that only travels in one direction is not accountability. It is politics wearing a referee’s whistle.
SANI MBOFANA AND THE FIVE-CLUB INVESTIGATION
Now, let us discuss the Mat North website story and the journalist responsible for it: Sani Mbofana.
I have worked in journalism since 2014. I am a qualified journalist. I understand how reporting works, how allegations should be tested and why journalists must approach subjects with an open mind rather than a conclusion in search of supporting evidence.
I also understand that journalists do not have to agree with the people they interview. They do not have to like them. They do not have to accept every explanation offered.
But they do have to do their jobs.
When Sani Mbofana approached me about the proposed Mat North website story, I told him that, from my perspective, there was no evidence supporting the angle he appeared to be pursuing and this was a speculative story. I asked him not to write about Mat North on that basis.
He proceeded to publish the story.
My concern is not simply that he published something I disagreed with. Disagreement is part of public life, and criticism of an association president is entirely legitimate.
My concern is that, he did not speak to members of the association’s executives or to the leaders of the clubs supposedly at the centre of the story before publishing it.
I have not established that he spoke to any of our clubs. None of the club representatives who contacted me said they had been approached by him.
And this is where the whole thing becomes rather difficult to explain.
Mat North has approximately five clubs in the association.
Five.
Not five hundred. Not a nationwide network of 300 institutions spread across several continents. Five clubs.
If the story concerns the views, concerns or allegations of those clubs, how difficult would it have been to contact them?
A few calls. A few conversations. A little patience. Perhaps an afternoon spent doing the sort of work that separates reporting from speculation.
Instead, I spent much of the following day fielding calls from club representatives asking what was happening and why their association was suddenly the subject of a controversy they did not recognise.
These were people who wanted to understand what had been said about their association and why.
So I have a very straightforward question for Sani Mbofana:
Who, exactly, is making the allegations?
Which clubs raised them?
Which club leaders were consulted?
Who supplied the information?
What evidence was obtained?
What did those sources actually say?
If allegations are being attributed to people or institutions, readers deserve to know the basis for those claims. If the allegations are anonymous, there must still be a credible process for establishing their reliability.
A journalist does not have to name every confidential source. But confidentiality is not a licence to invent a consensus, imply that people have concerns they have never expressed, or publish insinuations without a reasonable evidential foundation.
And then there is my name.
In the article, my name was incorrectly stated as Brighton Ncube.
My name is Brighton Musaidzi.
Now, mistakes happen. Journalists are human beings, and no one is suggesting that a spelling or naming error automatically invalidates an entire article.
But names are not obscure technical details. They are among the most basic facts in a story about a real person.
If a journalist is writing about the president of an association, surely identifying that person correctly is the bare minimum.
And if the name is wrong, it becomes reasonable to ask what other checks were performed.
Did the journalist verify the website’s purpose?
Did he establish whether the clubs had been consulted?
Did he distinguish between a genuine complaint and his own interpretation of events?
Did he seek a response from the people whose reputations and work would be affected?
These are not unreasonable questions. They are the questions I would ask of any reporter whose work appeared to have skipped some fundamental steps.
In my professional judgement, the account raises serious concerns about the standard of reporting applied to Mat North. Where a story rests on unverified insinuations rather than demonstrable evidence, it risks becoming speculative journalism.
And speculative journalism does not help Mat North basketball.
It damages confidence, creates confusion among clubs, invites people to question an association’s work without first establishing the facts and forces volunteers to spend valuable time answering claims instead of developing the game.
The irony is almost too rich.
A website intended to improve access to information has generated a controversy in which the most important question is whether enough information was gathered before the controversy was published.
Perhaps somebody should build a website for that.
WHAT THE WEBSITE ACTUALLY DOES
The Mat North basketball website was not conceived as a monument to Brighton Musaidzi.
It was not designed to promote a particular political faction, settle personal scores or give the association’s president an online shrine where every photograph comes with flattering lighting.
It was built to serve a practical purpose.
We want people to find fixtures, results, records, association information and updates about what is happening in Mat North basketball.
We want clubs to know when games are being played. We want supporters to follow the league. We want the public to see results. We want information about the association to be accessible instead of disappearing into scattered WhatsApp conversations and private discussions.
We want a record of the game.
That is the point.
For years, one of the problems facing grassroots basketball has been the absence of consistent, accessible information. If we want our competitions to grow, if we want to attract sponsors and if we want our players to receive recognition, we need structures that make the sport visible.
A website is one small part of building those structures.
It is not a replacement for good administration. It does not automatically solve funding problems. It cannot manufacture referees, transport players or make a league competitive by clicking a button.
But it can help make information accessible and preserve a record of what the association is doing.
If there are legitimate questions about how the website is managed, ask them. If there are governance concerns, identify them. If there is evidence of wrongdoing, present it.
But do not confuse the act of documenting basketball with an act of misconduct simply because the people doing the work are not part of the networks you are accustomed to dealing with.
TWO YEARS OF REBUILDING A PROVINCE THAT NEEDED FAR MORE THAN TWO YEARS
One of the most frustrating aspects of this story is the suggestion that Mat North’s current challenges can be understood without acknowledging the history behind them.
Matabeleland North basketball did not fall into difficulty two years ago.
The province had been struggling for many years before the current rebuilding efforts began. The two-year period refers to the work we have been doing to organise, strengthen and revive the game, not the total duration of its problems.
For a long time, Mat North had a league, but its participation in national championships was held back because the league was not recognised.
Think about what that means.
You organise a league. You find players. You arrange matches. You work with clubs. You try to keep the competition alive. And then, when the opportunity comes to compete nationally, you discover that the structure you have worked to sustain does not give you the recognition required to participate.
You are left building a house while being told that the address is not officially recognised.
We pushed for change. We sought recognition and accountability. I worked alongside people who wanted the situation resolved, including Walter Masunda, the competitions commissioner, as we pressed for progress.
Eventually, Mat North travelled to Mutare to participate in the national championships for the first time.
That trip was not free.
Twelve people travelling at about $70 each already meant $840 in transport. A delegation of approximately 30 people could mean $2,100 in transport alone. Then there is food, player support, officials, accommodation where required and the other expenses associated with taking a team away from home.
For a province as geographically spread out as Mat North, these costs are not minor inconveniences. They are practical barriers to participation.
It is easy to tell an association to attend a tournament when you are not the one finding the money to put people on the road.
It is easy to demand professional standards when you are not the one trying to sustain a competition with limited officials, limited resources and clubs that need help simply to turn up.
And it is easy to question what a small association is doing when you have not bothered to understand what it has had to overcome.
This is the context that gets lost when Mat North is discussed as though it were a fully resourced association that woke up one morning and decided to experiment with a website.
We are trying to build the foundations that other places may have enjoyed for years.
That deserves to be understood before it is judged.
THE WORK NOBODY SEEMS INTERESTED IN REPORTING
Since becoming involved in rebuilding Mat North basketball, we have worked to put structures in place and create opportunities for players.
We have the Victoria Falls Invitational Tournament, an event intended to bring teams together and create a competitive platform for the game.
We have a league.
We have organised the Battle of Schools, bringing together schools from across Matabeleland to give young players opportunities to compete. We held the event last year, and we are doing it again this year.
We have taken clubs to two consecutive national tournaments, helping them access competition beyond their immediate surroundings.
We have taken players to national-team trials, giving them opportunities to be seen and assessed at a higher level.
We have supported clubs with travel costs when resources were tight. We have worked to keep clubs participating and prevent financial challenges from becoming another reason for teams to disappear.
We have tried to ensure that, despite the shortage of referees in the province, available officials can get to games and competitions. We have worked to train coaches and officials because the development of basketball cannot depend forever on the same small pool of people doing everything.
These are not glamorous achievements. There is no champagne involved in finding transport money for a club. No one is handing out awards for persuading an exhausted referee to travel to another game. Nobody is making a Netflix documentary about the association president trying to keep a league running when the resources are thin.
But this is how grassroots sport develops.
You build a competition. You find a venue. You train officials. You support clubs. You create opportunities for young players. You organise school events. You take teams to tournaments. You try again when something fails.
Then you do it all over again the following week.
As president, I have had to help clubs stay afloat, find ways to get teams to games and make sure that limited resources are used to keep the competition functioning.
We have not solved every problem. We do not pretend that we have. Mat North still faces serious challenges, and there is plenty of work left to do.
But there is a difference between acknowledging the work that remains and pretending the work already done does not exist.
We are not claiming that Mat North has become the finished product. We are asking why the process of building it seems to attract so little interest until someone can turn it into a controversy.
Where are the stories about the league?
Where are the reports about the Battle of Schools?
Where is the coverage of the clubs travelling to national competitions?
Where are the profiles of the players who have attended national-team trials?
Where are the stories about the referees and coaches being trained, the clubs being supported and the officials trying to keep matches running?
Where is the interest in how a province with limited resources is trying to create a sustainable basketball structure?
Perhaps these stories are not sensational enough.
Perhaps development does not generate the same excitement as a rumour.
Perhaps five clubs working to build a league are simply less interesting than five clubs supposedly being involved in a controversy.
But if the objective is to grow basketball, these are precisely the stories that should matter.
A sport cannot develop if the only time its smaller associations receive attention is when somebody suspects them of doing something wrong.
DAVID PICK, HBC AND THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TELLING US WHAT TO DO AND HELPING US DO IT
I will admit something that may surprise people.
When David Pick first began telling us what he thought Mat North should do, I did not particularly want to listen.
I was tired of the familiar pattern in which Harare, Mutare, Bulawayo, the Midlands and Mashonaland Central and Sani Mbofana seemed to believe they possessed the universal instruction manual for basketball, while the rest of us were expected to sit quietly and take notes.
My first instinct was to resist.
Why should another province tell us how to run our affairs? Did they understand our geography, our financial limitations, the distances between our clubs or the years of neglect we were trying to overcome? Were they going to pay the bills when their advice became another unfunded obligation?
Mat North could have stopped there.
We could have dismissed David as another man from Harare who believed his position entitled him to instruct everybody else. We could have rejected his suggestions, questioned his motives and insisted that we knew best.
We could have belived what other told us, “he just wants your vote.”
After all, we had more than enough reasons to be defensive.
But something changed when David began to listen and help.
He made an effort to understand our circumstances. He checked in regularly to see how we were progressing. He offered support, that we often rejected, and when Mat North travelled to Harare for the 2025 preseason tournament, he personally covered part the expenses that enabled us to participate.
The point of that trip was not to demonstrate that Mat North had suddenly discovered an offshore basketball account. It was to give our players the opportunity to compete against stronger opposition, including teams such as Kings and Leopards.
The expenses that enabled our participation were partly covered by David personally. That distinction matters: it was his contribution, not a claim that the Harare Basketball Association as an institution had funded the trip.
If you think that was political, I point blank told Pick that during the trip I would have meetings with other presidential candidates and I actually spent most of my time in those mmetings.
However, that was an opportunity for our players to learn, compete and measure themselves against stronger teams.
It was also an example of what support can look like when it moves beyond advice.
David did not have to agree with me from the beginning. I did not have to agree with him either. What mattered was that the relationship moved beyond assumptions and into something practical.
I still believe that no province should presume to command another.
Advice is welcome; condescension is not. Partnership is welcome; paternalism is not. We do not need other provinces to pretend that our challenges are identical to theirs. We need them to recognise that our circumstances are different and work with us accordingly.
I do not object to people helping us. I object to people confusing help with the authority to command us.
That is the distinction I want people to understand.
Mat North could have rejected David outright. HBC, through the example of an individual willing to help, could have looked at our struggles and concluded that we were too far away, too under-resourced or too difficult to support.
Instead, there was an opportunity to build a relationship, exchange ideas and give our players a chance to improve.
This is how basketball development should work: not a hierarchy in which established centres issue instructions and smaller provinces obediently comply, but a sport in which people listen, learn and help one another grow.
And it shows that not everyone from a bigger basketball centre behaves in the same way. The issue is not where a person comes from. It is whether they approach others with respect and whether their actions match their words.
That is why I acknowledge David’s contribution. I may not have wanted to listen to him at first, but his actions gave me a reason to reconsider.
We should be able to recognise genuine support without surrendering our independence.
And we should be able to disagree with one another without turning every disagreement into a political contest.
THE PATRONAGE REPUBLIC: USEFUL FOR VOTES, INVISIBLE FOR DEVELOPMENT
Now we come to the heart of the matter.
For years, Mat North has been treated as a province whose political value within basketball could be greater than the attention it received in development.
There is a perception, particularly among those who have watched the sport’s internal politics over time, that smaller provinces can become important when votes are needed but less important when practical assistance is required.
I cannot claim that every past decision was made for that reason. Nor can I prove that every person who has overlooked Mat North did so because they wanted to preserve a particular political arrangement.
But I have seen enough to question the pattern.
In Zimbabwean basketball, a small province can be under-resourced enough to be overlooked when development opportunities are distributed, yet influential enough to become important when somebody needs votes.
Apparently, Mat North has been living a double life: an underfunded province by day and a political heavyweight by election night.
And there is a problem with this arrangement.
When a province is valued primarily for the influence it can provide to established leaders, its development becomes secondary to its usefulness.
The province is courted when it can help someone secure a position. Its representatives are consulted when votes are being counted. Its importance is recognised when the arithmetic of leadership requires it.
But when that same province needs recognition for its league, support for its clubs, resources for its players or help with the practical costs of competing, the enthusiasm can become less impressive.
This is the patronage problem.
It is not simply about who knows whom. Relationships are a normal part of sport. Experienced administrators can offer valuable advice, and established associations can help emerging ones.
Patronage becomes a problem when access, recognition and opportunity depend more on personal relationships and political loyalty than on transparent criteria and the actual needs of the game.
It becomes a problem when a province’s work is treated as insignificant because the people doing it are not part of the established network.
It becomes a problem when independent action is treated with suspicion, while the decisions of well-connected people are assumed to deserve deference.
And it becomes a problem when the people trying to develop the sport must spend more time proving that they are entitled to do the work than actually doing it.
A website is not a threat to basketball.
A provincial league is not a threat to basketball.
A schools tournament is not a threat to basketball.
A province sending players to national trials is not a threat to basketball.
But an association that begins to document its work, build its own structures and speak independently may become inconvenient to a culture in which information and influence have traditionally travelled through personal networks.
The solution is not to attack everyone who has been involved in basketball for a long time. Experience matters. History matters. Relationships matter.
The solution is to stop treating experience as ownership.
No individual or group owns the right to decide which provincial associations deserve to develop, which achievements deserve recognition or which questions may be asked.
Basketball belongs to the game, not to its gatekeepers.
WHY IS SCRUTINY SO SELECTIVE?
This is where Sani Mbofana‘s article becomes particularly troubling to me.
It is not because Mat North should be immune from criticism. It should not be.
If we make mistakes, report them. If we misuse funds, investigate. If clubs have legitimate complaints, interview them. If the website has a governance problem, establish what it is. If I have failed in my responsibilities as president, ask me to account for it.
I will not demand that journalists applaud us. I will demand that they establish the facts.
That is the difference.
What I object to is a story that, in my view, appeared to arrive at conclusions about Mat North without the basic consultation that would have allowed the people supposedly at the centre of the issue to explain their position.
What I object to is the absence of clear answers about who made the alleged complaints and whether the clubs were actually approached.
What I object to is having my name incorrectly reported in an article that purports to examine the work of the association I lead.
And what I find especially difficult to ignore is the timing, given that I had been among the voices repeatedly questioning the LaSigma kit arrangement.
I believe the Mat North story served to divert attention from that issue. I cannot prove the journalist’s private motive, but the effect was to move the conversation away from the questions I had been raising and towards speculation about a provincial website.
That is why I believe the public deserves to examine the reporting process as closely as the article purported to examine Mat North.
Was the same appetite for scrutiny applied to the national kit arrangement?
Were the questions surrounding supplier selection examined with equal determination?
Were the people responsible for the relevant decisions asked to explain the process?
Were documents obtained and reviewed?
Or is it easier to write about a small province because it lacks the institutional weight to push back?
I am not asking these questions because I believe Mat North is beyond criticism. I am asking them because scrutiny must be applied consistently if it is to have any credibility.
If we are going to question a provincial website, we should be willing to question national sponsorship arrangements.
If we are going to demand transparency from a provincial association, we should demand it from the national federation.
If we are going to investigate the conduct of grassroots administrators, we should be prepared to examine the conduct of senior figures.
And if we are going to write about allegations, we should be able to explain where those allegations came from and what evidence supports them.
Otherwise, we are not building accountability. We are simply choosing our targets.
A PROVINCE SHOULD NOT HAVE TO BE WELL-CONNECTED TO BE WELL-REPORTED
There is a wider problem here that extends beyond basketball.
Smaller associations often have fewer resources, less access to media attention and less capacity to defend their reputations when inaccurate or speculative claims circulate.
A well-established association may have communications staff, lawyers, administrators and a network of people who can respond immediately.
A small provincial association may have a president who is also trying to organise the league, help clubs find transport, arrange officials, communicate with schools and keep the competition running.
When a story appears, the smaller association must stop what it is doing and respond.
Meanwhile, the actual development work continues to depend on the same small group of people.
This creates an imbalance.
Those with greater access to established networks may find it easier to shape the public conversation. Those outside those networks may find that their work remains invisible until someone chooses to frame it as controversial.
That is why the patronage question matters.
It is not simply about whether one journalist likes one association president. It is about who gets to define the public narrative around the sport.
Who decides what deserves coverage?
Who decides which questions are asked?
Who gets to be treated as an authority?
Who gets to explain their work before conclusions are drawn?
And who is expected to defend themselves against allegations they cannot even trace to an identifiable source?
A genuinely independent sporting media should not operate as a public-relations department for any faction. It should examine the powerful, investigate the uncomfortable, recognise meaningful development and give readers enough verified information to form their own judgements.
It should not be a system in which the same people are continually treated as the natural custodians of basketball, while others must prove their legitimacy every time they attempt something new.
Mat North does not need special treatment.
It needs fair treatment.
It needs journalists who understand the difference between asking difficult questions and publishing unsupported insinuations.
It needs recognition when its clubs compete nationally, when its schools tournaments bring young people together, when its coaches and officials receive training and when its league continues despite limited resources.
It needs to be allowed to develop without every new initiative being treated as a political mystery.
And it needs the same standard of accountability applied to it as to everybody else.
THE BLISSFUL IGNORANCE VERDICT
Let us return to where we began.
There is something peculiar about Zimbabwean basketball.
A province can spend years trying to rebuild its league, train its coaches, support its clubs, send players to national trials and create opportunities for young people.
It can establish a tournament, bring schools together, send teams to national competitions and work to make its results and records publicly accessible.
It can do all of that without receiving the attention it believes the work deserves.
Then it can launch a website, and suddenly the questions arrive.
In the meantime, the national federation is dealing with a leadership dispute involving the SRC, court proceedings and FIBA’s concerns about governance. Questions remain to be answered about the process behind the LaSigma kit arrangement. Those matters deserve clear explanations, proper documentation and serious scrutiny.
None of this means that Mat North should be protected from scrutiny.
It means that scrutiny should be fair, evidence-based and consistent.
I am Brighton Musaidzi, president of Matabeleland North Basketball Association. I am a qualified journalist who has worked in the profession since 2014. I know that criticism comes with public office, and I do not expect to be shielded from it.
But I also know that a journalist has a responsibility to establish the facts, verify allegations and give people a fair opportunity to respond.
Getting my name wrong is not the greatest problem. Failing to establish the facts before publishing claims about the association I lead is a much more serious concern.
I will continue to ask questions about national basketball governance, including the LaSigma kit arrangement. I will continue to advocate for Mat North. I will continue to help clubs, support competitions, encourage the training of coaches and officials, and create opportunities for our players.
I will also continue to work with people from other provinces who genuinely want to help us develop, even when I do not agree with them at first.
Because the objective is not to win every argument. It is to build a better basketball system.
But we cannot build that system if patronage determines whose voice matters, whose work deserves recognition and whose questions are considered acceptable.
Mat North was useful when somebody needed our vote, inconvenient when we needed help, and suspicious when we started building something of our own.
That is the culture we must challenge.
We do not need permission to develop basketball. We need fair processes, honest reporting, accountable leadership and a sporting community willing to judge people by their work rather than their connections.
If there is evidence of wrongdoing in Mat North, publish it.
If there are legitimate concerns about our website, establish them.
If the clubs have complaints, speak to them.
But if the purpose is to build a story out of speculation, then do not be surprised when the people doing the actual work ask difficult questions about the journalism.
And if we truly care about Zimbabwean basketball, let us give the same attention to the questions surrounding national governance and sponsorship that we are so eager to give to a provincial website.
The next time someone asks what Mat North is doing, I hope the answer will not begin and end with a controversy.
I hope the answer will include the league, the tournaments, the schools, the clubs, the officials, the coaches and the players who are working to build something meaningful.
Because while some people are busy deciding which stories deserve to be told, we are busy trying to make sure there is a game worth telling stories about.
And if that makes us inconvenient to the patronage republic, so be it.
