A blame game has ensued after Malawi failed to send athletes for three disciplines to compete at this year’s Confederation of School Sport Association of Southern Africa (Cossasa) in eSwatini.
Athletes from three sport codes—namely football, basketball and athletics—were expected to leave the country on Saturday for eSwatini ahead of the games, which kicked off on Monday. However, the Malawi delegation did not travel, prompting Malawi Schools Sports Association (Massa) to blame Malawi National Council of Sports (MNCS) leadership for failure to release funds amounting to K40 million for the trip. This was after its initial budget of K57 million was trimmed.
In turn, MNCS said it could not release funds without approval from the Ministry of Education. Malamula said they were disappointed with the incident, saying it has denied young athletes a chance to get international exposure. “In this case, we [officials and athletes] had assembled, ready to set off.
This was after other stakeholders, including the Football Association of Malawi leadership, had done their part by, among other things, releasing a bus for the trip. “However, our efforts to get funds from the council proved futile as they did not attend to us. We had to send the players back to Chiwembe at Mpira Village, because that is where they were accommodated, to connect home,” he said.
Malamula said the government must not be blamed for the mishap; but, rather, some individuals in the system. However, MNCS Chief Executive Officer Henry Kamata said they were waiting for approval from the Ministry of Education before releasing the funds.
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“Firstly, Malawi National Council of Sports did not get the approval letter from the Ministry of Education as the Cossasa Games are school games which fall under their jurisdiction. When we [MNCS] asked Massa to get clearance from the Ministry of Education, they did not. “Secondly Massa did not send us a budget for these games at the start of 2025, as per the budgetary requirement; instead, they only wrote us last month, when the government had already passed allocations for this year.
Where was the council going to get the funds?” queried Kamata. Kamata said Massa was yet to account for K174 million which they got for the Malawi Youth Games. “As if this is not enough, after we funded this year’s Malawi Youth Games to the tune of K174 million, Massa still abandoned the kids at Blantyre Secondary School, saying they did not have the money after they already pocketed K174 million and Sports Council came in, hiring three buses to ferry the kids back home.
Did you expect us to break the protocol and fund the trip, which was not sanctioned by the ministry responsible—an unbudgeted [for] trip?” Kamata said. When asked why Massa had not yet furnished MNCS with a financial report on how they used the funds, Malamula said the process was underway and that they would submit the report later this week. Ministry of Education Public Relations Officer Christopher Kapachika Banda said they could not issue the clearance due to lack of proper documentation.
“Approval for the students to travel normally comes with the request and Massa made the request which had no details like funding and nature of the competition and who would be accompanying the students since it is a holiday in Malawi. And this information was not made available in the request, only to see a fresh request being made on Friday and, before we even acted on the matter, it’s when we saw on social media that Sports Council had failed to fund the trip.
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“So, in short, the request came in late and lacked full information on the trip, which included who was funding the trip, making it difficult for the ministry to clear Massa on the trip,” Kapachika Banda said.
