24/08/2026
The dust surrounding the cancellation of the Mzuzu International Volleyball Tournament is refusing to settle.
As debate over who bears responsibility continues, an Anonymous Volleyball Commentator has now weighed in, offering a pointed critique of the explanations given for the tournament's cancellation.
Advice: Long post
THE NRVL COMMITTEE DID NOT KILL MZUZU INTERNATIONAL TOURNEY, GOVERNANCE FAILURE DID
Volleyball in Malawi's Northern Region has not stopped, and it will not stop, simply because a regional committee does not exist on paper.
Athletes are training. Clubs are playing. The sport remains alive.
That is why the explanation given by Mzuzu International Volleyball Tournament organising committee chair Killy Msukwa, that the tournament was cancelled because "we cannot proceed when we have no regional committee in place," raises more questions than it answers.
The explanation does not appear to account for what actually happened. Instead, it risks becoming a convenient cover for a deeper governance and coordination failure.
An administrative gap, not an operational wall
The absence of a Northern Region Volleyball League (NRVL) committee is an administrative gap. It does not, by itself, prevent volleyball from being played.
Clubs such as Chibavi Smashers, Moyale VT, Ultimate VC, Karonga Spikers, Mzuzu Fire, Chikwina VT and Likoma Hooks, among others, have continued to train, compete and develop their players.
If volleyball itself can continue without a regional committee, then the absence of that committee does not, on its own, adequately explain why an international tournament could not proceed.
The tournament was expected to attract teams from Zambia, Zimbabwe and Tanzania and had the backing of a sponsor. The question, therefore, is why the absence of a regional administrative structure became a reason to cancel the entire event rather than a problem to be addressed through a transitional or interim arrangement.
That is the first weakness in the argument. The reason given appears disproportionate to the outcome it produced.
Why was the problem discovered so late?
There is another important question.
If the absence of an NRVL committee was genuinely fatal to the tournament, why was this discovered only at the point of cancellation?
This was not a new event. Previous editions had been staged, with the same sponsor reportedly investing more than K15 million in the tournament.
The absence of a regional committee, therefore, was not a problem that suddenly appeared in the final stages of planning. It was a standing governance condition that should have been known to the organisers and relevant volleyball authorities long before preparations reached the cancellation stage.
If the organising committee knew that the tournament required a functioning regional structure under Volleyball Association of Malawi regulations and proceeded to court sponsors, invite teams and build public expectations regardless, then the responsibility cannot simply be shifted to the missing committee.
Either the organisers did not know the requirement, which raises questions about competence, or they knew about it and failed to resolve it, which raises questions about governance.
Neither explanation strengthens the case for cancellation.
The sponsor's account raises even bigger questions
The sponsor's own account further complicates the explanation.
Thilina Sameera, the sponsor's Finance Manager, reportedly told The Nation that the sponsor had indicated its willingness to continue financing the tournament and had asked the organising committee for a fresh budget.
Yet the tournament was cancelled without, according to the sponsor, meaningful engagement with the financier.
That changes the character of the story.
It suggests that the central problem may not have been a lack of financial support, but a breakdown in communication and coordination.
If a sponsor was ready to finance the tournament and was waiting for a budget, then "there was no regional committee" becomes a much less convincing explanation for why the event could not proceed.
The obvious questions are therefore: Was a budget prepared? Was it submitted? Was the sponsor consulted before cancellation? Was the possibility of postponement discussed? And did the organising committee explore an interim administrative arrangement?
Those questions deserve clear answers.
The WhatsApp comments
Msukwa's own remarks in the Volleyball Malawi WhatsApp group appear to have added fuel to the controversy.
His comparison that, when something goes wrong, there should always be someone to blame to cover up the mess, likening the situation to a boy caught with cannabis in Blantyre, is particularly striking.
The irony is difficult to miss.
Critics are accusing the organising committee of looking for a scapegoat, while the chair's own analogy speaks directly about the practice of finding someone to blame when something goes wrong.
Rather than resolving the controversy, the comments risk reinforcing the perception that responsibility is being passed around rather than accepted.
Where does VAM stand?
The position of Volleyball Association of Malawi President James Kaunda introduces another contradiction.
Kaunda reportedly said VAM was not formally informed about the cancellation.
Yet the organising committee is said to have relied on a VAM regulation concerning the existence of a regional committee to justify cancelling the tournament.
If a national federation's regulation was the basis for such a significant decision, one would expect the federation to have been involved in the process.
Instead, the picture that emerges is of a national federation distancing itself from a decision apparently made in reliance on its own regulations.
That raises a fundamental governance question: who actually made the decision to cancel the tournament, and under whose authority?
The "corporate language" explanation
Msukwa's later reference to an email from a hotel reportedly "excusing themselves" from this year's tournament, together with his description of the matter as one of "corporate language" between the organisers and sponsor, does little to settle the issue.
Neither does the suggestion that publicly defending the matter further would be "immature and unprofessional."
Once a cancellation has been publicly justified through a national newspaper, and the sponsor subsequently offers a different account, public scrutiny is not necessarily unprofessional. It is a legitimate consequence of a public decision involving athletes, clubs, sponsors and the wider volleyball community.
If private correspondence contains information that materially explains why the tournament was cancelled, the existence of that correspondence should help clarify the matter, not simply close the discussion.
What actually needs answering?
The cancellation itself may not be the biggest story.
The bigger story is what the cancellation appears to expose about the governance of volleyball in the North.
Several questions remain unanswered.
Why did the tournament continue in previous years without a functioning regional committee, and who provided the administrative support that made that possible?
Why was a sponsor reportedly ready to finance the event not given a budget and, according to its own account, not consulted before the cancellation?
Why was a VAM regulation cited as the basis for cancellation when VAM says it was not formally involved?
Was postponement considered?
Was an interim or transitional committee considered?
Could the tournament have been placed under another recognised administrative structure while the regional governance issue was being resolved?
Until these questions are answered, blaming the absence of an NRVL committee provides only a partial explanation.
Northern volleyball deserves better
Volleyball in Mzuzu did not need a committee to survive. It needed effective coordination, communication and leadership.
The clubs remain. The players remain. The supporters remain. The sponsor appears to have remained willing to support the event.
What appears to have failed was the coordination between the people responsible for bringing all these elements together.
The Northern Region deserves an honest account of what happened, not a convenient scapegoat.
The real issue is not whether the NRVL committee existed on paper. The issue is whether those entrusted with organising one of the region's biggest volleyball events did everything reasonably possible to make it happen.
Northern volleyball deserves better than a blame game. It deserves transparency, accountability and leadership willing to own its decisions.
Because ultimately, the tournament did not disappear because a volleyball net was missing.
It disappeared because the people responsible for keeping the event on the calendar failed to keep the different parts of the system working together.
Killy did not merely cancel a tournament. The episode has exposed a governance failure that the volleyball community can no longer afford to ignore.
Disclaimer: Views expressed are not of the pblisher
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