Zimpapers Logo

Minister Makhosini Hlongwane

Sikhumbuzo Moyo, Senior Sports Reporter
Organisers of this year’s rebranded Zimbabwe National Youth Games have been challenged to ensure the Games are a success.

Addressing delegates to the two-day Zimbabwe National Youth Games general assembly launch in Bulawayo yesterday, the Minister of Sport and Recreation Makhosini Hlongwane said reforms for national Games structure in the country meant a lot of work had to be done if the Games are to be a success.

“The kind of technical work that this year’s edition of the Games requires is that you fully apply yourselves to making sure that they are a success and as we often say in policy planning that the devil is in the detail, something always goes wrong when we all become bosses and there is no one who is dealing with detail. The policy thrust of the National Youth Games in their revised format is a very important competition structure of strategy agreed on by the Government and stakeholders. You must always be alive to the main objective, why are we doing this? Is this a calendar issue? At the back of our minds as sports practitioners we must always have that cardinal key imperative as to why we are doing the Games,” said Minister Hlongwane.

This year’s Games will be held in Hwange, Matabeleland North from August 17-27.

Minister Hlongwane said the general assembly has an overall mandate of ensuring the realignment of the competition landscape to include the Under-18 age category which is earmarked for the schools platform and the Under-23 age category for the community sport and recreation platform, tertiary institutions and uniformed services platform.

“In policy planning we say structure follows strategy, when we have the strategy in place, when we have agreed on the broad and minute outlines of the strategy we must then say what is the structure to deliver this strategy. You are moving away from five to eight different sport codes to 22, that has implications in terms of the structure of the Games, in terms of the involvement of the national sports associations, in terms of the budget, in terms of resource mobilisation and in terms of the calibre of the people that will be interacting with the Games,” said Minister Hlongwane.

He said the revised Games’ methodology will see mass talent identification which will see nurturing and identification being achieved.

“The success of this approach will go a long way in sustaining the objectives of the Community Sport and Recreation Club System which was primarily set up to invent the guiding principles for mobilising all Zimbabweans to participate in organised sport and recreation activities from ward level right up to national level. Therefore it is pleasing to see the extent to which the Youth Games are curating the momentum for the success of the Community Sport and Recreation Club System,” said Minister Hlongwane.

The director for sports in the ministry Eugenia Chidakwa, acting SRC director general Joseph Muchechetere, Matabeleland North Provincial Administrator Latiso Dlamini and other senior Government officials attended the launch.