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Makhosini Hlongwane

Ellina Mhlanga Harare Bureau
THE Minister of Sport and Recreation Makhosini Hlongwane yesterday emphasised on the importance of national sport associations coming up with clear resource mobilisation strategies and noted that they should not leave everything to the government when it comes to funding. The minister had a familiarisation tour with the National Federation of Zimbabwe Bodybuilding and Fitness (NFZBBF), Tennis Zimbabwe(TZ), Zimbabwe Aquatic Union (ZAU) and Zimbabwe Table Tennis Union at their respective offices in Harare yesterday.

All the associations were led by their presidents with the NFZBBF led by Kenny Murugweni while Regis Bhunu fronted his team from TZ and Mary Kloppers headed the crew from ZAU. Table tennis was led by John Muringani

The associations raised several issues affecting them with some of the major concerns highlighted revolving around funding and lack of support from the government. Hlongwane acknowledged the challenges but said it is not the government’s sole responsibility to fund national associations and encouraged them to come up with clear resource mobilisation strategies.

“First and foremost I want to make it clear that government does not necessarily have a responsibility to fund sport associations. Having said that, it is important that people that populate our sport associations have a very clear resource mobilisation strategy so that they are able to necessarily resource mobilise for their associations.

“The government to the extent that it may be possible to do that may come in to complement the efforts already underway within the various sport associations as far as resource mobilisation is concerned. “But government should not be the one source of funding for all sport associations, it’s certainly not going to be possible. It’s not sustainable for government to do that.

“It’s very clear that most of our associations are struggling from a resource point of view . They are also struggling from a point of view of installed capacity utilisation as far as human capital is concerned, issues around governance still continue to come up. “There are some associations that are doing well but we also have a fair share of those that are not doing very well,” said Hlongwane.

Hlongwane was expressed concern with the fact that most of the associations are operating without permanent offices and said there is need to change the approach. “We noticed that some of the associations are operating from people’s houses and we discouraged that. We think that associations must have addresses not only as way of complying with governance issues but also as a way of ensuring that communication structures are in place.

“You can imagine a whole national association operating from somebody’s house. It means that something is not quite in place and that should change. “As far as the whole sport movement in Zimbabwe is concerned we are going to try engender a paradigm shift in terms of that approach. “Moving away from individualisation of the sport codes to making sure that they are well spread across the country and are managed by people who know what they are doing.

“It’s an issue that we have to discuss with our associations and make sure that they understand the imperative of having an address that bears the name of the association just as a basic requirement especially where you are using the country’s name as a prefix to your own name. I mean you walk into a national association and it’s like you are walking into a kraal or something like that. We think that is not the way to doing.

“The one way we could assist as a ministry is that government has got available sport infrastructure. “The National Sports Stadium has installed capacity for offices and government does not charge that much for space. A lot of these sport associations could move to the National Sports Stadium to take up that space that is available for use as office space.

“It will go a long way in terms of addressing the challenges of accommodation for most sport associations,” said Hlongwane. The Minister also encouraged the national associations to strike gender balance in their executives, good corporate governance and sport development programmes with the emphasis on grassroots development in all sport codes.

Hlongwane noted that there is need to spread sport to all parts of the country.