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SUBJECT — Legacy of the Africa Union Youth Games
YOUR Excellency, as a plebeian it is not common that one thinks and acts on the impulse of writing a letter to the highest office in the land. This is so because the author is indisposed to courting melodrama. I feel strongly about the need for an effective post Games strategy that will ensure that we immortalise your gallant efforts of hosting the Games in Bulawayo.

As widely documented, amid all misgivings about Bulawayo as an ideal venue, you had to stamp your authority and provide leadership on the matter. It is against this background that as beneficiaries we are more than keen to come forward with constructive ideas to avert detractors from harvesting the “I told you so” bounty.

Allow me Your Excellency to give both deductive and inductive reasoning for my plea. I will then propose an indicative course of action as the last part of my short letter.

You recall Sir, that Greece hosted the Olympics in 2004.

The Greek government invested heavily in sporting infrastructure. By 2012 that legacy had collapsed. Let me allow Helena Smith writing for the Guardian newspaper to give a graphic picture of the state of Olympic facilities by 2012;

The clocks have stopped along the corridors of endless basement offices, outside changing rooms beneath and around the site’s velodrome.

The light fixtures are rusty; there’s tumbleweed almost everywhere and graffiti on the walls. Behind their peeling paint several of the buildings are in decay and locked behind wrought-iron fences, dozens of bigger edifices and hundreds of little office blocks are standing idle . . . Up the road, world-class venues, purpose-built to host baseball, fencing, hockey, softball, kayak and canoeing events stand eerily empty . . . In the working class district of Nikaia, north of the port of Piraeus, the weightlifting centre has almost never been used since the Games, at least for sports purposes. In the northern suburb of Galatsi, a giant 8,000-seat stadium also built in 2004 to host table tennis and rhythmic gymnastics stands empty

Our own version of the Olympics — the 1995 All-Africa Games have not faired better either. Most facilities that the government invested in are now derelict. When the aquatic complex was built and used during the 1995 Games it was touted as one of the best facilities on the continent yet Cde Godfrey Mandimika the Chitungwiza District Public Works Officer says it last functioned in 2002!

The Mbare Netball Complex, a multi-purpose complex which can host tennis, athletics, netball and basketball is now used for church events.

Cce President, these examples prove that while it is usually challenging to put together infrastructure for such Games, it is even harder to maintain the standards once the athletes, the officials and diginitaries have left. This is not necessarily a Zimbabwean shortcoming but as illustrated through the Athens example, it is a foible of administrators across the world.

In the case of Bulawayo we should not forget that part of your efforts to bring the Games to Bulawayo was  also to cheer us up given the de-industrialisation witnessed in the last decade. The political economy of the city and its outlying areas has been drastically altered.

It behoves upon well meaning bureaucrats  and thought leaders to complement the political leadership by pioneering a new  economic trajectory of course underpinned by the Zim-Asset programme. I believe that sport can be and should be one of the many options considered not as just recreational but as a solid economic activity. The Africa Youth Games gives us the necessary springboard to test this hypothesis but on condition we get the fundamentals right.

My suggestion Cde President is for a special Presidential Task team that would be given the responsibility of overseeing the effective implementation of the post games strategy. The  organising committee led by Madam Khonzani Ncube has done exceptionally well and has served us in the national interest but their mandate ends with the final whistle.

This task team should have the means and authority to harness stakeholders to ensure multiple sport initiatives are established, nurtured and supported. Domiciling it in the Office of the President will ensure the task force has the necessary executive support and benefit from the solid results based management supervisory model being used in the Presidency. Without being ahead of oneself Cde President, it would be important for this task team to broadly understand and learn about how other countries in similar situations have managed to preserve and protect their investment in sporting infrastructure.

Just as an indication, the revamped swimming pool can be the centre for promoting swimming talent in Bulawayo.

A plethora of community clubs can be established and the Luveve and Barbourfields swimming pools can be rehabilitated to play a feeder role to the main pool.

Regular competitions  at local and international level can be held at the pool instead of transforming it into a wedding venue. The new world class athletics stadium can be utilised in creating solid seasonal athletics competitions that are properly branded to attract both corporate sponsors and household names in the world of athletics to endorse the venue.

Downstream benefits will be immense if an elaborate plan is calibrated towards achieving this goal of sustained functionality and expansion of sports facilities. This should also include harnessing the contemporary sport for development models and promoting sport entrepreneurship.President, these are my abridged views given the fact that you are busy with matters of the State. We thank you once again for choosing Bulawayo and hope that by taking some of these ideas we would not disappoint you in the long term in preserving the legacy of these Youth Games.

Yours Sincerely,

Innocent Batsani Ncube
Bulawayo Resident