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Sikhumbuzo Moyo Senior Sports Reporter
THE local organising committee for the forthcoming African Union Sports Council Region Five Under-20 Games has begun canvassing for a name for the official mascot of the competition.
The committee has already sent pictures of the mascot to Bulawayo schools with the winning student and schools set to receive a prize.

Addressing a Zanu-PF delegation on Tuesday during a meeting called by the local organising committee to drum up support for the Games, head of the marketing committee and Premier Soccer League chief executive officer Kennedy Ndebele said the committee will soon be opening up submissions from schools.

“We will go through all the suggestions. Pupils have been asked to submit their proposed names and the reasons for that, the winning student and his or her school will receive a prize for that,” said Ndebele.

However, there were reservations from the floor about the presentation and look of the proposed mascot which is a diagrammatic representation of an athlete with an elephant head. An elephant is on the Bulawayo coat of arms.

Bulawayo’s provincial affairs Minister Nomthandazo Moyo felt the general appearance of the mascot was not presenting a sportsperson but instead, the presentation appeared to be that of a tired sportsperson.

She asked the committee to come up with a more imaginative mascot.

“I get the concerns and I think we have to ask the artist to redraw our mascot, as a matter of urgency,” said Ndebele with the concurrence of the Games’ chief executive officer Henry Manzungu.

A mascot is any person, animal, or object thought to bring luck or anything used to represent a group with a common public identity.

Fifteen countries, 10 from the Southern Region and five specially invited countries will converge on Bulawayo and compete in nine sports codes, namely athletics, athletics for the visually impaired, basketball, boxing, football, netball, swimming and tennis.

Zimbabwe, as the host country was given the prerogative of adding one more sport code and chose golf.The five specially invited countries are the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mauritius, Madagascar, Seychelles and Tanzania.