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Tafadzwa Chibukwa, Chronicle Reporter

MZILIKAZI High School is the winner of the Bulawayo 2023  public speaking competition.

The event was hosted last Friday at the Zimbabwe Academy of Music by the Rotary Club of Bulawayo South and featured 12 schools.

A total of 34 schools participated in the first rounds of the competition and 12 made it to the finals.

Sharnede Banda, an Upper Six pupil at Mzilikazi High School, came tops beating Priscillah Sithole from Nkulumane High School and Charmaine Shava from St James High into second and third place.

Her winning speech was titled “The power of the tongue” while St James speech was: “Coming home” and Nkulumane high schools’ speech was; “Are friends for life or right now.”

Sharnede walked away with a shield, US$300 and US$100 shopping voucher.

Schools that participated in the finals were Girls College, St Columba’s, Green Gables, Townsend and Dominican Convent high schools.

Sharnede could not hold her excitement when she was named the winner.

Speaking after the competition, she said she was delighted to have won the competition, something she had not foreseen.

“I am quite ecstatic over my victory. This is something I had not prepared for, judging from the competition that I had since day one of the competition. Initially, I always had faith in myself and believed that I would make it but I was not expecting first place, I expected to be second or third,” said Sharnede.

She when she wrote her presentation, she took her time to craft something that would stand out and catch the attention of the audience.

She said she invested her time in research and conducted interviews to find out what people thought and implement it in her presentation.

“I took time to check out past topics that have been chosen by competitors at most times and realised that they tend to make the same mistake, which is choosing topics that are unrealistic. Most competitors forget that they have to impress the audience as well as the judges, which is why I chose a topic that the audience would relate to and understand better.”

I chose my topic “the power of the tongue” in order to highlight the power of our words as people, even though we do not give much attention to it. Most problems that we face as a people start from the words that we speak. My topic was based on educating the audience on the power of our words,” said Sharnede.

President of the Rotary Club Bulawayo South District, Mr Jacob Nyathi extended his congratulations to the winning team of the day.

“We would like to congratulate the winning team for this year’s public speaking competition. Winning such a competition shows that they are quite skilled and they prepared well because this year’s competition was tight and competitive. I was impressed by the use of language and anecdotes in the speeches. This shows that the contestants prepared well for the competition,” he said.

Mr Nyathi said being a Rotarian meant pursuing service before self and they wanted to instil that into the young generation.

He encouraged schools to groom pupils to be leaders of tomorrow through interact clubs.

@Sagepapie14