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Grace Chingoma, Harare Bureau

TEAM Zimbabwe for next month’s African Games in Morocco will be revealed next week with the management committee busy streamlining the sporting codes that will represent the country.

The management technical team is headed by Martin Dururu.

The Games will run from August 19 to 31 in Rabat and Casablanca.

And the Government, the principal sponsors for the team’s participation at the continental Games, have committed to funding and support.

The chef de mission for the team, Eugenia Chidhakwa, is in Morocco to finalise participation of Team Zimbabwe and securing athletes’ acceptance.

Twenty six 26 sporting codes are on offer at the Games.

However, Zimbabwe will not feature in all the codes and the exact number of athletes would be known once Chidhakwa returns from Morocco.

Some team sporting disciplines such as football, handball and indoor volleyball were required to compete at the Games by qualifying but failed to                                       do so.

Other disciplines also failed to make the grade due to compliance issues.

Dururu said they have since met with each national sports association to discuss the composition of teams and qualification standards.

“We started from a long list and then met with associations looking at athlete by athlete, if they had met the selection process from that stage, and we were then able to do accreditation of the long list. 

“We then met with associations and did accreditation of the short list 

“Next week, we will have the unveiling ceremony to announce the team that will go for the Games.

“There were some teams that were expected to go through qualifiers but others couldn’t, for example, handball failed, indoor volleyball didn’t attend the qualifiers, and football couldn’t make it due to the criteria which was being used by Caf.

“For individual sport, for example athletics, they have to meet certain times.’’

Golf was removed from participating codes as it requires a lengthy period to prepare playing courses which were not available when Morocco was granted the right to host the tournament last year following Equatorial Guinea’s withdrawal. 

However, rowing were forced to withdraw as they would be participating at the Rowing Championships.