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Joseph Muchechetere

Sikhumbuzo Moyo Senior Sports Reporter
A budget of $600,000 has been drawn up for Team Zimbabwe’s participation in the African Games to be held from September 4-19 in Brazzaville, Congo.

Team Zimbabwe Chef de Mission and veteran sports administrator Joseph Muchechetere said the figure would enable the team to have adequate preparations ahead of and during the Games.

“We already have the budget set and as we speak, we’re busy trying to get the corporate world to assist us. We can’t always rely on the government because these are not government games, but for us all and to therefore rely only on treasury would be unfair,” said Muchechetere, on the sidelines of the ongoing African Union Sports Council Region 5 sports confederations’ forum.

Muchechetere, who is the sports development director of the Sports and Recreation Commission, said despite having kick started their fundraising drive late, he was confident the budgetary requirements would be met.

“It’s not a good idea to always rely on the government. The money might come but it usually comes a bit late when we would’ve lost out on some of our plans. I would therefore like to appeal to the corporate world to be steadfast in assisting Team Zimbabwe,” said Muchechetere.

He said the final athletics team list would be submitted by the end of this week.

“Athletics just gave us their list yesterday (Tuesday) because of the Region 5 Senior Athletics Championships in Mauritius, but by the end of this week that list would have been finalised.”

Zimbabwe will take 85 athletes, who Muchechetere said were all medal hopefuls.

“We’ve stopped taking up every Jack and Jill to these Games. In 2011, we took more than 200 athletes to Mozambique but that never helped us at all because we almost came back home with no medals. Our new stance is that we take only those who are capable of getting medals because the African Games are a platform to showcase top athletes, not budding talent,” said Muchechetere.

He said platforms like the Zimbabwe National Youth Games and the Region 5 Games were for budding talent.

“We can’t showcase mediocrity at the African Games. That’ll mean we don’t want to market Zimbabwe as we’ll not hear our national anthem out there and this is a challenge we’re giving to our national associations,” he said.

The 11th edition of the Games will see 22 different sport codes on show, among them two disability sports, athletics and swimming.

Rugby was set to be the 23rd discipline but was dropped after the sport’s continental confederation indicated that it was not yet ready to participate.

Angola will be the next African Games hosts in 2019.

2015 African Games sport codes:

Athletics, Badminton, Basketball, Beach Soccer, Beach Volleyball,Boxing,Cycling,Fencing, Football,Handball, Judo, Traditional, Swimming, Tennis,Table, Tennis,Taekwondo,Volleyball,Weightlifting,Wrestling

Previous Games hosts: Congo (1965), Nigeria (1973), Algeria (1978), Kenya (1987), Egypt (1991), Zimbabwe (1995), South Africa (1999), Nigeria (2003), Algeria (2007), Mozambique (2011)