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Masenda amassed 22 votes to beat his challenger, Thabani Gonye, who had 14 votes and he will lead the country’s Olympic sport organisation for the next four years.
It will be his third term of office having taken over the hot seat from Paul Chingoka in 2006.
Speaking after the elections, Masenda said they were going to do all they can to revamp sport in the country and see to it that the nation succeeds at the Olympic Games.
Masenda called on national associations to involve the National Olympic Committee in their events.
“Well I am grateful, I think it shows there is some good work we are doing as an organisation and some good work we are doing as a board for the general assembly to have re-elected me for the third term of office,” said Masenda.
The ZOC president said they were hoping to organise an indaba with the national associations and various stakeholders to come up with a plan on how to move sport forward and noted that the small team they took to last year’s Olympic Games reflected the general state of sport in the country.
“We will try and host what we call a forum or an indaba to discuss where we involve all the sporting associations to try and agree on what is required to move sport in this country forward.
“Right now our fortunes across the board have been dwindling. I mean we are not doing well as we were doing 10 – 15 years ago be at the All-Africa Games or the Olympics.
“So the question we need to look at as we sit together with the associations and various stakeholders is what are the critical things we need to do to move sport forward?” said Masenda.
The ZOC president said they were hoping to have the indaba within the next two months.
“We are working on it, we didn’t have a ZOC forum for this thing, maybe in the next month or two we will have it. Instead of the forum we will have that indaba.
“We just got to get all the people in place and as I mentioned before we have already engaged the SRC and ask them if they can come on board as well and so that we can partner them in it because I think its critical that they be involved,” said Masenda.
Although he lost to Masenda for the president position Gonye was voted one of the two vice presidents and he joins Busi Chindove who retained her post.
Chindove and Gonye got 28 and 21 votes respectively to outwit the other two contestants, Custom Kachambwa, who had 15 votes and Fredrick Ndlovu who had eight votes.
Gonye takes over from Brian Warren who resigned from the Olympic Committee after 15 years.
George Nachamba takes over the post of treasurer from Gonye as he got 26 votes against Godfrey Sunguro’s 10 votes.
Other board members that were elected are Letitia Chipandu and Margie Gibson with 19 votes each, Titus Zvomuya who got 26 votes, Custom Kachambwa with 20 votes, Addison Chiware had 18 votes while Rick Fulton and Lovemore Malianga had 17 and 16 votes respectively to complete the board which is made up of 11 members.
The elections were presided over by ZOC trustee Mike Ndubiwa and the Sport and Recreation Commission director general, Charles Nhemachena.
A total of 36 representatives voted namely the 26 national associations that are in good standing with the National Olympic Committee, eight ZOC board members and two members of the athletes commission.
Speaking after the elections, the ZOC trustee, Ndubiwa urged the board members to work as a team to ensure that sport continues to grow and improve in the country.
Online Reporter