Online Reporter
Eddie Chikamhi
Zimpapers Sports Hub
IT is always important for any nation to celebrate its heroes.
Over the years, Zimbabwe has enjoyed modest success at the Olympics stage where the Golden Girls of hockey and iconic swimmer Kirsty Coventry flew the country’s flag high by winning medals.
Lately, the nation has been held spellbound by the potential demonstrated by sprinters Makanakaishe Charamba and Tapiwanashe Makarawu, who became the first from the country to participate in the finals of an Olympics last year.
And, what of Coventry ascending to the helm of the International Olympic Committee last month in a historic feat that challenged century-old biases and prejudices?
Zimbabwe is firmly on the global map!
But these success stories can never be sufficiently told when leaving out the foundational blocks, the ones that set the groundwork decades before.
Zimbabwe first competed at the Olympic Games under that name in 1980, the nation had previously participated at the Games under the name Rhodesia in 1928, 1960 and 1964.
But the playing field was not as level as it is today for all contestants.
Black athletes suffered a myriad of challenges. Apart from the discrimination of the colonial racial policies, they also fell afoul of the ban on Rhodesian athletes from taking part in the Games due to international sanctions.
Talent has always been abounding in Zimbabwe, but it was not easy for athletes of colour during the pre-independence days.
It needed heroes like Cyprian Hatidani Tseriwa, Mathias Kanda, Robson Mlombe, Bernard Dzoma and speed king Artwell Mandaza to unlock doors of hope. It is unfortunate most of these pioneering athletes are now late. But they can still be celebrated posthumously.
“These people were the pioneers in the sport who paved the way for others to follow. They set a mark in terms of defining success,” says Zimbabwe Olympic Committee president, Thabani Gonye.
“They were real talent, they pushed boundaries, and their feat was probably just a glimpse of the potential in this country. These guys set the bar and demonstrated in those years that it can be achieved despite the odds.
“They set landmarks and put the name of the country on the map. That was highly inspirational. I think it’s upon us the generations that followed to try and learn from their legacy. I believe in legacies and the preservation of history. We should honour their legacy,” Gonye explains. Tseriwa became the first and only black Rhodesian on the Olympic team of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland at the 1960 Rome Olympics.
“The black flash” — as he was affectionately known — was already defeating privileged white athletes back home where he broke the Rhodesian three and six miles records during the Olympic trials with times of 14min 25sec. and 30min 16sec. respectively.
He was working as a schoolteacher when he was selected to compete at the 1960 Games. However, he finished in 10th place out of 11 athletes in his heat in the 5 000m race and could not advance. Tseriwa was placed 28th in the 10 000m event out of the 29 athletes that completed the race. Still, he posted a decent time of 15min 02sec in the 5 000m race and then crossed the finish line in the 10 000m event in 30min 47sec. After the Olympics, Tseriwa worked as a coach and was succeeded at the 1964 Games in Tokyo by Kanda and Mlombe, who were also national record holders at the time. Unfortunately, Kanda died of throat cancer in 2009. Tseriwa died in Harare in 2023 at the age of 86 years after a battle with an undisclosed illness.
Back in the day, after the Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965, many other talents bore the brunt of Rhodesian politics. The country was banned from participating in international competition because of the rogue status of the settler regime under UDI.
Bernard Dzoma, who was the first Zimbabwean to break 30 minutes in the 10 000m race, was one of the brightest black prospects denied the right to compete in two successive Olympiads —Mexico, 1968 and Munich, 1972 because of the ban.
The country was only readmitted to the Games at independence in 1980.
A few years back, black Rhodesian athletes were defeating their white counterparts in nearly half of all national championships from 1959 to 1970, to become world-class competitors.
Track and field star Artwell Mandaza held the unofficial world record for the 100m sprint at 9.9 seconds following his feat in a semi-final at the South African Bantu championships at Welkom in 1970.
His time came just short of the world record of 9.95 seconds set by Jim Hines of the United States of America two years earlier.
Nicknamed “Mangula Meteor” due to his exceptional speed and his town of origin Mhangura, Mandaza’s fastest official time, 10.2 seconds, was the fastest time ever run by a Rhodesian athlete and eleventh in the world in 1970. He was named the Rhodesian Athlete of the Year for 1970.
Mandaza shattered white monopoly on the sport with national records in the 100m race (10,2secs), 200m race (20,8secs) 400m race (46 8secs) and 400m hurdle (52 18secs).
He toured West Germany in 1971 where he was the only one from this country to reach the qualifying mark for the 1972 Munich Olympics in the 100m. Unfortunately, the ban prevented him.
“We remember very well the impact the athletes of that era had on our sport, especially when the Chamber of Mines was still active,” says National Athletics Association of Zimbabwe president, Tendayi Tagara.
Mandaza died in 2019.
Veteran sports administrator and former Sports and Recreation Commission board member Titus Zvomuya told Zimpapers Sports Hub that these pioneering athletes not only paved the way for track and field stars.
They also made it possible for Zimbabweans to claim positions of influence in global sports administration.
Peter Tanyanyiwa