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Mthabisi Tshuma Showbiz Correspondent
MEMBERS of the Zimbabwe Junior Parliament representing Bulawayo Metropolitan Province have launched an online short story competition which is now replacing the primary schools public speaking competition that was cancelled as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The public speaking competition dubbed My Zimbabwe @40 was supposed to be held on March 26 at the Large City Hall.
As a way of improvising, the parliamentarians have now put in place a national short story competition named #WeWrite and are encouraging pupils to enter. The contest is being bankrolled by Harare’s 4-H Zimbabwe Foundation in association with the Bulawayo Junior City Council.
Child President, Mukudzeishe Madzivire who is a pupil at Bulawayo’s Christian Brothers College (CBC) called on primary and secondary pupils to apply to enter the competition.
He said the competition will run in two divisions – junior, comprising students from Grades 4 to 7 and the senior division, comprising students in Forms 1 to 6.
“Each entrant will prepare a creative text on a topic selected from an appended list of approved topics. Entries in the junior and senior categories should be no more than 800 and 2 500 words in length respectively.
“A five-person panel of community youth leaders will be responsible for vetting entries based on content, style and creative value with each entry being given a score out of a 100,” said Madzivire.
Topics for junior category (Grades 4 to 7) include President for a day, Th e bully, Th e attack, The flood, Street kids, First day at school, I’m sorry, The day I’ll never forget, Trapped and The biggest mistake. Topics for the senior category (Forms 1 to 6) include Times were tough, The shadow woman, I have something to tell you, The storyteller, The awakening, Turning away, Hotel Africa, Look Away, The Cyclone and At night.
Madzivire said shortlisted entries will be published in a booklet in order to appreciate the linguistic skills of the pupils who have been holed up at homes for over a month since the start of the lockdown. Pupils who use heavily political, racial or social charged language or otherwise culturally unacceptable language will be penalised.
“Shortlisted entries will be compiled into a booklet to be published online. Entries are to be emailed as either a PDF document, a Word document, a scanned handwritten document
or a set of pictures to wewritezim2020@yahoo. com. The cover page of the document should consist of the name, schooling level, contact details of the author, name of the school, contact details of the contact person of the school and an authenticity declaration by the author,” he said.
Deadline for submitting the online short stories is June 16 while the results will be announced on July 1. Those who excel, the Junior President said would be given cash prizes.
“Three cash prizes of ZW$800, ZW$500 and ZW$300 are available for the top three participants in the juniors’ division and three more cash prizes of ZW$1 500, ZW$1 000 and ZW$500 are available for the top three participants in the seniors’ division.”
4-H Zimbabwe Foundation founder, John Muchenje said the competition which has come at a time most schools are closed, should help in ensuring pupils keep abreast with their schooling.
“As schools are closed, we felt there was a need to continue empowering pupils so we hope that this competition will go a long way in improving the literacy rate.
“The competition will also help pupils to keep in touch and remain in the mood of learning,” said Muchenje. — @mthabisi_mthire.
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