adminchairperson of the Zone VI Council of Ministers of Sport.
Botswana’s Minister of Youth, Sport and Culture, Shaw Kgathi, was part of the dignitaries.
The Supreme Council for Sport in Africa (SCSA), based in Yaoundé, Cameroun, divides the 54 African countries into seven Zones.
Zone VI is therefore made up of Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe and its head office is in Botswana.
The Zone has been instrumental in spearheading a lot of policy formulation for the Zone’s member countries in an effort to promote sport and recreation among its members.
Apart from policy formulation, a lot of programmes, projects and activities have been executed through the Zone’s initiatives among them being the popular Zone VI Under-20 Youth Games, the fifth edition which was held in Lusaka, Zambia, from December 7 to 16 2012.
The Zone VI Games have made significant contributions towards talent identification and exposure with a lot of the Zone’s sporting icons having been a part of this regional initiative.
Notable athletes that have been a part of these games include the likes of the iconic World Junior Champion and Olympian Nigel Amos who won a silver medal at the London 2012 Olympic Games in 800m.
The Games have provided a formidable platform for administrators and officials who have gone on to be given assignments at other major continental and international competitions.
Apart from the Games, the Zone has developed the Sport, Education and Accreditation Systems (SEAS), a programme that aims at building and developing capacities of coaches and administrators through sports education, training and development.
Other significant programmes include the Zone VI Academy, Zone VI Awards as well as the Zone VI Museum under which the exhibition that was launched yesterday falls.
SCSA Zone VI takes pride in recording and preserving the Zone’s rich sporting history as a legacy for posterity.
Not only does the history remind our future generations of our sporting heritage, it also forms a unique repository of our identity and creates a knowledge centre for use as reference upon which we can benchmark our successes and achievements in the future.
The exhibition goes on to engender a culture of celebrating our own African identity as a people and invoke a spirit of believing in ourselves as Africans especially among our youth.
What it further does is to challenge us to perform better and harder based on the standards that we will have achieved as shown in our archives and museum records.
Most importantly, we create for ourselves, an opportunity to conduct research on pertinent sport related matters using empirical evidence that is authentic and credible.
The exhibition is expected to run for a period of three weeks during which the public is free to visit and enjoy the story of the proud Southern African sporting heritage.
The public will also be able to enjoy the diversity of the region’s culture as shown in the different Zone VI Games cultural artifacts and elements among them being the mascots, team regalia and other accoutrements.
The SCSA Zone VI has in its strategic focus plans to establish a fully fledged Zone VI Museum and Hall of Fame as well as a Zone VI Library and Knowledge Centre in an effort to strengthen and preserve the Zone’s rich sporting heritage.
Online Reporter