Minister hopeful of sports museum benefit

YOUTH Sport, Arts and Recreation Minister, Kirsty Coventry, says the hosting of the African Union Sports Council Region Five sports museum is going to benefit the country.

Zimbabwe signed a Memorandum of Understanding last Wednesday with the AUSC Region Five that will see the museum housed at the National Sports Stadium.

Coventry revealed she is hoping, hosting the regional museum will lead to the creation of a national museum, which specifically celebrates local athletes and their achievements.

Some of the success stories that have emerged from this country include the Golden Girls who won a gold medal at the Olympic Games in 1980.

Coventry is Africa’s most

Olympian.

The inspiring stories of the likes of Peter Ndlovu, who became the first African to break into the English Premiership in 1992, and the late Artwell Mandaza, the greatest sprinter to emerge from this country, as well as golf legend Nick Price, who is a threetime major championships winner, are some of the many sporting success stories by Zimbabwean athletes.

“When it was brought to my desk I thought it was a great opportunity. One, we are centrally located as Zimbabwe,'' Coventry said.

''We are trying to promote ourselves, we are trying to work towards becoming a sport powerhouse. decorated

''By having, and hosting the regional museum, we have a lot of history.

“But not only that, I am hoping and selfishly hoping, that it will then allow us to create our own museum and celebrate some of our past heroines and icons in sport.

''We have a strong history and we need to be proud of it.

“And, it also allows for athletes today to look at the museum and dream about the future and dream about one day being in the museum.

''My hope is that the regional museum will lead to us having our own national sports museum.''

AUSC Region Five chief executive, Stanley Mutoya, said they were looking at fundamental issues which include preservation of the region’s sporting heritage.

“The first issue is the preservation of our own sporting heritage where we don’t seem to see any records that are being kept,'' he said.

''Any heritage repository that can help us reflect on our past success, our trajectory going forward in sport and to be able to measure where are going, where we are coming from.

“When we measure success we don’t want to measure it only on the basis of the number of medals we have made.

'' We want to look at the inventions we have made, we want to look at developments we have made, we want to look at community developments that we have made.

“We want to talk about the story that we have developed as a people and be able to say it from our own perspective.''