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Eddie Chikamhi Sports Reporter

THE Ministry of Sport and Recreation has designed a policy document to root out nepotism, bribery and discrimination on financial grounds in the selection of national teams.The policy will ensure that only the best athletes will only be picked to represent the country at all competitions.

National team selections in almost all sports have caused public outcry and the policy seeks to encourage associations to put excellence as the basis of all selection processes to ensure athletes should be selected purely on merit.

Sport and Recreation Minister Makhosini Hlongwane said there should be a level playing field when it comes to selection of the national teams.

Hlongwane said as long as the athlete is Zimbabwean, no one should be prejudiced on the basis of colour, creed, disability, religion, ethnic group, geographical location and financial capacity.

“Government has had to come up with a Team Zimbabwe selection policy to root out corruption and to systemitise the selection process by providing space to excellence.

“There are sport codes that segregate against the less endowed in terms of money by imposing a participation premium beyond affordability of many to the detriment of sport development in Zimbabwe.

“Others are still arrested by residual colonialist structures that present as enclave sports while neglecting the embrace of inclusion and provision of equal opportunities

“The policy is the compass on the basis of which selection is guided and a key aspect of that is meritocracy. Only deserving athletes must be part of Team Zimbabwe because tax payers’ money has to be optimally deployed,” said Hlongwane.

The document is a template from which various associations would develop and publish their own selection polices which are in line with their own constitutions.

Under the system, selectors should ideally and clearly spell out the stages followed to arrive at the decision to pick each and every athlete.

Hlongwane said the Ministry had been saddled with reports of undeserving athletes or injured players being selected for international tournaments when the medical team should have been consulted.

The Minister noted the country has also suffered mostly at junior teams where, in elite sports like golf, rugby and hockey, players were chosen on the ability of their parents to meet their travel costs at the expense of the talented ones who could not afford air tickets.

He also said the policy aims to promote clean sport by also considering malpractices such as age cheating, doping, match-fixing, hooliganism and drug abuse.

“The approach where national representation is restricted to the chosen few should thus become a thing of the past.

“The selection of athletes should chiefly be based on individual capacity as well as documented, formally agreed and published performance standards.

“It should be noted that violent behaviour, corruption, rent seeking, clientelism, doping and an unethical track record shall also be considered together with performance.”

To deal with bias and ensure fairness, all registered national association shall be required to commission a standing or ad hoc committee or panel responsible for the selection of national team athletes.

Such a panel will be made up of individuals with proven and requisite training, knowledge, expertise and experience. Director of Sport Development and Promotion in the Ministry, Eugenia Chidhakwa, said many associations do not have a clear procedure of selecting their athletes and technical officials.

She said the policy should help level the playing field for deserving athletes, coaches and officials and at the same time instill transparency, fairness and uphold good ethical practices.

According to the selection policy document, associations are urged to have national and regional structures which help with talent identification and monitoring.

The policy, however, is not a one-size fits all.

“The sporting disciplines are different in their nature but what we are going to encourage as the Ministry is that, we look at their selection criteria and we should be able to analyse and critique it.

“And now we have this (document), it means they have to satisfy the requirements according to this document. So we have to look at national association by national association because of the uniqueness of our different sporting disciplines,” said Chidhakwa.

“Whilst we are taking it sport by sport, the sport will have a selection committee. But they will select according to the regulations of their own sporting disciplines. It can’t be one size fits all for national associations.

“We also want technical officials that are selected on merit. It has to be ascertained that the officials have the relevant qualifications to lead our national teams so that they take us to greatest heights.

“We are looking at officials who have a clean disciplinary and ethical profile. It’s very important for the technical officials.

“We don’t want officials who when they go out they go drinking with the athletes; we don’t want officials who have got a history of match-fixing; we don’t want officials who have maybe played a role in age cheating, doping and are still with the athletes; or officials who have been involved in sexual abuse or alcoholism.

“Basically this is the background of the selection policy. We are going to come up with a robust monitoring and evaluation tool that is going to be used by both the Sports Commission and the national associations to make sure that the associations are adhering to the selection policy.”