Ellina Mhlanga Sports Reporter
THE Zimbabwe Karate Union on Saturday approved their code of ethics during their meeting at Elcombe’s restaurant in Harare in an effort to ensure professionalism in the way national teams are set up.

The meeting saw various issues being discussed, but the main focus was on the code of ethics draft the association came up with and balancing the representation of both semi-contact and full-contact in the national executive.

ZKU president Joe Rugwete said they were now expecting to present the document to the Sports Commission who will have the final say before it can be included in their constitution.

Rugwete also indicated that they will be appointing a new full-contact technical director to replace Tendayi Mutikani after some complaints were raised against him during Saturday’s meeting as the full-contact athletes and officials felt neglected.

“There were two topical issues, with the first one being the representation of full-contact and semi-contact styles in the association.

“There is a deliberate move to balance the representation for both full-contact and semi-contact that’s why we appointed two technical directors but it seems the full-contact guys are not happy with their technical director who was absent during the meeting.

“So, what we have done is we have urged them to forward names of the people they feel can represent them.

“We are going to have a meeting between the ZKU executive and all full-contact instructors so that we get to the bottom of what was being said because it was not on the agenda.

“It’s going to happen in the last week of February and after that we will make new appointments of the technical director and management so that we correct the things that have been happening,” said Rugwete.

He said they also discussed the draft on the ethics.

“The second issue was the issue of the code of ethics. There was a healthy debate on the draft and people voted to endorse it, so the next step is to submit it to the Sports Commission.

“The code of ethics is just there to put in place and to make it known the ethics we are expected to uphold as we conduct national team business. It’s mostly for national teams travelling or when they are in camp.

“We want to make it clear that there are certain things we don’t want. especially when it comes to relationships between people because karate is a full-contact sport,” said Rugwete.

The ZKU president said they were also going to appoint a marketing executive and development director as part of implementation of their strategic plan.

“The development director will be dealing with junior development. Mostly we want him to work with Nash and Naph as we go into schools.

“This came out as a result of our strategic plan, its part of implementation of our strategic plan,” said Rugwete.

The appointment of the development director is expected to go a long way in the development of the sport at grassroots level and also considering that it will be a busy year for the juniors with a number of international competitions lined up for different styles.

For the semi-contact styles they will be hoping to compete in the World Junior, Cadet and Under-21 Championship scheduled for November in Indonesia while for those that are in full-contact they will begin their international tournaments with the IFK World Junior Championships in March in Greece.

It will be followed by the Kyokushinkan Juniors and Seniors Championships set for May in Japan. There are also a number of local and regional tournaments lined up for this year.

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