Bukhosi Mangena Sports Correspondent
BULAWAYO will host the 18th edition of the Confederation of Universities and Colleges Sport Associations (CUSCA) Region 5 Games in August.
The biannual games will see tertiary students from the region’s 10 countries competing in sporting disciplines that will be determined by the host country.
Countries expected to take part in the games include Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland and Zambia.
The last edition of the games was held in Zambia in 2014 where Zimbabwe claimed fourth place behind winners South Africa, Namibia and Botswana.
Zimbabwe Tertiary Institution Sports Union (ZTISU) president Martin Zibwi said they had settled for Bulawayo as the games’ hosts as it had ready sporting venues that hosted the African Union Sports Council (AUSC) Region 5 Under-20 Youth Games in December 2014.
“We sat down and chose Bulawayo because we noticed that it had all proper stadia we needed for the games, having hosted another major regional event in 2014,” said Zibwi.
He said ZTISU had since sent their proposed sporting codes to their regional counterparts and the finalisation will be done at a general meeting from March 18-19 in Bulawayo.
The sports ZTISU have proposed are football, volleyball, darts, basketball, cricket, rugby, chess, tennis and table tennis.
“We have so far set up the LOC as part of our preparations and we have also sent our list of sporting codes that we want to play, but we will meet our counterparts at a general meeting in March to finalise on them. We also expect to improve our performance as the hosts and that means we will channel more resources towards preparations,” Zibwi said.
Hillside Teachers’ College has been chosen as the Games’ Village.