Sport in Zimbabwe has a long and interesting history. The people of Zimbabwe are very keen sports fans, and the government itself encourages its people to be physically active by building facilities and gyms to accommodate their sporting interests. Many famous athletes have come from this country, and the country has long punched above its weight, with international success in cricket, tennis, rugby union, field hockey, and swimming among other sports.
Although Zimbabwe has produced many athletes that have competed for Zimbabwe, there are also many athletes who learned their sport in Zimbabwe, but have chosen to represent other countries, due to greater earning opportunities abroad.
Below are details of sports, sporting events and sports people related to Zimbabwe.
All content from Kiddle encyclopedia articles (including the article images and facts) can be freely used under Attribution-ShareAlike license, unless stated otherwise. Sport in Zimbabwe Facts for Kids.
Olympic Games
Zimbabwe participated for the first time at the Olympic Games under its current name in 1980, and has sent athletes to compete in every Summer Olympic Games since then. Previously, it competed at the Games under the name Rhodesia in 1928, 1960 and 1964. Zimbabwean athletes have won a total of eight medals - three golds, four silvers and one bronze - in two sports.
Read also: Egypt Sports Channel Details
Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) first participated as Rhodesia in the Olympic Games in 1928. Rhodesia was then absent until 1960 when the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland competed under the name of Rhodesia in Rome. Southern Rhodesia then competed alone under the banner of Rhodesia once again and for the last time in 1964. The country thus always competed as a British territory.
It was unable to take part in the 1968 Games in Mexico, due to the Mexican government's interpretation of regulations on passports. It never successfully competed following Ian Smith's declaration of an independent Rhodesian republic in 1970. Although it returned to the Games in 1972, Rhodesia was expelled by the International Olympic Committee four days before the opening ceremony, under pressure from other African countries, which did not recognise the legitimacy of the Rhodesian state and threatened a boycott.
The country's successor state, Zimbabwe, made its Olympic début in 1980.
Kirsty Coventry at the Beijing 2008 Olympics
Zimbabwe has won eight Olympic medals. One was a team medal in field hockey at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. The other seven medals were won by the amazing swimmer Kirsty Coventry. She won three medals at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens and four at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Of Zimbabwe's 8 Olympic medals, 7 have been won by swimmer Kirsty Coventry.
Read also: The Legacy of Baba Yara
Zimbabwe has also done well in swimming at the Commonwealth Games and All-Africa Games. Kirsty Coventry won 11 gold medals in these different competitions.
Football
The most popular sport is football. Football’s uneven development in the country is a legacy of decades of racial segregation. The Zimbabwe national football team is called The Warriors. The Zimbabwe women's national football team is known as the Mighty Warriors. One of the biggest sporting facilities in Zimbabwe is the multi-use National Sports Stadium. At this 60,000 capacity stadium football matches and rugby union matches often are conducted.
The Zimbabwe Premier Soccer League is the top professional football league in Zimbabwe. There are 16 teams in this league. FC Platinum was the champion in 2018. Dynamos F.C. has won the most league titles.
There are two professional soccer leagues, the Zimbabwe Football Association and the CBZ’s Premier League. There are two main cup competitions played in Zimbabwe, both are knockout tournaments, the first is the Mbada Diamonds Cup with Highlanders FC being crowned champions of the 2013 edition and the Banc ABC Super 8 which was won by Shabanie Mine in 2013 as well. Of late the Football administrators have partnered with a local company to launch another cup game - Chibuku Super Cup. The CBZ FA Cup was first created as the Southern Rhodesia Castle Cup in 1962.
Some famous Zimbabwean footballers include Benjamin "Benjani" Mwaruwari, who played as a striker. Peter Ndlovu also played for many top English football clubs for twelve seasons. Another well-known player is Bruce Grobbelaar, a goalkeeper, who played for Liverpool F.C.
Read also: Fraud in Youth Sports
Before majority rule in 1980, Rhodesia (colonial Zimbabwe) was briefly a member of FIFA, and even played a World Cup qualifying match in 1969. A year later, the team was suspended from global football. In the 1970s, football continued domestically under John Madzima, one of the vice-presidents of Rhodesia’s national football association, who successfully launched a coup against the white leadership. After independence, Madzima became the first head of the Zimbabwe Football Association (ZIFA).
ZIFA has had organizational and financial difficulties and few continent-wide successes. Football passed from industrializing Britain to the colony then known as Southern Rhodesia in 1890 by soldiers, and later missionaries and white settlers.
For whites, football served an important purpose: a way of building a (white) Rhodesian identity. But, as elsewhere, sport was also a tool of social control. Mine workers from Transvaal brought football to Rhodesia’s black community about 1923. Township clubs sprang up almost overnight due to the logical rules and low costs of the game.
In Southern Rhodesia, football was organized around private clubs. The most important black elite football clubs were Highlanders FC in Bulawayo (founded in 1926) and Dynamos FC in Harare (founded in 1963). The Highlanders tended to have Ndebele fans while Dynamos had Shona fans. Football games saw political protest, especially when playing white teams.
Because football was organized around private clubs, racial discrimination was common. White clubs were often ethnic based with separate clubs for Scottish, Portuguese, and Greek settlers, for instance. The difference between black and white clubs was stark. Black clubs had to lease or share sports facilities. While some clubs became integrated and participated in multiracial competition, most did not.
Apartheid South Africa affected Rhodesian sport as well. Only segregated teams could play in or tour South Africa. Nonetheless, football dwarfed all other sports. A rugby cup final could attract 6,000 spectators.
The Southern Rhodesia Football Association (SRFA) applied for FIFA membership in 1961, three years after admitting black players and the national team was racially integrated. In 1963, Dynamos FC won the Austin Cup, a major cup tournament that was until then whites-only. However, most SRFA-affiliated clubs remained white, while black clubs were affiliated to a separate organization, the Southern Rhodesian African Football Association.
Mixed-race and South Asian clubs were affiliated to the Southern Rhodesian Soccer Board. These competing organizations merged into the Football Association of Rhodesia (FAR) and officially joined FIFA on May 21st, 1965. But, racial discrimination did not disappear.
Just six months after FIFA membership, Rhodesia’s white settlers unilaterally seceded from Great Britain and established an increasingly draconian police state. Mandatory United Nations sanctions excluded athletes from sport competition abroad. For FIFA, nothing changed. Stanley Rous, infamous for his support of apartheid South Africa’s membership, was still FIFA President.
Rhodesia was therefore eligible to compete in the 1970 World Cup in Mexico. Because other African teams would boycott, Rhodesia had to be moved to the East Asia/Oceania group. Ultimately, the compromise was that South Korea, Japan, and Australia played in Seoul, with the winner (Australia) to play Rhodesia in Maputo.
After the 1970 World Cup, Rhodesia was suspended from FIFA. FIFA recognized teams from colonies and from independent countries, but Rhodesia under UN sanctions did not fit either category. When, two years later, the FIFA Executive Committee recommended lifting the suspension, the African membership revolted.
Rhodesian football turned inward. Racial segregation continued to exist in football even though the overwhelming majority of clubs, players, and fans were nonwhite. John Madzima led a revolt by the African clubs. In October 1973, he formed the competing National Football Association of Rhodesia (NFAR), which absorbed the clubs and players as well as the major cups and sponsorships. The old FAR became defunct.
In February 1974, Madzima applied for FIFA membership. In April 1980, Zimbabwe achieved majority rule. FIFA lifted the suspension and Madzima became ZIFA head.
Zimbabwe has been somewhat mediocre in African and World Cup football since then. It is among a handful of African countries that has never made it past the top-16 in the African Cup of Nations, though it had a comeback in recent years at the Southern African regional level.
National Sports Stadium in Harare
Cricket
Cricket is the second most popular sport in Zimbabwe, right after football. The national team is one of 12 elite Full Members that play Test cricket. This big win helped Zimbabwe get "test status" in 1992. They had more international success in the early 2000s. Andy Flower, a Zimbabwean player, was even ranked as the best batsman in the world back then.
However, issues of corruption, mismanagement, emigration and a decline in funding led to a series of poor performances in Test cricket into the past decade. Zimbabwean cricket is, once again, in a state of disarray and chaos. Its performance in international matches and tournaments is pitiful.
Back in 1934, nine immigrant men formed the Young Merchants Cricket Club in the city of Salisbury in Southern Rhodesia. Seven years later they renamed it the Oriental Cricket Club. They had all crossed the Indian Ocean in recent decades from Gujarat on the western coast of the Indian subcontinent looking for opportunities in a new colony. They were the first Indian cricket team in the country.
Cricket was brought to Rhodesia in the late 19th century by the country’s first white settlers. These men called themselves “pioneers” for whom the bat-and-ball game represented a legacy of colonialism and empire. The Oriental Cricket Club aspired to become ideal colonial subjects by using the game as a way to claim affinity with white settler society, rather than the majority African population.
For them, the game of the empire provided a means of inclusion in the elite sporting life of the colonial city. But as the white settler government consolidated Rhodesia’s status as a self-governing colony, discrimination against non-European populations intensified. Cricket was an elite sport requiring specialised equipment and grounds that remained out of the reach of ordinary Africans. For their part Indians faced discrimination whenever they played against white teams.
As a result, Indian cricket teams in Southern Rhodesia, including the Oriental Cricket Club, began to use the sport as a means of connecting to an Indian tradition of the game and a nationalist Indian identity. Postcolonial India began to emerge as a strong contender in international cricket, triumphing over its former coloniser.
Rather than only playing against white teams, the Oriental members also played against other diasporic Indian cricket teams in the region. In 1969, the centenary of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth, the Oriental team officially opened its new grounds at the Sunrise Sports Club, located in the Indian neighbourhood of Ridgeview in Salisbury. The team’s name was officially changed to Sunrise.
As the 1970s progressed, it became clear that the tides of change that had permeated the rest of the continent were penetrating Rhodesia’s borders. Still under white minority rule, the country had declared unilateral independence from the UK in 1965. But international sanctions and civil war threatened the white government’s hold, and by 1979, change was in the air.
Fearing retaliation for the years of oppression if a black-majority government came to power, white Rhodesians were unsure of their status in the new country. Several Indian players and former Sunrise members, including the all-rounder and left-handed batsman Ali Shah, were drafted into the international team, representing both their community as well as their country. But this period of hope and change did not last long.
In 1995, Henry Olonga was elected the first black player to the international team. His selection caused waves in Zimbabwean cricket. Black members of the Zimbabwe Cricket Union leadership pushed for the selection of more black players. The remaining white members dug in their heels and insisted on keeping mostly white players on the team.
Several white players left. And the conflict over the racial composition of the national side translated to the local league level. Once dominated by white cricket teams, it has now been reduced to a few clubs who still participate in social tournaments.
Sport, and specifically cricket, provided a way for Indians to make themselves visible, and navigate the racial hierarchies and structures of colonial and postcolonial society in Zimbabwe. While cricket has been seen as both a British and an Indian sport, the case of the Sunrise team suggests that they drew from both these inheritances in the 1980s to aspire towards an African citizenship.
Other Sports
Other sports like rugby union, tennis, golf, and netball are also well-liked.
Rugby union is an important sport in Zimbabwe. It has been played there since the late 1800s. The Zimbabwe national rugby union team has been at the Rugby World Cup twice. Excluding South Africa, Zimbabwe is one of only 3 nations in Africa to qualify for the Rugby World Cup, the others being Namibia and the Ivory Coast.
Some of the best rugby players often go to countries like the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Australia.
Zimbabwe has a long history in golf. There are many golf courses for the country's population. Zimbabwean golfers often compete on the Sunshine Tour, where they have a friendly rivalry with South Africa. In golf, Zimbabwe reached the final of the Dunhill Cup in 1995.
Zimbabwe has also competed in major tennis tournaments like Wimbledon and the Davis Cup. The Black Family is very famous in Zimbabwean tennis. This family includes Wayne Black, Byron Black, and Cara Black.
Field hockey has a lot of players in Zimbabwe, second only to football. Many boys and girls play it in schools. Zimbabwe has three special fields for hockey. The Zimbabwe women's national field hockey team won a gold medal at the first Olympic hockey tournament in Moscow in 1980. This was a huge achievement! Recently, it was harder for them to play in international games.
There is even a professional snowboarder from Zimbabwe named Michael Lewer.
| Sport | Notable Achievements |
|---|---|
| Field Hockey | Gold Medal at the 1980 Moscow Olympics (Women's Team) |
| Swimming | 7 Olympic Medals won by Kirsty Coventry (3 in 2004, 4 in 2008) |
| Golf | Finalist in the 1995 Dunhill Cup |
| Rugby Union | Qualified for the Rugby World Cup twice |
Popular articles:
tags:
