BY DANIEL NHAKANISO
THE Zimbabwe Rugby Union (ZRU) has taken the period of inactivity due to the moratorium imposed on all sports as a result of the Covid-19 lockdown to revamp its structures and come up with a raft of policies to grow the game of rugby and spread it to previously marginalised areas and stakeholders.
After years of stagnation due to lack of support, the women’s game in Zimbabwe has experienced unprecedented growth over the last few years, with the major highlight coming in July, 2019 when the country hosted South Africa’s Under-20 girls’ team for a historic series in Harare.
The visit by neighbours South Africa came on the back of some consistent competitive performances by Zimbabwe’s Under-18 girls’ teams at the Under-18 SA Girls Rugby week tournament since 2015.
Zimbabwe women’s rugby has also witnessed an increase in the number of young girls taking up the sport at school level, but a lack of support structures, cultural norms and household expectations, and the limited nature of funding continue to hinder the development of rugby for women and girls in the country.
ZRU has, however, come up with a grand plan to promote gender equality and an equal playing field for women in this male-dominated sport.
“Some of the raft of measures taken and approved are that there is an urgent need to reduce the gap between the men’s and women’s game by bridging the difference that exists between the two. To bridge the gap, the union will with immediate effect introduce compulsory mentoring programmes whereby all senior men’s teams must have a woman sitting on their first team’s technical bench either as the assistant coach or an understudy of the head coach,” says the union. ZRU says plans are at an advanced stage to introduce compulsory mentorship programmes where all senior men’s teams must have a woman sitting on their first team’s technical bench.
“The management team for all women’s teams must with immediate effect have at least two women in influential decision-making positions. To ensure that the women in these positions aren’t just figureheads without the technical grounding, the union resolved to develop capacity within the women’s ranks by ensuring that for all training and education programmes, women will have a reserved quota of places for them across all the programmes delivered by the World Rugby educators across all strands. To top it all, given that all registered provincial teams have women’s teams, plans are at an advanced stage to introduce the Women’s Super-Six League in 2021.”
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For the first time in the country’s history, ZRU is also planning to offer contracts to 20 female players who will form the nucleus of the country’s rugby sevens and 15s women national teams.
“With the appointment of the high performance team coaches, the ZRU is finalising the contracts for the engagement of 20 women to be on contract with the union. The women will be the nucleus of the national women’s Sables and Cheetahs teams. As they play, they will assume guardianship roles for the upcoming talented players in the schools in their communities and they will be used as vehicles for change in the perception of women in the community and the fight against social injustices against women,” ZRU said in its new monthly newsletter.
The new plans by ZRU come after one of its board members and the current women’s rugby boss, Abigail Kawonza, was last week appointed to the Rugby Africa women rugby advisory committee’s subcommittee for leadership, training and conferences.
Rugby Africa’s women’s advisory committee was established in September 2019 to advise all Rugby Africa committees on positive gender inclusion practices, with a particular focus on women’s rugby.
