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Zimbabwe/Lesotho: Lesotho Olympic Officials in Country
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 Published by the government of Zimbabwe |
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The Herald (Harare)
12 March 2008
Posted to the web 12 March 2008
Collin Matiza
Harare
TWO top Lesotho National Olympic Committee officials - Tsepo Hlojeng and Mofihli Makoele - are currently in Zimbabwe for a six-day fact-finding mission at the invitation of the Zimbabwe Olympic Committee.
The LNOC chief executive, Hlojeng, and the organisation's secretary-general, Makoele, arrived in Harare on Sunday for their visit, which will, among other things, help in strengthening the ties between their body and ZOC.
ZOC chief executive, Robert Mutsauki, said yesterday that they have put in place a full programme for Hlojeng and Makoele, which will see them interacting and exchanging ideas with several members of ZOC and other key stakeholders during their stay here.
Mutsauki said the visit by the two-top LNOC officials falls under the National Olympic Committee Exchange Programme which is funded by the Olympic Solidarity.
The programme offers sports officials from different countries the opportunity to compare and share ideas, experiences and strategies through a mutually beneficial process.
Hlojeng and Makoele, who are scheduled to return home on Friday, will spend the greater part of their six-day stay in Harare working with the ZOC Secretariat.
They will also meet chairpersons of the various ZOC Commissions, representatives of the Zimbabwe Olympic Academy as well as officials from key stakeholders like the Sports Commission and the Ministry of Education, Sport and Culture.
"You will recall that in January 2006 we had two officials from the National Olympic Committee of Swaziland who were here on a similar mission.
"So, Hlojeng and Makoele are also here to see how we run our organisation. What will actually happen is that they will spend a lot of time (working) with our Secretariat where they will have an overview of the whole organisation and how it operates.
"The programme started yesterday (Monday) and this morning (yesterday) we've been talking about ZOC's 2008 Business Plan with them," Mutsauki said.
During their stay in Harare, Hlojeng and Makoele will also be looking at a full range of programmes and activities run by ZOC and making comparisons with the way they run their own National Olympic body in Lesotho.
Hlojeng and Makoele said their visit would give them the opportunity to share ideas, experiences and strategies with the local Olympic organisation.
"We are basically here to learn and to see how ZOC conduct their business on a daily basis. We also decided to come here because our structures are almost the same but Zimbabwe seem to be two or three steps ahead of us in terms of how they run their Olympic body.
"For example, ZOC have done away with the post of secretary-general and they now have in place a chief executive who oversees the day-to-day operations of the organisation unlike in Lesotho where we still have a secretary-general and a chief executive officer working under one umbrella.
"So, we would like to see how they changed their system from (having) a secretary-general to a chief executive and we'll also like to see how they merged the two posts into one position," Hlojeng and Makoele said.
ZOC have had the post of chief executive in place for the past three years.
Hlojeng and Makoele said the LNOC currently has six full-time employees who work under the organisation's board members.
"In fact, in Lesotho we have board members, who are volunteers, and then the secretariat which is headed by the chief executive and we have some commissions who currently report to the chief executive."
In Zimbabwe, the ZOC Commissions report directly to the board and not to the chief executive.
Hlojeng and Makoele also said athletes from Lesotho, like their Zimbabwean counterparts, have of late been benefiting from Olympic Solidarity scholarships aimed at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China, in August.
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They also revealed that so far Lesotho have four marathon runners who have set qualifying times for the Beijing Games.
"We have three male marathon runners with A Standard qualifying times and one female runner with a B Standard qualifying time."
Although Lesotho have not won any medal at the Olympic Games since joining the International Olympic Committee way back in 1971, they have picked up numerous medals at other major international sporting events such as the All-Africa Games and the Commonwealth Games.
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