I write this article at a time when we have celebrated the International Day of Peace under the theme Make Peace Happen. I am writing this email at a time when we have managed to rally young people to unite and fight for peace through sport under the Zimbabwe Youth Organisations’ Network (ZIYON) which is a network of 25 youth organisations working together to enhance the role of the youth in community and national development processes. (picture by: http://rastaheadwraps.com)



At ZIYON we strive to create lasting peace in the different communities where our members are based. We are coming from the Youth Sector, a sector which is blamed as the leading sector in perpetrating violence as well as being the sector with the greatest number of victims of political violence. This why we have launched our Sports for peace campaign in an effort to take the discourse about peace to all 10 provinces in Zimbabwe.



Our project is acknowledging that there is a struggle that has to be fought in Zimbabwe. We are fighting a pro-peace, pro-freedom and pro-youth participation battle because we are being left out in different processes. We are in this battle to create peaceful societies because in the absence of peace our future will continue to hang in the balance.



We are in this battle for peace because our fathers in the African Union, in their collective wisdom want us to make peace happen. We are in this battle to advocate and create space for youth participation. We are in this battle through sports because of the need to engage in comprehensive peace building processes to reduce the possibility of future conflicts.



It is critical to understand the role of youths in politics. Youths are always needed by political parties. They are needed just close to election time in the field and not in offices for violent reasons. We as young people must create a system to develop our ideas, run our own budget and implement our own projects. In short we want young people to use their time in a manner that will assist them to develop. Our youth must establish themselves as independent and objective thinkers who can use sports and other art forms as a medium to communicate pro peace gospel. They must become weapons of mass instruction in their communities.

 

We are of the firm view that National healing must begin in the communities. If they are to have an impact, peace building initiatives must be driven by the community. This is why we as a youth network have seen it feet to establish permanent sporting facilities and structures in grassroots communities. These structures and facilities will be community owned with the youth taking a leading role. We want young people from Lupaka to Gachekache, from Mutyorahoto to Chidiya, from Shirichena to Kuponda to benefit from this programme. We want those from Chipusha, Mandedza, and our beloved schools and universities to bounce that basketball and score a basket for peace. We want those in Mbare and Bindura to spike or volley violence out of their communities through that volley ball court. Our rural areas must be sensitized about the need to have lasting peace. Our sports for peace programme will call communities to action and empower them to resist influence from political parties to engage in violent activities.  We reiterate that no amount of dining and winning in plush hotels will bring national healing and lasting peace in our country. We need to engage communities at grassroots level. Our sporting activities can do that for us.



We want to complement initiatives by the Organ on National Healing, NANGO and other civil society organisations. We want to call our young people to action and make the UN Year of the youth count. We want the decade of African Youth as declared by the African Union top be a decade in which we as Zimbabweans preach the gospel of peace and deliver it on people’s doorsteps. We believe that an environment littered with fear, mistrust, violence and intimidation will not assist this country realize the full potential of its young people. It will not assist us to move forward as a country. In the absence of peace this country will not prosper.



We call upon the young people of Zimbabwe to contribute in devising concrete strategies for the sector’s engagement in peace building process. We must not continue to be divided along political lines. Divisions have made it difficult for us to come up with common positions and approaches to national processes. Our sports for peace programme is making an attempt to create platforms that brings together young people from different backgrounds so that young people can begin to find each other and locate areas of cooperation especially when it comes to the national healing process. Through sports we promise to bring the national healing process to people’s doorsteps in a language that they will not only understand but will also enjoy listening to.



Our campaign will see us donating equipment to institutions of higher learning, schools, youth centers, orphanages, rural communities and other community spaces which have been made available to us by city authorities. In total our programme will donate 120 sporting sets around the country. In our first phase we will donate equipment for volleyball, basketball and table tennis. We have already received this equipment and youth organisations have started to collect their equipment. We will also partner with other stakeholders to build capacity and skills of young people in these sports before we can move to other sporting disciplines. We hope that this way young people will locate their talent in sports and not in how well they can bit their own mothers and fathers in their communities who might have different views from theirs politically.



We as a network believe that our future begins today. In fact the future began yesterday and this is why we want young people to start being masters of their own destiny today. At this defining moment in our country we should be able to succeed as young people. We know the journey will be tough as the road to success has many detours because it is always under construction. We want to make peace happen through sports. LETS DO IT.



By Michael Mabwe

Spokesperson

Zimbabwe Youth Organisations Network

GYCA Zimbabwe National Focal Point

National Association of NGOs National Youth Chairperson