By Beverly Bizeki
University of Zimbabwe (UZ) stole the limelight at the Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development (ZIMCODD) Tertiary Institutions Debate 2024 competitions held at Bethany House in Masvingo after bagging four awards from the 20 teams that competed from May 21 to May 22, 2024.
UZ was awarded the best institution and two of its participants Banele Ntuta and Nicole Mushore were awarded best female and best speaker in the competition respectively.
Africa University was second placed with 12 points, followed by National University of Science and Technology (NUST) with 10 points, followed by Bindura University of Science Education (BUSE) with nine points.
On fifth position was another team from UZ with nine points, followed by Harare Polytechnic after which came Midlands State University with Chinhoyi University of Technology placed in the eighth position.
Speaking at the awards ceremony ZIMCODD Senior Programmes officer Lead Tashinga Zamba said the debates were part of a project called Strengthening Institutions and Youth Agencies (SIYA) in Zimbabwe’s Accountability Narrative and said they were targeting youths in tertiary institutions to get an appreciation of the dynamics around and how to fight corruption.
The debates were aimed at giving youths a platform to air their views on corruption and their strategies for building integrity.
“As youths, we are not going to relax and see our country being attacked or continuously beheaded by the animal called corruption. The youths must become champions and integrity icons that are going to drive the process of dealing with corruption. The centrality of young people taking advantage of the demographics in our country is important because we want to create a movement of young people who would say no to corruption.
“This country is ranked very low in terms of corruption index so by this project we intend to achieve a generation of young people that would say we want to stop corrupt practices and live an honest life as well as be hard workers. We want to start by building integrity and instilling a culture of principles that lead us not to engage in corrupt practices,” said Zamba.
Mushore said the engagement was eye-opening to the youths on issues of governance and thanked the organizers for a learning opportunity.
“We are grateful for competitions because they help us get a better understanding of governance and how young people can take an active role in participating in governance issues and how we can start to feel like our voices matter and are being heard.
“It was a tough competition but we are grateful that we did well and our institution came out first. We are looking forward to more learning opportunities. We are no longer going to be shy to speak up in public spaces and allow ourselves to be heard because now we have realized that our voices matter,” said Mushore.
The eight teams will participate in the semifinals to be held on a date to be announced while the finalists are expected to compete at the SADC Summit Forum.
The project has two targets: dealing with corruption issues at the subnational level and building a movement of young people who are eager to challenge corrupt practices.
