AFTER the 42 Zimbabwe Nomads Nationals held in Bulawayo last week, the tournament coordinator, Tonderayi Gavu speaks to the Golf Zone. Below is how their discussion turned out:
GZ: Can you tell us a brief background of the the Nomads Movement?
TG: The Nomads Movement started in about 1916, with Mike Florence being the founder member. Then it spread to Zimbabwe later on, first having the Mashonaland Club, then Matabeleland, and then Midlands. Our two main objectives are furtherance of the game itself, and then supporting the less fortunate members of our communities. These nationals are. What happens is that every year, in each country, we come together. Here in Zimbabwe, we've got the three clubs, and this year, Matabeleland is hosting the 42nd Zimbabwe Nationals, which we have dubbed Trailblazers, in honour and celebration of our founder members. We are saying that other than just playing golf, is there anything else that we can do? So, this is mainly where you find your business leaders, different professionals coming together and playing. Our nationals this year are that theme, Trailblazers. We are celebrating also all those who we have served, our past national chairmen, our past captains.
The other thing that we also recognize is the environment where we play golf. Here in Matabeleland, you see on our logo, we have the elephant emblem, which signifies the Matabele people.
As you know, King Lobengula used that in his royal seal. So, we tried to capture that element to show how we appreciate playing in this region, in this environment.
GZ: How big is the Nomads community?
TG: In terms of members, Mashonaland has over 160, here it's over 80, probably close to 90, then the Midlands has around about 60. So that should take us all just over 300 members in Zimbabwe. At the Zimbabwe Nationals, other countries are represented here. From South Africa they are being led by their national captain John Kayula. He is actually the first person of color to be national chairman in South Africa since the movement was founded in 1959. Then we also have members from Zambia, Botswana, Eswatini.
We have representation in England, New Zealand and Australia as well.
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GZ: You mentioned fundraising for charities…?
TG: As Nomads, what we do is that we do not target charities ourselves. We have charities that write maybe through our various social media platforms, or work we would have done elsewhere, and then they come and appeal for sponsorship. Every year, we have a vice captain who will be tasked to fundraise for those charity groups. In a way, we respond to those charities that would have requested for sponsorship and support. We have worked with Childline, we have worked with Island Hospice and then also there is Mpilo where you have those children who require shunts. There is a challenge in that and we have a fundraising initiative towards that.
GZ: You are having about 225 players here. Can you take us through the challenge of just preparing for the tournament of this match?
TG: Any golfer will tell you managing a field that huge is challenging but we allowed our field to be of that size to be able to accommodate members from the various clubs to come and participate which also shows the anticipation and excitement around the theme that we're celebrating this year. The preparation involves setting up your field and then after we're done playing, we have prize giving and dinner. My committee has worked very hard. Our approach was just putting in a strategy and let everything fall in place and I'm glad that from what we have seen so far, everything was in place. We had guys who finished a bit late and then we had a possible time where we just encouraged the morning guys to go through and just basically play fast. But I would say we managed to achieve our objectives by I'll say by a mark of over 90%!
GZ: When is your next nationals going to be held?
TG: Our next nationals will be in Mashonaland which is Harare. What I've heard so far is it will be at Chapman Golf Club and that will be coordinated by our current national chairman Vijay Patel.
