Botswana to host 2018 COSSASA athletics

Koketso Kgoboge | Thursday December 14, 2017 14:20

Francistown will be the venue for the competition to be held in May. Windhoek in Namibia will host the COSSASA ball games next year.

Zimbabwe hosted the last edition’s athletics, while Lesotho organised the ball games. Botswana has twice hosted COSSASA games, athletics in 2014 and ball games in 2016, both in Gaborone.

The decision to hand Botswana the athletics competition was taken during the COSSASA summit held in Johannesburg recently.

The decision was reached by the COSSASA executive committee and board members. The Board is made up of the presidents of both the primary schools and secondary schools associations in all member states.

Botswana was represented at the meeting by the presidents of Botswana Primary School Sport Association (BOPSSA) and Botswana Integrated Sport Association (BISA), Busani Segweni and Joshua Gaothobogwe respectively.

The two presidents were coy with information as all key stakeholders have not been briefed. However, Segweni confirmed the developments but said nothing tangible had been reached.

He said stakeholders are yet to be notified of the decision taken in Johannesburg. He said they have not yet engaged their parent sponsors, the Ministry of Basic Education and the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, and the mother body, the Botswana National Sport Commision. He said a lot of consultations have to be done until they can be sure they will be able to host the games.

“These are the people who can give us the green light to host these games otherwise we have not communicated. All we have is that we are given the opportunity by COSSASA,” Segweni said.