The Botswana National Sport Commission (BNSC) board chairperson, Marumo Morule and CEO Tuelo Serufho recently led a team to Düsseldorf, Germany, where the TAFISA congress was held. It was the first time that Morule and Serufho attended the congress, which served as an opener and changes in the sport fraternity are expected to follow. Speaking to MmegiSport, Serufho said the mandate of the commission is sport and recreation development. “Hitherto, by design or default, we have been focused on, not even sport development, but rather elite sport, perhaps to the detriment of development and certainly recreation,” he said.
Serufho said through the TAFISA congress, they have been able to learn of the best examples around areas of sport for all and development. “I believe that should help us recalibrate. I must of course hasten to underscore that we will not be slowing down on elite sport development, rather, we (are) empowered to explore new partnership opportunities to drive recreation and mass participation,” Serufho said. He said the BNSC will draw an example of the partnership between the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to nurture a partnership with the Ministry of Health to encourage mass participation and in the process assist in fighting non-communicable diseases. “We discussed issues such as while sport is good for health, if not done properly, it can have an adverse impact on climate action, as such we will be careful that our actions henceforth are those in line with the global climate action objectives,” Serufho said.
