The Sunday News
Bruce Chimani Sunday Leisure Correspondent
THE Contemporary Affairs Foundation (CAF) has launched the Zimbabwe Schools Debate Championships (ZSDC), which is an elite high schools debate competition targeting at least 20 schools from across the country. The organisation is the only full-time debate and public speaking organisation in the country.
The competition is scheduled to take place between 24 and 29 November this year and will be hosted at the Bulawayo Polytechnic.
“International debate standards, training, adjudication and exposure will be availed to participating students and the top 10 students at the ZSDC will qualify for a competition to be held in 2015, in Singapore at the World Schools Debate Championships (WSDC),” said CAF in a statement.
Students will debate using the standard World Schools Debate Style and each school is expected to register one team, comprising three debaters. “The tournament chief adjudicator is Zanele Ncube. She has the vast experience, locally and internationally to lead the adjudication of this prestigious competition. She has judged at four World Universities Debate Championships, the recent one being Chennai Worlds in Chennai, India, where she sat at the Worlds Council as an alternate candidate for Zimbabwe,” said CAF.
Ncube has also coached in the Netherlands, Turkey, Germany and Malawi. In 2011, she was selected as one of the 16 global trainers at the prestigious International Youth Forum in Istanbul, Turkey. Locally, she has participated in the Zimbabwe National Debate Championships in 2009 as a debater where she reached the semi-finals and was awarded the third best speaker prize.
In 2010 she became the Tournament Director of the Zimbabwe National Debating Championship (ZNDC). She served as the 2011 Pan African Universities Debating Championship Tournament Director.
The full list of participating schools will be released before the beginning of the tournament.
