When will ‘we’ ever learn to learn from past mistakes? To make a mistake and repeat it once may be excusable, but to do it over and gain with impunity is surely unacceptable in every sense. For nine years I have been following Rwandan sports, five of which I have been in the thick of it—I guess you [I mean you reading this] all know what I do best, [I suppose it’s the reason I won two back to back Rwandan Golden Pen Awards for sport journalist of the year 2005 and 2006]. Having worked in Rwanda’s sports circles for some time now, [for timeframe, check the preceding paragraph], I can confidently emphasize that the major reason for the continued decline of sports development in the country is caused by people who do not take lessons from their past mistakes. Different commentators have come up with diverse opinions on what could be the major cause of the drastic slump in progress of Rwandan sports [all fields] in last two, three years. The big percentage of Rwandan sports administrators behave and go about their responsibilities as if they are born of the same ‘father’. Mainly, they are more about fulfilling personal dreams than doing what is of interest to the public. It has become folklore with the so called sports administrators to only show their ‘determination’ to develop their respective sport only at the time when conditions favour their personal aspirations. This, I say without mincing words because I have seen it happen in almost all national federations—where they don’t have much personal interest, they give little or no attention and vice versa and I wonder what the hell is this supposed to mean? I am not going to explain case by case reason being that those concerned know exactly what I am talking about—I guess. Oh just for the starters—sports administrators or those supposed to take Rwandan sports to another level, may be with the exception of the minister Joseph Habineza care to fulfill their responsibilities only when they gaining ‘something’ for their own interests. I will give an example [but sorry, I am not going to name no names or specific federation], officials in the majority of these sports institutions do tend to show care only when there is a trip to travel out of the country or when there money involved. And also, they another major characteristic of Rwandan sports administrators is preparing their athletes [sportsmen and women] for a particular competition, local, regional or international at the eleventh hour—this is further nonsense. What is funny though, is that after their athletes [footballers, Basketballers, volleyballers, athletics name it] fail to perform well; and it is attributed to late and poor preparations as if the competition caught them by surprise! Very few of these existing sports institutions have written and standard plan of action and even for the few that have, they either fail to implement them or the administrators just don’t have the no-how to runs such bodies. This is bound not to auger well with many concerned with this, but that is the reality and unless someone out there like your columnist talks about it, it is bound to continue until only Gods knows when. Before I sign off, can someone in the athletics federation explain what it means to send athletes at a World Championship minus a coach, official nor a doctor? Dieudonne Disi and Angelline are currently in Osaka, Japan but only on their own and it’s not the first time something so embarrassing to the image of the country is happening and I bet it won’t be the last—but why for heavens’ sake do the responsible parties allow such a thing to happen in the first place. This and many more other cases are some of the silly and inexcusable mistakes that our sports administrators keep repeating over and over again, which in the end, are doing anything our common cause which is to see sports in Rwanda develop at the pace it started with in the late 90s and early 2000s. Last word-They say ‘you can take a cow to the water pond but you can’t force it to drink.’ Next time, we shall focus on the meaning of the above saying and what the athletes had to say about going for a whole World Championship unaccompanied. Talk to you then. I’m out for now. Contact: nku78@yahoo.com Ends
