HARARE - Across the border, a nation has been given the afternoon off. Here, the office is open as usual, which is a shame, because Zimbabwe also made history in Paris on Thursday night. It just did not win anything.
Botswana’s Letsile Tebogo won the men’s 200 metres at the Paris Olympics in an African record of 19.46 seconds, holding off the Americans Kenny Bednarek and Noah Lyles. According to World Athletics, it was Botswana’s first Olympic gold medal in any sport, and made Tebogo the first African man to win the Olympic 200m title.
On Friday President Mokgweetsi Masisi declared the afternoon a public holiday. His office said Tebogo’s achievement was “markedly outstanding and deserving of the nation to pause and celebrate him,” Xinhua reported. Masisi had posted on Thursday that his voice was “completely gone” from shouting at the television, according to Reuters, as carried by TimesLIVE.
The two men behind him
Look further down the results sheet. Tapiwanashe Makarawu finished sixth in 20.10 seconds and Makanakaishe Charamba eighth. World Athletics said it was “the first time the nation has had two sprinters in an Olympic 200m final.” They were separated only by Liberia’s Joseph Fahnbulleh.
Both had come through as fastest qualifiers after placing third in their semifinals, the official results show. Charamba, who also carried the flag at the opening ceremony with swimmer Paige van der Westhuizen, ran 20.27 in his heat; Makarawu ran 20.07 in his.
Two finalists in the same Olympic sprint is not nothing. It is, in fact, a first.
The medal table and the team bus
It is also true that Zimbabwe leaves Paris without a medal. The country sent seven competitors in three sports: four in athletics, one rower and two swimmers. Isaac Mpofu finished 19th in the men’s marathon in 2:10:09. Rutendo Nyahora did not finish the women’s marathon. Stephen Cox placed 29th in the men’s single sculls.
A cartoon published before the Games compared the Zambian and Zimbabwean delegations, the Zambians a tidy squad in green, the Zimbabweans a crowd so large it needs its own flagpole. It is a familiar joke about officials and travel allowances. ZimDaily has not found an official published figure for the size of the Zimbabwean party, so readers should take the crowd as the cartoon’s opinion and not as a head count.
Two presidents, one cartoon
The cartoon at the top of this page imagines the contrast in leadership styles: one head of state handing his champion a public holiday, another threatening his sprinter with Chikurubi prison “for embarrassing me at the Olympics”. The second half is satire. There is no record of any such threat, and the sprinter in question had just reached an Olympic final.
What is real is that the medal table has no column for finalists. In Botswana, the president’s office said Tebogo’s gold would be “etched in the annals of the history of the country”. Zimbabwe’s own piece of history, two men in the final, appears nowhere in the medal count at all.
What comes next
Tebogo, who ran in spikes bearing his late mother’s date of birth, told World Athletics his win meant “a lot to the African continent because now they see Africa as a sprinting home.”
Zimbabwe had two men in that same race. If the continent is now a sprinting home, Harare has at least two rooms in it. A half-day holiday might be too much to ask. Remembering their names would be a start.
