ZIMBABWE Rugby Union (ZRU) excecutive vice-president Colleen de Jong, fresh from an “eye-opening” visit to South Africa, has hailed the good relations between the local governing body and the Confederation of African Rugby (CAR) and their South African counterparts.
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De Jong was recently hosted by the South African Rugby Union (Saru) in Cape Town as part of the CAR’s Leading Rugby programme for African rugby unions.
While in South Africa, she met with department heads of Saru’s various governance and operational departments from finance, corporate affairs, senior national team operations, women’s rugby, commercial and marketing, amateur events and competitions, development, and Saru academies in an effort to learn how the sport is governed in that country. “I was well received by Saru who shared with me their procedures for business strategic planning and strategy implementation and reporting in general. Rugby is a sport, but like any business it has to have a management, plan which creates room for growth in the sport, be it financially, human resource-wise or cost-effective event/competition management, and most importantly corporate governance,” she said.
“The meetings were to discuss union best practice procedures and how Zimbabwe can implement these within the ZRU constitutional requirements. They were very informative, productive and positive meetings which has given me the opportunity to learn how a professional union conducts its day to day business to ensure that the game is administered to the highest reputational level.
“I am very excited by what has been learnt, what it will mean long term for Rugby in Zimbabwe and look forward to sharing this with all stakeholders in Zimbabwe Rugby. We are very grateful to CAR and Saru for affording ZRU this opportunity,” said De Jong, who was also hosted by the president of Western Province and the Western Province Rugby Union at Newlands after her meeting with the high-level Saru delegates.
