Wilfred Mashaya and Vincent Fambira ready to represent Zimbabwe in the Martial Arts World Championships.
By Robert Simbarashe Zvidza
Zimbabwe Kobudo Team under Zimbabwe Karate Union (ZKU) landed in England on Thursday for the World Martial Arts Championships to be held in Hull from 20 to 22 October 2023.
The Tournament includes various styles, categories and forms of Martial Arts that are Point Fighting, Full Contact, Light Contact, Forms, Muay Thai, Boxing and Weaponry, among others.
The Zimbabwe team shall be participating in Weaponry categories and the Martial arts Weapons include Tonfa, Sai, Bo, Kama and Nunchaku.
The Zimbabwean team is made up of two athletes who are Wilfred Mashaya and Vincent Fambira. In August this year Vincent Fambira did well in the regional Tournament held in South Africa where he bagged 2 gold medals and one silver medal. He was among the Zimbabwe team of 6 athletes which was coached by Wilfred Mashaya.
This will be Fambira’s first International Tournament. The Team has been training hard preparing for this Championships and hope to do their best for the country.
Some of the Weapons they specialise on in their field includes the Tonfa, Nunchaku, Katana Swords, Sai , Bo and Kama among others. On all these Weapons they shall be various categories such as traditional forms, freestyle forms, creative forms and extreme forms.
The Zimbabwe Kobudo Team has been doing well in Weapon/Weaponry Competitions thereby raising the country’s flag high in sports in previous years.
From 2020 to 2022, during the COVID-19 era, the team participated in more than 10 International Virtual Weapon Competitions and bagged more than 200 medals. The team deployed a gender balanced team competitions had the gender balance of both male and females as the Club values Inclusivity. Kids were also part of that team which were made up of 15 athletes selected for the 2020 to 2022 Competitions.
This being their first Physical International (World) Tournament after the Covid pandemic era, they hope to do their best for the nation as well.
Building up to this World Championships, they should have send a team of more than ten athletes but due to lack of funds and Sponsorship, they managed to send a team of two athletes and they hope that through their performances the Sponsors and the corporate World will chip in to support them as they are on a mission to continue raising the country’s flag high around the World and make our nation proud.
The Sport of Kobudo/Weapons is making a big impact in Zimbabwe since the year 2016 when Mashaya conquered Russia in the sport and later pioneered it in Zimbabwe. He went on to be crowned the 2018 Zimbabwe Sports person of the year and in 2019 became the First male Zimbabwean to clinch the prestigious Regional Sportsman of the year Award in Windhoek Namibia. His student Fambira is also following his footsteps by doing very well in the Weaponry Martial Arts.
The trip to South Africa in August were the team coached by Mashaya bagged 22 Medals was Mashaya’s way of measuring how his students or team’s performance as compared with other regional participants. Now it is time to also measure how the performance can be measured on the World Stage through this Championships in England. The Multi Award Winning Mashaya has always brought Glory and joy to the country through sports and they are high hopes that he is going to do the same this time with his student Fambira by his side.
