29 Aug 2021

Long serving tennis coach, Mthandazo Sibanda, has been hailed for contributing to development of the sport in the country.

Before his remains were interred at Phomolong Memorial Park in Gaborone on Saturday, various speakers took turns to wax lyrical about the indelible mark Sibanda left in tennis and the sporting fraternity.

Botswana National Sports Commission (BNSC) chief executive officer, Tuelo Serufho, said he met the man he knew as Uncle Sibs while on a trip to Gaborone as a young tennis player from Selebi Phikwe.

Serufho said he and his generation of tennis playing youngsters benefitted from Sibanda’s mentorship and the two would later become colleagues at BNSC.

He described Sibanda as a ‘walking library, a rare breed of a man who was the embodiment of passion and resourcefulness.’

“He would go to work early, leaving late and did more beyond his core duty. He would even be a driver taking players to tournaments in Namibia or the RSA whenever necessary,” Serufho said.

He further called Sibanda a ‘disciplinarian par excellence’ who was patient and supportive as a coach and guardian who assisted in grounding upcoming players.

Serufho called on the Botswana Tennis Association (BTA) to work on reviving tennis in the northern part of the country to continue Sibanda’s recent efforts of strong tennis development programmes in Francistown, Selebi Phikwe and Orapa.

Other speakers, including Tapiwa Masunga of the International Tennis Federation (ITF) and Confederation of African Tennis representative, Nelson Amanze, also outlined the efforts Sibanda made in tennis development.

Masunga said Sibanda had constantly pushed for tennis development to take place across Southern Africa irrespective of the type of sporting infrastructure available in any part of the region.

Similarly, Amanze said messages had been pouring in from across Southern Africa since Sibanda’s work as a tennis coach over a 30-year period had been extended to the region as a whole.

Amanze further said other sports codes had benefitted from development ideas conceptualised by Sibanda, citing the Re Ba Bona Ha programme that was utilised by various BNSC sporting affiliates.

Lefa Sibanda, the son of the deceased, said it had been a difficult period for the family as his father underwent illness and isolation prior to his passing away.

He described his father as ‘the embodiment of a family man, who touched people’s lives in Botswana and left us a family across the region to Mauritius and beyond.’ ENDS