By Anesu Chakanetsa

ZIMBABWE has got talent.
In a move which is both motivational and exciting for the Zimbabwean sports fraternity, Vitalis Chikoko (25) became one of the most decorated basketball players in Zimbabwe after recently penning a one-year-deal with Germany-based side Bayern Munich (Basketball Team).
After playing for teams in Italy, Tenezis Verona and Pallacanestro Reggiana, Chikoko re-joins the Basketball Bundesliga for the whole 2016 season where he is going to play against his erstwhile teams, ASC Gottingen, BG Gottingen and TBB Trier.
Little known as he might be, Chikoko came a long way to become a professional basketball player.
During his early primary school days in Kuwadzana, a high density suburb in Harare, Chikoko was not a basketball player at all.
He just had remarkable height that earned him the nickname ‘Alefu’, meaning ‘The tall one’.
His height caught the eyes of his first coach, Simbarashe Nyatumba who groomed him.
The existence of a community basketball court in Kuwadzana and a youth scouting group, Hoops for Hope provided Chikoko with a platform to improve.
Today, he has become one of Zimbabwe’s best athletes.
One of his former coaches, who is also one of Zimbabwe’s best players, Norest Shenje explains his delight for his erstwhile power forward.
“It’s a blessing for me and the nation of Zimbabwe as a whole and now he is getting paid for what he worked for since his primary school,” said Shenje.
From Kuwadzana, Chikoko had moved to Glen View where he played for both Glen View Nuggets and Glen View 2 High School before he was groomed at Prince Edward Boys High School (PE).
Shenje said Chikoko would have his own time for session after the main training with the team which gave him endurance and composure more than any other player he knew.
After scooping several medals and trophies while at PE, Chikoko moved to Mbare Heat in 2010 where he also helped the team scoop the Harare Basketball Association League Trophy.
By 2011, he got a deserved move to Europe to play for his first Bundesliga side ASC Gottingen.
Chikoko joined the NBA’s Houston Rockets summer camp in July 2013, but could not be drafted.
Although he has enjoyed several contracts in Europe before moving to Bayern Munich, Chikoko remains one of Zimbabwe’s prodigal son who turned out for the national team during the African Basketball Championships (Afrobasket) held in August last year in Tunisia.
Zimbabwe is at pains of enjoying the service of its own ‘sons and daughters of the soil’ who have renounced their citizenship in order to represent other nations on the sporting arena.
Like Chikoko who decided to play for Zimbabwe Basketball National Team, Charles Manyuchi, the Zimbabwean welterweight champion boxer refused an offer from Zambia who wanted to grant him citizenship in 2012.
Unlike his heavyweight counterpart, Derrick Chisora who decided to ‘become British’.
Chisora enters the ring with shorts branded with the British flag, yet he is Zimbabwean.
Tawanda ‘Beast’ Mtawarira is another disturbing example for Zimbabwe sport.
He was born and bred in Zimbabwe, attended Churchill Boys High and Peter House High before moving to South Africa.
The ‘big guy’ after moving to South Africa, publicly announced that he enjoyed playing rugby for the Springboks.
In his words, Mtawarira claimed he is a South African at heart and feels ‘honoured to wear the green and gold jersey’.
Unlike Mtawarira, Chikoko’s inspiration is driven from the whims of being nurtured in a Zimbabwean landscape and rubbing shoulders with former and current Zimbabwe greats like siblings, Norest and Duncan Shenje, Eric Banda, Edward Mtetwa and Farai Tumbare, among others.
Popular Zimbabwean sports legends like Peter Ndlovu, Benjani Mwaruwari, Kirsty Coventry and Elliot Mujaji made the nation proud by making the Zimbabwean flag known all over the world.
Coventry in particular, scooped 34 medals in all competitions from 2000 to 2011 and dedicated them to the Zimbabwean family.
In fact, President Robert Mugabe called her the ‘Golden Girl’.
She now holds a diplomatic passport and is now a Zimbabwean ambassador.
Peter Ndlovu and Benjani Mwaruwari are clear examples of sportsmen who ensured they would jet in for a national match, not because of money, but because they were proud of their nation.
In some instances, they would even use their own money to fund the cash-strapped Warriors.
Currently, the sports fraternity in Zimbabwe is not certain of decisions that are going to be made by the country’s superb young athletes locally and abroad.
However, on a positive note, Zimbabwe boasts of young people like Tanya Muzinda, a motorcross athlete who at the age of 11 has already scooped awards in Zimbabwe and abroad.
Chikoko, Muzinda and other excelling young athletes have proved wrong the negative perceptions of both local and foreign nationals who look down upon Zimbabwe when it comes to sport.
When Chikoko played for the national team during the Afrobasket tourney in Tunisia, he shocked the world with his ‘moves’ and became a darling of the camera.
Despite the attention and the benefits that come with being a star, unlike Chisora, Mtawarira and others of their kind, Chikoko never renounced his Zimbabwean citizenship.
He is proud of being Zimbabwean.