In normal circumstances, the ZOC ballots would take place in the year immediately following the Summer Olympic Games.

With Tokyo 2020 delayed until next year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, a conflict with the constitution was caused but the organisation has pledged to still go ahead with its elections in 2021.

This was decided at the ZOC annual meeting after discussion with members.

The ZOC is approaching a period of change as President Admire Masenda will not seek re-election and chief executive Anna Mguni will leave when her contract expires at the end of the year.

"The postponement of the Olympic Games had, aside from the obvious implications for the athletes and preparations, key constitutional implications on the ZOC constitution," said Masenda to The Herald.

"Elections, in one instance, should be held no later than eight months after the Olympic Games and, therefore, what has always happened traditionally is that they will be held in April, which sort of gets to that eight months period, after the Olympic Games.

"However, within the same constitution is the provision that an Executive Board member will be elected for a period of up to four years, if it says eight months after the Olympic Games we could easily say we wait until the Olympic Games next year, and have the elections thereafter.

"However, we would have violated another aspect of the constitution where people in office would have served longer than four years and we would have taken away from the new people in the office a period of time.

"So, as a Board, we resolved that we bring this matter up and brought it to the attention of the General Assembly to say 'this is the situation, your options are these, you can either postpone until after the Games or you can have the elections in April as per schedule and proceed from then on'.

"And, the General Assembly have said the elections must go on as per tradition in April." 

Zimbabwe has won eight Olympic medals, with seven of these claimed by current Sports Minister Kirsty Coventry.

Coventry, whose haul includes two golds, chairs the International Olympic Committee's Athletes' Commission and sits on the ruling Executive Board.

The other medal won by Zimbabwe was gold for the women's hockey team at the boycotted Moscow 1980 Olympics.