Over the weekends of 23 July and 6 August, for a total of four days, the Rustenburg Senior Debaters took part in the Western Cape Schools Provincial Debating Tournament. Our senior team, consisting of Tamsyn Arendse (Grade 10), Tia Morrow (Grade 11), Imaan Davids (Grade 11), and Zahraa Roshan (Grade 11), participated in a total of 8 debates and won 6 out of these 8 debates.
So, how does debating work? Here’s a quick summary: You receive a motion, the topic you’re debating, an hour before that actual debate. The motion can be anything; it can be about politics, pop culture, or philosophy. It gets decided whether you are for the motion or against it, and during that hour each team has to prepare their different cases. Debates take about an hour to complete, there are three speakers on each team, and four speeches are being made.
There were a total of 24 teams debating and on the third day the top 8 teams ‘broke’, which essentially means that they qualified to participate in the quarterfinals which took place on the fourth day. From there onwards, teams would be eliminated based on whether or not they won their rounds. Throughout rounds, speakers were assessed and awarded ‘speaker scores’ based on various factors such as the style and structure of their speeches.
The Rustenburg Senior Team were able to break first, which meant that our team had the most wins by the end of day 3 out of all of 24 teams participating, and we had the third-highest average speaker scores. It was an overall successful tournament, with our team making it through to the semi-finals, and most of our speakers qualifying for Western Province trials.
