Programme Director
President of South African Football Associatio (SAFA); and all SAFA Board members
Chief Executive of SAFA
Former Local Organising Commitee (LOC) members of 2010 FIFA World Cup present here
Regional Executive committees present here
Delegates and football players
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
It is with humility and great pleasure that we have accepted the invitation to attend this National Executive Committee (NEC) Meeting as you prepare for a very important occasion of the Football Indaba 2011. We have met most of the Federations and have shared our views with their National Leadership and Administrators. We are looking forward to deepening this engagement going forward.
Thank you Mr President for your corporation and support by ensuring that this long overdue meeting is now taking place in climate characterised by vigorous debates towards the Sport and Recreation Indaba.
We have as a country and as a people come out of a very eventful decade and year. The year 2010 will go down the annals of history as a milestone in the evolution of football in Africa. We closed the last decade on a positive note and it is therefore befitting to go through the new decade on another positive note as well!
To all the sport loving people gathered in this room and South Africans at large, we salute you for your majestic contribution towards the successful hosting of the First FIFA World Cup ever staged on the African soil in June/July 2010. We will return to this magnificent achievement and what we plan to do as government to thank the people of South Africa by tabling our Country Report to Cabinet soon.
We also take this opportunity to express our gratitude to the leadership of SAFA for issuing the clarion call for all of us to gather in this room this morning to discuss pressing issues in the football discourse in our country. We do so inspired by the fresh and indelible memories of the glorious hosting of the first FIFA World Cup in Africa by Africans.
Talking about the legacy of the FIFA 2010 World Cup to the African Continent is as rejuvenating as talking about the meaning of freedom to many generations that went through imperialism, colonial rule, plunder, apartheid and racial discrimination. The World Cup opened opportunities for many of our people. It lit skies and provided us HOPE!
Thank you all and well done for your indelible work!
As Antonio Gramsci said in his Cultural Writings in the 19th Century:
"The collectivity must be understood as the product of a development of will and of collective thought attained through concrete individual effort and not through a process of destiny extraneous to individual people."
So the 2010 FIFA World Cup was a collective effort of all South Africans and the people of the continent.It was and African World Cup, organised collectively by Africans themselves.
Ladies and gentlemen, indeed, Africa today is laying the ghost of colonialism and despotic rule to rest and charting a new way forward for herself, taking our rightful place in the community of nations. The new Vistas that are opened by the democratisation processes are propelling our continent to new economic heights and generating a plethora of opportunities for current and future generations. Our historical mission of creating peaceful conditions that allows for free movement, freedom of choice, freedom of association, a united and prosperous Africa are beginning to yield the desired results.
However, we can not use dialectics in sport and dynamics in football as an excuse for ignoring history. Indeed, it is well known that Football is not an indigenous sport of South Africa. It is, even, not an indigenous African sport. It first arrived in an African soil through colonialism in the late nineteenth century. Football was a popular game and sport among the British soldiers; through their colonial conquest they introduced the game in the so-called British colonies.
Since the 1910 pact between the Britons and Afrikaners; a systematic introduction of racial segregation laws under the Union of South Africa, under which the birth rights of the majority of South Africans who are Africans in particular and blacks people in general were truncated; and white minority rule became the supreme law of the land.
The subsequent white colonial minority regimes became machineries of maintenance. They segregated sport and recreation art and culture; healthcare and many other strategic public services for the majority of South Africans especially Africans, of which the majority are women.
Since the minority white dominance in South Africa, sport became a political vehicle of the apartheid colonial regime to further segregate and discriminates against the ordinary citizens of the country coupled with the Group Areas Act and Reservation of Separate Amenities Act, the introduction of the Bantu Authorities Act and the Promotion of Black Self-Government Act of 1958. Football was also affected by the apartheid regime’s system of racial oppression and segregation.
Hence the formations of the whites-only Football Association of South Africa (FASA), the South African Indian Football Association (SAIFA), the South African Bantu Football Association (SABFA) and the South African Coloured Football Association (SACFA) between 1892 and 1936.
All these racially segregated teams sought recognition to the Confederation of African Football (CAF) after it was founded in 1956, but were expelled after a short stay in CAF due to the South African government’s policy of racism and racial oppression. At this conjuncture the apartheid state and the constitution of South Africa prohibited non-racial teams from all high performance sport; only sending racially segregated teams to competitive sport; thus South Africa was finally expelled from CAF in 1958 and thereby formally expelled by FIFA in 1976.
This sporting scenario sparked internal resistance and violence as well as a long trade embargo, including sport and cultural boycotts against South Africa. This was sparked by evident devaluing of African sport and football; lack of funding for black sport in general and football in particular lack of funds for sport and equipment to black youth would be evident, this alone exposed the uneven distribution of resources and unequal lives Africans in particular and blacks in general were subject to in relation to their White counterparts who lived in resource and financial abundance.
Human rights groups and sport activists put pressure to a number of bodies in the United Nations to stop South African participation due to her apartheid policies and South Africa was officially banned from international competitions, including FIFA World Cups.
However, since the emergence of SAFA in 1991 and the subsequent South Africa’s official FIFA membership endorsement in 1992 and warm welcome-back of our country into CAF became the milestones in the history of football in South Africa and the world.
Celebrating the unity talks and process, few weeks after this dramatic turn of events, South Africa was called upon to host the first ever international soccer match in our soil; and many African and world soccer championships were played in the Republic of South Africa.
Since then the South African government has been engaged in a vigorous process of transformation that has included a new democratic Constitution, transformation of the State machinery and changes to almost all policies in order to ensure the emergence of a democratic society, based on the principles of non-racialism, non-sexism and democracy.
In this regard, in a short space of time, football in South Africa have achieved a remarkable success with qualifications for the World Cup finals in France in 1998, the title of African champions at the 1996 African Nations Cup finals, which the country hosted, and the runners-up berth in Burkina Faso two years later.
At under 20 levels, our country were runners-up at the 1997 African championships in Morocco and qualified to play in the world under 20 championships in Malaysia. Behind the scenes, SAFA has worked long and hard to provide the structures to take football to all levels of the South African communities. There are now national age-group competitions, including Youth Football Leagues, from under 12 levels up, qualified coaches working all over the country and nine provincial affiliates based on regional leagues.
We need to jealously defend these gains and consolidate our achievement and strengthen the strategy to go forward. Hence, the Ministry of Sport and Recreation South Africa and the government of the Republic recognised the damage caused by internal squabbles between individuals in the association which permeates to Regions and structures; and acknowledge that this is not our core-business and that these internal wrangles were orchestrated by individuals and barons of factions with absolutely have no regard to national pride, transformation and sport development. We want to remind everyone in the South African football and the leadership of SAFA to discharge your historical mission for which you were established by condemning this demon that is slowly killing our national pride. We must all do so in our words and deeds.
We said this before; and we are saying it again today that, anything that is aimed at undermining and distracting this agenda and movement forward won’t be tolerated. We are almost getting to a point of saying that those who want to fight for whatever reason, if they cannot overcome the fighting streak, they must continue fighting, but they must not invite us because we are not interested in their pseudo gymnastics. Our fight was against apartheid and we defeated the apartheid regime. Our fight now is against under-development and resistance to transformation. As sure as the sun will rise tomorrow – we will win this battle with support from the very same people and youth they continuously undermine and denigrate through their selfish utterances and deeds.
We, in the Ministry, expect the following on the roadmap into the turnaround discourse for Football in South Africa. These are, but not limited to, unity and cohesion, changing the present situation regarding the state of amateur football in South Africa. The lack of a concomitant and fully blooded school’s sport that would be regulated properly by the government of the Republic is a challenge that faces football in South Africa. Without this intervention the lowest Leagues registered under the SAFA battles to ensure broad-based participation by boys and girls from all the communities with equal access because schools football is still played by selective schools in selective areas.
With millions of Rands injected into this environment through the 2010 FIFA World Cup hosting fees payable to SAFA by FIFA, we can only hope, as FIFA has already pronounced that, this money will go straight to grassroots development so that all the 25 regions of SAFA across the country will have facilities improved, administration jerked up, match officials and coaches developed. Well structured and sponsored competitions need to be in place to ensure that development leagues are incentivising those who put an extra effort in the development of players. Development can only be measured through structured competitions.
We need to look closely on the issue of the lack of proper player development facilities in rural and far-flunk areas of South Africa could be address with the FIFA funding or we can look at a possible partnership with other stakeholders in a roll-out of such initiative. SRSA and FIFA will have to look at the turn-around strategy for the Football Development Academy system to ensure regulations that guard against exploitation of the youth and parents. We need to root-out crime and corruption in the Academy System rid it of “fly-by-night” academies with the help of law enforcement agencies.
Key to this transformational agenda is the element of alleged corruption within and amongst match officials through ‘match-fixing’, doping, and etc. The new SAFA CEO, Dr Petersen and SAFA Board will have to look closely to this phenomenon and put in place stringent measures to curb this disease, especially at this level. In the same vein, age cheating is wound in the body of amateur football. There is a need to a strict and monitored way of dealing with this scourge. This ruins the young player’s careers and is also an embarrassment to the country when it is picked up and exposed on an international platform.
However, we need to also look closely at the benefits of money accrued from Television; and solicit its impact and benefit to the players. A robust debate and dialogue need to ensue between authorities and player unions on this matter; and we need to conduct research and look at the best practices in the world regarding this matter. SAFA and Premier Soccer League (PSL) and others need to investigate the possibility of the so-called “Reserve League to ensure that fringe players, the majority of whom are very young, at professional level are not match starved at the time of match needy.
SAFA and PSL should engage in discussions and involve all their coaches to tighten up relationships between and amongst themselves. The benefit of this dialogue is huge for the country especially on the issue of player selections and player availability for club, national and international player commitments.
SRSA and SASCOC will have to devise means to deal with the issue of the shortage of skills in sport and recreation, particularly in administration, management, marketing and communications. This should including skills development on sport legislation drafting and analysis, financial management and sport business development and ownership; even savings and investment skills.
Therefore, we dedicate this keynote address to the uninterrupted nineteen years of struggle since the re-acceptance of the Republic of South Africa to the global football stage which took place in July 1992. Since then, South Africa became a force to be reckoned with in Sport and Recreation world-wide especially in Football.
As Antonio Gramsci concluded in his book on Hegemony:
“Common sense is not something rigid and stationary, but is in continuous transformation, becoming enriched with scientific notions and philosophical opinions that have entered into common circulation.(Therefore), ‘common sense’ is the folklore of philosophy and always stands midway between folklore proper and the philosophy, science, and economics of the scientists. Common sense creates the folklore of the future, a relatively rigidified phase of popular knowledge in a given time and place.”
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the art of leading a winning battle for a victorious war and a glorious victory!
Thank you.
