Ambassadors and Consulates invited here;
The Cabinet Ministers of the Republic who are present here;
Deputy Ministers and Directors-General of our democratic state;
Members of Parliament of the Republic of South Africa and all Members of our nine Provincial Legislatures, including Councillors in all our Local and District Councils;
Members of Provincial Executive Councils (MECs) across the breath and length of the Republic;
Distinguished International Guests and the Academia;
Sports Luminaries and sports men and women of the world;
Business, Labour and Civil Society present here today;
Representatives of Media;
Fellow South Africans;
Ladies and Gentlemen, on 15 November 2011, the Ministry of Sport and Recreation South Africa addressed both Houses of Parliament – the National Assembly by the Minister of Sport and Recreation and the National Council of Provinces by the Deputy Minister.
Both statements of the Ministry where to brief Parliament about the planned national Sport and Recreation Indaba and the Departments’ readiness to host this august gathering of the sports people of South Africa.
In our address to Parliament we also took an opportunity to congratulate one of our own Mr Chad Le Clos who on 13 November 2011, again made this nation proud by his virtuoso victory in the Fina Swimming World Cup Series in Tokyo. Chad Le Clos won this Championship with flying colours claiming his 23rd gold medal on the circuit, and as usual clocked a time of one minute forty three seconds to win the men’s 200m race.
Today Le Clos receive an accolade of being the South African Swimmer of the Year for his victory of a total of thirty five medals in the series; and we want to say to him well done! We will support you in all your endeavours.
In the same vein, we also took an opportunity to express our excruciating pain and lumber of grief and sadness for the untimely death of the former Springbok player, Mr Solly Tyibilika who was gunned-down in New Crossroads a township between Gugulethu and Nyanga East.Mr Tyibilika played for our mighty Springbok and made South Africans proud when he was selected to play for amaBhoko-Bhoko in a Mandela Cup between Australia and South Africa. After we addressed Parliament we also took an opportunity to visit the Tyibilika Family where we officially offered our condolences and later visited the Tavern where he was gunned down to express our dismay with regard to the premature death of this hero. May his soul rest in peace!
I would like to take this opportunity to ask everyone in this gathering to rise up for a moment of silence to give our lasting respect to our sporting martyr, Mr Solly Tyibilika and all our sport men and women who passed on in the year 2011.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to welcome you all to the 2011 Sport Indaba of Sport and Recreation South Africa (SRSA). Traditionally an Indaba is an important conference held by the iziNduna, the principal men of the Zulu and Xhosa peoples of South Africa. It is a consultative gathering of people who come together to sort out problems and deal with challenges that may affect them, where everyone has a voice and where there is an attempt to find a common understanding or a common story that everyone is able to tell when they leave again.
To introduce our debate in this historic Indaba on sport and recreation in the Republic of South Africa, let me take from Kazuo Uchiumi in his writings on the commodification and de-commodification of sports:
“Sports, which developed from hunting in a primitive community system into a form of recreation, became a primitive right of the community constituents and a public and socially cooperative activity in past times. Although athletic sports meetings were established in the ancient Greek and Roman Empires, participation in sports was restricted to the people who had Greek and Roman citizenship, and in particular, to only aristocratic adult men. Therefore, not only slaves, but also women and children of the aristocracy could not participate in them. Eligibility for the ancient Olympic Games was limited to the former. In this way, sports were the privilege (special right) of the ruling classes”.
Although athletic meetings disappeared because of religious ideological dominance in the world based on the ideology of spiritual predominance and flesh subordination; in the forming of capitalist society, modern sports were born again in the public schools in Britain.
As Uchiumi explains:
“The bourgeois in Britain through the Industrial Revolution became the centre of a colony scramble and wanted their children to learn within the capitalist system to become bourgeois, soldiers and civil servants with adequate leadership qualities. Sports quickly spread not only throughout England, but also throughout Europe because the proliferation of railroads, the development of a communication means and other related developments in the era of Industrial Revolution enabled people mutual visits and cultural exchange. Sport and Recreation was born again in this process, including Africa.”
Hence, 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 black 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; health care and many other strategic public services against the majority of South Africans especially Africans, of which the majority are black women in rural areas.
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.Sport and Recreation was also affected by the apartheid regime’s system of racial oppression and segregation. Hence the formations of the whites-only Sports Federations between 1892 and 1936.
All these racially segregated Federations sought recognition to the International Sport Bodies but were expelled after a short stay 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 these bodies after the watershed Conventions of the United Nations, especially the 10 December 1985 Multilateral International Convention Against Apartheid in Sports which stated the following:
“The expression ‘apartheid’ (and discrimination) shall mean a system of institutionalised racial segregation and discrimination for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over another racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them, such as that pursued by South Africa, and ‘apartheid in sports’ shall mean the application of the policies and practices of such a system in sports activities, whether organised on a professional or an amateur basis … Convinced that the adoption of an International Convention against Apartheid in Sports would result in more effective measures at the International and national levels, with a view to eliminating apartheid (and discrimination) in sports”.
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 culture; lack of funding for black sport in general and; 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 resourced 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.
However, since 1990 and the subsequent release of Nelson Mandela, a warm welcome-back of our country into the international stage became the milestone in the history of sport and recreation 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 play a first Cricket Competition in India to celebrate its re-acceptance into the international sport arena and hosted the first ever international soccer match in our soil; and many subsequent African and world championships were played in the Republic of South Africa including the 1995 Rugby World Cup.
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.
Since 1994 the people of the Republic have been trying to tell a story; a new story of the Legacies and Vision of All South Africans; a story that we have been trying to find and create together.
Central to that story are the words found on our national emblem:!ke e:/xarra//ke –which is the Khoisan language of the /Xam people, and means "diverse people unite" or ‘different people joining together’. For South Africa to succeed, no matter our race, colour, culture, gender, sexual orientation or abilities we must all belong to the same team; a South African team; black and white – united in our diversity.
As the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr Ban ki Moon has once alluded that:
“Sport has become a world language, a common denominator that breaks down all the walls, all the barriers. It is a worldwide industry whose practices can have a widespread impact. Most of all, it is a powerful tool for progress and development”.
Ladies and Gentlemen, we are gathered here today to host the National Sport and Recreation Indaba to reconstruct and revitalise the sport and recreation sector for an active and winning nation, and ultimately to improve the lives of all South Africans, especially the sport loving South Africans. Indeed, in contributing to an inclusive citizenship, we will remove the sport sector from abstract to concrete and make it a system that involves more than just playing; and take all matters from policy to practice and make sure that this is not just another Indaba.
As President Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela said in his address at the closing of his budget debate in Parliament, Cape Tow in June 21, 1996:
“The strategies, frameworks and plans should be improved through criticism, where necessary, and used for the benefit of the whole country. Ultimately, in debate and in action, now and in the future, we shall always face the option of whether to wallow in the mire of pettiness or to deal with the real issues that face the nation”.
Of course it is not just another indaba because we are reminded by the 2008 National Sport Indaba. In this regard, we would like to inform the Indaba as we did so to Parliament that:
“On the 09 – 10 October 2008 Sport and Recreation South Africa (SRSA), the South African Sport Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC) and the broader sport and recreation movement met at Inkosi Albert Luthuli Convention Centre in KwaZulu-Natal to pause and take stock on the road traversed since the establishment of the fully blooded Sport and Recreation department in the history of the Republic of South Africa (RSA) and at the same time craft a way forward for the transformation of the sport system in the Republic under the theme “From Mass Mobilisation to Excellence – Improving the Integration and Organisation of Sport”.
At the centre of the debates in the 2008 National Sport Indaba was the issue of transformation where delegates at conference recognised the slow pace and resistance to change in sporting circles of our country. Conference believed the journey to full transformation in sport and recreation was still far from over and delegates cited living examples in rugby and cricket that pointed out to lingering prejudices.
Delegates and Conference re-iterated the necessity to transform and reminded players and administrators that transformation is non-negotiable; and it is part of our Constitutional mandated and it is government agenda.
All matters relating to broadening access to all and the need to bring the building and construction of sport and recreation facilities back into the fold of the Department of Sport and Recreation were at centre of the discussions; and all other issues relating to reviving of the schools sport and promotion of physical education where highlights of the 2008 Sport Indaba.
However and sadly so, four years down the line we are called upon again to assemble here and tackle the same issues as raised by the 2008 National Sport Indaba.
We therefore call upon all delegates in this assembly to commit to themselves that this national sport and recreation Indaba would not be like any other Indaba that the Republic has ever had.
This Indaba must first and for most adopt a ‘popularisation of sports policy’ based on the foundations of ‘sports for all’, especially through cooperation between capital, labour and civil society as tenets of corporatism and an important measure for the developmental state to integrate and unite the people of South Africa.
This Indaba should carefully differentiate between two major dimensions in sport; one a ‘political economy in which one weighs the degree to which sports serve the accumulation problems of advanced monopoly capital and two a dimension in which one examines the ways in which sports solve the problem of legitimacy and help produce alienated consciousness in self and society’ as Mr TR Young have suggested in January 1986 in his writings of the Sociology of Sport: The Structural Marxist and Cultural Marxist Approaches in Sport.
This should help us to de-mystify the myth and bring forward an insight in both uses to which commodity sports are put. We must put at the centre of our debate the human desire for good and enlivening social relations and refuse to transfer sport and sport activism into the lifeless commodity. Of course, a better use of sport is to locate desire within community and interpersonal concerns rather than profit and false solidarity.
Ladies and Gentlemen, we have as a country and as a people come out of a very eventful decade and year 2011. The sport calendar of 2011 and the activities thereof will go down the collection of history as a milestone in the advancement of sport and recreation in the Republic of South Africa.
We are closing 2011 with a high and positive note and we are sure that we will enter 2012 on another high and positive note as well; as we celebrate the Centenary of African National Congress being rejuvenated by the successes of the road we traversed since the birth of the ANC and the 1994 democratic breakthrough including the gains we have made in the year 2011!
Indeed, we met in January this year, we promised the nation that, together, we will take the sport and recreation to new and higher heights; and rid our sector of all negative factors that beset our sporting system.
We have done so by officially adopting the Road Map to Optimal Performance and Functional Excellence. In the road map we assured our people that in the year 2011 SRSA we will achieve all the goals we have set ourselves based on five strategic priorities namely; transformation, schools Sport, institutional Mechanisms, mass mobilisation, recreation and funding.
We believed then that these critical success factors will provide a new paradigm that will guide and direct the new thinking and thesis of the Department in its total functionality; and that they will inform and influence our five year strategic horizon, which is disaggregated into annual operational frameworks in the short, medium and long term.
This in essence means that, our sport system shall be predicated on our new vision, our new Road Map for Optimal Performance; and that this Road Map will be an integrated and wholesale strategy to reposition the Department, and engender functional efficiencies and accelerated service delivery. We committed ourselves to use the road map as a compendium to transform the department and the sport sector into an agile, athletic and responsive institutional architecture. We said this road map will epitomise a new paradigm, a new energy of a vibrant epoch in managing Sport and Recreation in the Republic to confront complex set of challenges with much vigour, vibe and vitality.
Yes, indeed, we walked the talk and practiced what we preached! For the past 10 months SRSA have embarked on an uninterrupted journey to fulfil its mandate as instructed by the President of the Republic in 2010 and the January 2011 Strategic Planning workshop.
At the centre of this mandate was to vigorously organise the national Sport and Recreation Indaba and develop a clear plan for sport and recreation in our country. In order to carefully fulfil this objective we embarked on a vigorous consultation process in the form of sector to sector engagement and dialogue in order to reach everyone who has interest in sport and recreation in our South Africa.
We did this fully aware of the importance of history and dared not to indulge our collective wisdom into forgetting by using gymnastics as an excuse of ignoring Judo.
In charting the line of march, we purposefully recalled that “in 1996, the late Minister of Sport, Honourable Minister Steve Tshwete released a White Paper on Sport and Recreation. This White Paper was the first of its kind on sport and recreation in the Republic of South Africa. At the end of 2000, after the continued poor performance of our athlete, government appointed a Ministerial Task Team (MTT) to investigate challenges facing South Africa athletes on high performance and elite sport and provide recommendations thereof; which were approved by Cabinet in 2003.This led to the amalgamation of the then different sporting bodies into a fully blooded Department of Sport and Recreation and later the establishment of the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC).
It is in this regard that the process of updating the White Paper was finalised in 2011 together with the development of the Road Map to Optimal Performance and Functional Excellence that outlined priority areas for sport and recreation discourse in the Republic.
As Cheryl Roberts once articulated in her book titled: No Normal Sport in an Abnormal Society – Struggle for a Non-racial Sport in South Africa – From Apartheid to Sport Unity. She had this to say:
“Our officials (and sportspersons) who gave so much to the development and organisation (of) non-racial sport.(South Africans, black and white) who were involved in sport (and recreation) from way back in the 1950’s are still involved in sport today, still giving their time to sport (and recreation) and still loving sport. Post-apartheid South Africa has gone on to record international sports victories and sports prowess of our sports has surfaced with the eradication of apartheid. Elite and professional sports stars abound in all sports and South Africa derives much joy and pride from international sport. And through all of this, our stars from behind the bars are still involved in sport, still organising and loving sport, but never forgetting where we came from and what got us where we are today.”
It is therefore against this background that SRSA together with SASCOC committed themselves to fast-track the conversation with the people and that together we embarked on a broad consultative process that will involve the entire nation in a national and robust debate on transformation and a national sports plan that will culminate in a conceptual and contextual transformation framework and a tailored sports and recreation plan for the country.
The strategic imperative on this matter was to launch a rolling, interactive and progressive process that today has its footprints from a mass-based and people-centered developmental and transformative discourse that will continue to evolve organically from the masses of our people at the grassroots level. Our people did this inspired by their thoughts and enhanced by their opinions through their organised and voluntary formations, they gained their own momentum and this culminated in a vibrant debate and solid platform for national dialogue that will add value to this national indaba.
In this protracted journey we were reminded that the year 1990 marked the release of the father of the nation Dr Nelson Mandela and renaissance of a non-racial, non-sexist, democratic and prosperous sport in South Africa.
Eighteen years down the line, the people of the Republic and the world observed an analogous development in a large-scale sport activism; an expansion and deepening of sport participation at all levels. Sport and Recreation became a seminal activity in the social pursuit of cultivating a healthy nation through healthy body and healthy mind.
In this short period, sport activism in South Africa was able to achieve greater national and international prominence and impact because of its public nature and broadcast. This public appeal made sport and recreation susceptible to be drawn into the polity which gave the democratic state access into the passionate commitments of the people towards sport and recreation.
Hence, we must go out of this Indaba tomorrow having finalised all the pertinent issues; we must all emerge on Tuesday more united than ever before and provide effective leadership in the conduct of sport and recreation in our country.
In that light this meeting should be charged with a duty to fundamentally change the sport and recreation system in South Africa for the better.
In conclusion, 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!
I would like to visit the resolutions adopted by the 18 October 2010 UN General Assembly on ‘Sport as a means to promote Development’; the General Assembly had this to say:
“During a day of lively and wide-ranging discussion on the significance of sport as a driving force for peace and development, and intercultural dialogue as a tool to ensure respect and the equal dignity of all cultures, the General Assembly adopted a consensus resolution recognising the potential of sport to help attain the Millennium Development Goals by 2015, and foster an atmosphere of tolerance.
By a new resolution on “Sports as a means to promote education, health, development and peace”, the Assembly today reaffirmed the importance of sport as a tool to foster cooperation, solidarity, and social inclusion. It also acknowledged the need to strengthen efforts, including multi-stakeholder partnerships, at all levels, to maximise sport’s potential to contribute to the achievement of internationally agreed development goals and national peace building priorities.
In addition, the Assembly acknowledged opportunities for development and social cohesion provided by the 2010 International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) World Cup, held in South Africa from 11 June to 11 July. It also acknowledged the opportunities provided by the XXI Olympic Winter Games and the X Paralympics’ Winter Games, held in Vancouver, Canada, for education, understanding, peace, harmony and tolerance among and between peoples and civilizations.
Among other things, the Assembly, by the text, encouraged the use of sport to strengthen education for children and young people, promote health — including by preventing drug abuse — empower girls and women, foster the inclusion of persons with disabilities and facilitate conflict prevention. It also encouraged the organisers of mass sporting events to leverage those events to promote peace initiatives and raise awareness at all levels.
Throughout the day-long discussion, many of the 45 representatives of Government and civil society lauded the holding of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa - the first time the game had been played on African soil and in a developing country's a vital opportunity for Africa and developing countries to make progress toward achieving the Millennium Goals by 2015.
South Africa’s delegate recalled that during the World Cup, her country “was the stage and Africa was the theatre” that had furthered social cohesion continent-wide. Underscoring the importance of that fact, she said sport had played a crucial role in the demise of the Apartheid system and in the creation of a new society after 1994. Echoing the words of former South Africa President and Nobel Laureate Nelson Mandela, she said: “Sport has the power to change the world, the power to inspire, the power to unite people in a way that little else can.”
I hope these issues raised above capture the spirit of this meeting and that the sport and recreation Indaba will also take the tune from the resolutions of the 2010 UN General Assembly on Sport as a means for Development. I also hope that in this meeting each and every person will be afforded an opportunity to contribute meaningfully towards the realisation of the objectives of our democratic state in general; and sport and recreation fraternity’s strategic priorities as espoused by our Road Map and Strategic Plan 2011 - 2015 and possible adoption of the National Sports Plan 2012 - 2020 in line with National Development Plan of South Africa 2030 produced by the National Planning Commission (NPC).
Thank you, very much!
Opening Address of the Minister of Sport and Recreation, Honourable FA Mbalula (MP), on the occasion of the National Sport and Recreation Indaba, Gallagher Estate, Johannesburg, Gauteng Province, Republic of South Africa
