“From Policy to Practice”
The Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee
Members of Parliament
Ladies and Gentlemen
Today we present the 2012/16 Strategic Plan and the 2012/13 Annual Performance Plan of the Department of Sport and Recreation South Africa (SRSA) to the Portfolio Committee for Sport and Recreation of the Parliament of the Republic of South Africa.
Chairperson, The Sport and Recreation South Africa (SRSA) is hereby presenting the Strategic Plan for the Fiscal Years 2012 to 2016 to the people of the Republic of South Africa and the Parliament of the Republic for consideration.
The Strategic Plan is aimed at giving the nation a clear picture of the planned programmes and activities of SRSA for the next five years as well as budget allocations and estimates for such years. This Strategic Plan is broken down into Annual Plans and Activities that are aimed at realising the stated objectives of the 2012/16 Strategic Plan.
At the same time this plan will on an Annual Basis position itself to integrate the National Sport and Recreation Plan (NSRP) 2030 as adopted by the National Sport and Recreation Indaba (NSRI) in November 2011.
Concretely, the Strategic Plan takes into account all the relevant policies, legislation and other mandates for which Sport and Recreation South Africa is responsible. It accurately reflects the strategic outcome oriented goals and objectives which Sport and Recreation South Africa will endeavour to achieve over the period 2012/16.
The genesis of the documents presented to the Portfolio Committee this morning emanates from the January 2011 Strategic Planning Workshop of Sport and Recreation South Africa (SRSA) together with all the Members of Executive Councils (MEC’s) as well as the South African Sport Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC) including Sport Federations held in Misty Hills, Gauteng Province was a watershed moment for Sport and Recreation in the Republic of South Africa.
This Strategic Planning workshop provided the foundation for faster change in sport and recreation in South Africa; and made a positive impact on the quality of sport and recreation system in our country.
As reported to this Parliament in 2011, the Strategic Planning Workshop had extensive discussions and conclusions on issues related to transformation, schools sport, facilities, funding and etc. Key to this was the proposal to host the first ever National Sport and Recreation Indaba in the Republic.
At the centre of the strategy to deal with the aforementioned programmes was the matter of levelling the playing field in sport and recreation in South Africa. In this regard, SRSA held a National Sport and Recreation Indaba (NSRI) in November 2011, the first of its kind under the theme “From Policy to Practice”, not Just Another Indaba!
Honourable Members, the NSRI was a ‘festival of ideas’. It provided a platform for our people to establish a connection between the developmental impact of sport and recreation, development in sport and recreation as well as structural characteristics of the sport and recreation architecture. It looked at the internal organisation of the Department of Sport and Recreation and its relations to all stakeholders in sport and recreation.
The significance of the Indaba is that South Africa’s sport and recreation fraternity need to pay close attention to the institutional design in SRSA and National Federations (NFs) and all the organisation of sport and recreation that should underpin the South African government development policy and programmes. And such institutions have to be transformative, rather than constraining the capacity of the developmental state.
The National Sport and Recreation Indaba (NSRI) therefore affirmed the need to intensify the transformation agenda in sport and recreation using schools as incubators for development. It re-affirmed the centrality of schools as ‘bedrock’ for sport development in our country whilst at the same time confirming schools sport as the important grassroots participation in ensuring that sport development is achieved and fulfils the mission of SRSA.
The Sport Indaba stated without equivocation that there should be a structured schools sport programme with dedicated schools sport structures in line with schools’ sport leagues.
It is therefore our collective responsibility to embrace this and provide leadership towards the realisation of this dream. Only through our collective efforts we will achieve a qualitative and sound schools sport system in South Africa.
In the same token the National Sport Indaba re-affirmed the strategic importance of Sports Hubs and also affirmed that it is through the collective wisdom of the people of South Africa as well as private sector to build strong and functioning sports hubs across the country.
It further recognised the importance of rewarding excellence through a well organised South Africa Sports Awards; and committed the SRSA to organise a bigger and better South African Awards for 2012.
It also recognised the steps taken to improve the performance of our national teams and athletes through opening access, efforts for greater integration and coordination of all sport structures and systems.
It lastly acknowledged progress made since 1994, and called on all stakeholders to redouble their efforts and commitments to address the persistent disparities in sport and recreation in the Republic.
As we thrust ahead towards the eighteenth anniversary of the existence of the Department of Sport and Recreation in 2013, reflections on the long road traversed occupy our daily thoughts, it is palpable that those vistas give way to lessons learned, and the long road that still lies ahead of us in achieving a better life for all South Africans.
Honourable Members, we have closed the year 2011 with the completion of both the Country Report on the hosting of the 2010 FIFA World Cup and the 100 Days Report of the Ministry of Sport and Recreation South Africa (SRSA) in Office. We can however boast that both the year 2010 and 2011 have been wonderful and happy periods in the history of sport and recreation and for the people of the Republic of South Africa, Africa and the world.
Both these auspicious years witnessed a world soccer extravaganza prepared and hosted by Africans themselves on the African soil; and our participation in the Cricket and Rugby World Cups as well as the World Netball Championships showing sport and athletic skills, our hospitality and a caring spirit towards the peoples of the world during the 2010 FIFA World Cup and Ekhaya Hospitality programmes we hosting elsewhere in the world.
We have in the same token launched the Schools Sport programme for South Africa in 2011 and will in 2012 rigorously roll-out schools sport programmes based on the priority sport codes we have chosen. At the same time SRSA stresses and reassert the importance of schools sport; especially the matter of compulsory physical education and activities in all schools of the Republic of South Africa.
This includes, but not limited to, local, regional, provincial and national schools sport competitions which is now high on the agenda of SRSA and the nation going forward. This should also include our relationships and partnerships with other government departments e.g. the Memorandum of Understanding with the Department of Education on Schools Sport and the Department of Health around issues of nutrition in schools.
In this context South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC) is called upon to work closely with SRSA in the delivery of our Schools Sport programme. We want to use schools sport as a platform to encourage social integration and integrated social inclusion. We would like all stakeholders to put their valuable time to support all our young athletes especially in schools and provide assistance to our educators with the necessary support and skills in areas such as coaching and officiating using the ‘Coaching Framework’ as well as sport administration and management, among other things.
Ladies and Gentlemen, progress has been made since 1994 in sport and recreation, however, more still needs to be done to level the playing field in sport. We still witness an inaccessible and unequal landscape in sport as well as lack of a fully funded sport development and system in the Republic. Therefore, this sport administration has been given a mandate to correct these imbalances of the past.
To concretely implement these strategic imperatives, the delegates at the November 2011 Sports Indaba charged the government and the civil society to move with speed in improving the sporting environment, access to facilities and sustained development.
In this context we would like to call upon all the developmental state, private sector, labour and business as well as civil society to join hands with us in the Schools Sport programme enchored on three important components:
- Physical Education
- Top School Leagues, and
- Youth Olympics.
SRSA regards schools sport as ‘foundation’ of sport development in South Africa. We would like to build strategic alliances in the roll-out of Schools Sport. We want schools in South Africa to be incubators and nurseries for sport development and talent identification. We want to use schools sport as a platform to encourage social integration and integrated social inclusion.
As from this year 2012 onwards, we commit ourselves to maximise access to sport, recreation and physical education in every school in the Republic.
We have identified schools sport as a strategic opportunity for sport development and talent identification. In this regard we have developed an Integrated School Sport Delivery Framework that is being implemented in 2012 and beyond.
At the same time, SRSA and the Department of Basic Education (DoBE) are mobilising schools and society to register their schools’ teams to participate in the Leagues’ five competitions categories that will ultimately lead to the National School Festivals for all the winning schools.
For an example, schools will be required to participate in Intra-School Competitions, Inter-School Level competitions, District Level Competitions, Provincial Competitions, and National Competition.
In this regard, through the SRSA partnership with the DoBE and other key stakeholders, we agreed to prioritise and magnify this programme. We are launching the Magnificent Wednesdays. This Wednesdays programme will be used as a vehicle that will drive the School Sport Programme for the country on a weekly basis. This is an ambitious yet achievable programme where major business faculty is needed to inject more financial and kind support for a better South Africa.
By doing this we believe that Investment in education and sport are not parallel, they are dialectically intertwined, we suggest that Corporate Social Investment (CSI) of business entities should be channelled to priority areas, particularly In school sport programmes.
We would like to use every available platform to exchange ideas on how we, together with society, can fast-track the implementation of our national sports and recreation plan.
We hope to lobby everybody to discuss with us new modern ways of developing modern sport clubs and teams. We want to share experiences with each and every person on how to use modern technology to advance sport development especially at the level of schools, clubs and federations.
In the same token SRSA together with SAFA will utilise the FIFA World Cup Legacy Trust Fund to roll-out the construction of artificial football fields to be utilised to roll-out the implementation of Regional Sports Hubs. These hubs will take the form of the construction of Multi-purpose centres, High Performance Centres as well as Sports Academies across the country especially in rural and neglected areas.
We would therefore like to continue and maximise our efforts in the spirit of the Indaba and build on that foundation for a well-rounded and a sound sport system in our country.
We will do so determined to alter the balance of forces in sport and recreation landscape towards a united, non-racial, non-sexist, democratic and prosperous sport and recreation system in the Republic; because we believe that seventeen years in our democratic dispensation South African sport is still faced with a huge backlog in terms of transformation, our national teams are still predominantly unrepresentative, distribution of facilities is still skewed and access not open to all.
As an ‘active and winning nation’, SRSA held first ever South African Sports Awards in October 2012. The SA Sports Awards is a platform to celebrate excellence; rewarding achievement in sport and recreation and well-designed recognition of luminaries in and off the field of sport.
SRSA together with SABC and SASCOC organised a very successful SA Sport Awards for our country. We therefore want to host a bigger and better Awards in October 2012.To do this successfully, we are here to also moblise partners towards this historic event.
We therefore urge everyone in South Africa to partner with us by contributing towards the success of the SA Sport Awards or Adopt a Sport as a token of appreciation of ‘a winning nation’; or/and Adopt a Hub as a symbol of promoting ‘an active nation’.
Concretely and in essence the Ministry of Sport and Recreation will in this financial year appoint the National Sport and Recreation Transformation Commission that will among other things Monitor and Evaluate the extent of the implementation of the Transformation Charter as part of the NSRP with its stated Scorecards as the Monitoring and Evaluation tool for Transformation in sport and recreation.
In this effect SRSA and SASCOC will take full responsibility for overseeing transformation with SRSA being at the helm of the process. This will involve signing Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with all the Federations and other stakeholders who are in sport and recreation service delivery machinery.
Ladies and Gentlemen, SRSA is formulating a Cabinet Memorandum in order to table the NSRP to Cabinet for approval and request Cabinet to prioritise sport and recreation by instructing the developmental state to put more and sufficient funds the vigorous implementation of the NSRP.
We will, after the approval by Cabinet of the NSRP, go out on rigorous ‘Road Shows’ country wide in all provinces and municipalities to engage our communities on the NSRP. This will include tailored awareness and outreach programmes as well as Magnificent Fridays programmes to inform our people about the NSRP and its envisaged impact in the lives of ordinary South Africans especially sportspersons.
Chairperson, we will continue to turn around the operational mode on how we conduct our business as a department and portfolio of sport and recreation, and realign our outputs to our strategic national outcomes. This we do, fully aware that it would be a long, arduous struggle which would require vision, determination and commitment.
It is incumbent upon us to work in unison, to construct a social compact with all stakeholders that will harness our collective resolve, underpinned by our shared values and common vision.
We will do this to establish links between the internal workings of SRSA, Provincial Sport and Recreation Departments, SASCOC as well as NFs and civil society at large which should result in functional, seamless, coherent, and with cohesiveness and accountability resulting in excellent performance of the sport and recreation sector.
Honourable members, finally, I would like to thank the Deputy Minister, Mr Gert Ootsthuizen, the Director General, Mr Moemi and all those senior managers who ensure that the grinding mill produces the staff members of the department. To the department, I say, we must always remember our central drive on this year of “From Policy to Practice”: ‘Not Just Another Year’: making SRSA work faster, harder and smarter, with less.
I would also like to thank the Portfolio Committee on Sport and Recreation under the leadership of Mr. Richard Mdakani, for his leadership in the Portfolio Committee and we look forward to the continued constructive oversight role of the Portfolio Committee in the implementation of the National Sport and Recreation Plan (NSRP).
I thank the Staff in the Ministry for their commitment and support, and going beyond the call of duty for the Ministry to stay ahead of the game. Sport and recreation system in 2011 and beyond.
Honourable Members, we therefore present to the Portfolio Committee 2012/16 Strategic Plan and 2012/13 Annual Performance Plan of the Department of Sport and Recreation South Africa.
Thank you.
