Programme Director
Distinguished Guests
Colleagues
Ladies and Gentlemen
Fellow South Africans and Visitors
Thank you very much for inviting me to this majestic gathering of the Lagunya Rugby Football Club and Easter Weekend Tournament, a well-known and unique Tournament in the history of the Republic of South Africa. This tournament assembles an extremely experienced pool of rugby players from different provinces and exposes them to hard core rugby competition.
Indeed, it is with great honour and privilege for me to accept this responsibility to deliver this Speech to you today and also welcome all distinguished guests to the shores of the Western Cape Province.
Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the City of Cape Town, the city at the southern tip of the Western Cape Province of the Republic of South Africa. As you have already seen, Cape Town is a place where mountains rise, where delicate scenery drifts into distant horizons, where the sun thaws out into warm and cold seas.
This City is a place that is robust and vibrant, where you will find sport, recreation, art and culture blowing up and high-spirited, attached with its wild life of boisterous people and murmuring sands, where you will enjoy so much more with its peaceful and warm people.
Our people call this part of our country iKapa and they are proud to call it iKapa Elihlumayo, their home, they have so much to offer. They collectively believe that ‘working together we can do more’ for our City and Province.
Western Cape in general and Cape Town in particular is a unique place, a Province and a City of many challenges, but, promising future, a Province that could be united in its diversity, a Province with many possibilities, and a people with zeal and zest to survive and with passion, a home full with a spirit of uBuntu. A Province that can defeat the Legacy of Apartheid, if provided an opportunity.
Distinguished Guests, as we are all aware that the divided past of our country and people, which was put into the cul-de-sac through a democratic process in 1994 when we had our first historic democratic and people-centered elections, was characterised by a plethora of apartheid discriminatory laws and practices based on race, gender and class.
The sport and recreation sector did not escape the plague of officially recognised, institutionalised and non-institutionalised racial, gender and class practices. The black majority, Africans in particular, the indigenous people of this land; did not have equal rights and access to sport and recreation as well as competitive or recreational sport opportunities at school and community levels.
This is why during unity negotiations between the South African Rugby Board and the South African Rugby Union, executives of the 23 clubs in Langa, Gugulethu and Nyanga reached an agreement to merge the clubs and Lagunya Rugby Club was formed. After the merger, the national and super 10 teams were required to practise at Lagunya. Recently the Super 14 teams continued to practise at Lagunya.
The main aim was to establish a platform to be used to reinforce the struggle for non-racialism in sport and in society. The club members were responsible for raising travelling funds and the teams were accommodated in school classrooms. The tournaments were synonymous with the exhibition of top quality rugby and it is where a lot of players were noticed and enticed to greener pastures.
We know that our black schools were isolated in the sport of rugby and many did not play rugby during the late 70’s due to the ills of apartheid. After the unity in the mid 90’s a core group of clubs revived the tradition at the time when club rugby in black communities was faced with serious challenges and even possibilities of extinction. Central to the celebration of friendship and competition was the “revival of club rugby “in black townships and rural villages. The tournament has been hosted in the Eastern Cape, Gauteng, Western Cape and the former Transkei.
This initiative to us speaks directly against the lack of or no investment in our communities by the apartheid government especially in communities where the majority of the people resided. This disinvestment was also evident in areas such as sport infrastructure, sport equipment and attire, sport development and talent identification and/or sport activities especially for historically disadvantaged national groups who are blacks in general and Africans in particular; of whom the majority are women living in rural areas.
So as government we say thank you for your farsightedness, and believe that the Easter Week-end rugby tournament culture will continue to be our living testimony in building new rugby stars. We want you to take this tournament beyond the Eastern Cape, Western Cape and Gauteng. Clubs should move from across our country to play here and take part in rugby games to celebrate a mile stone achievement by the host clubs and it must take its initial form of celebrating the anniversaries of clubs affectionately known as “Jubilees”.
We believe that the Lagunya RFC is in line with the mission statement of the Sport and Recreation South Africa (SRSA) “to maximise access, development and excellence at all levels of participation in sport and recreation in order to improve social cohesion, nation building and the quality of life of all South Africans”.
We view this initiative as a beginning of a process to create an enabling environment to broaden participation of the black child in sport and recreation especially in rugby at all levels of participation. We are encouraged by such boldness as displayed by the leadership of Lagunya, other Rugby Clubs who are taking part in this tournament, to create an atmosphere where our youth are encouraged to choose sport as a necessary tool to uplift their living conditions.
Such initiatives, in our view, contribute immensely towards the realisation of our national goals of building a healthy nation through healthy lifestyles. In the same vein, initiatives of this nature contributes constructively in the fight against crime, alcohol and drug abuse, abuse of women and children and reducing violence, teenage pregnancy, delinquency and all other social ills confronting South Africa and her youth today.
In this regard we would therefore like to take this occasion to present our cordial support to all the participants in this tournament especially the players who will take part in this important event.
This year’s Easter Weekend Tournament should epitomise one of the successful development programmes that government, with the help of the Lagunya Football Club and other clubs, is putting into place to groom future sport stars. We want to commit ourselves to use such Tournaments as bedrock for sport development in South Africa. It should harness talent in sport, and foster community development, social cohesion, economic integration and nationhood.
These games represent a new tradition for sport in our country, attracting the youth and stars of the future, but, at the same time grooming future South African champions from the wider community. As South Africans, we expect the tournament to showcase the hidden sport talent and allow you to participate meaningfully in the Springboks in future.
Our role as government is to present these opportunities so that these dreams are realised, and as government and communities were you belong, we will support you as you choose to grab these opportunities!
Government has prioritised school and community sport as a fundamental instrument for sport development in the country and will therefore support such related programmes. We will support these programmes and government is fully behind the country’s sport people and will continue to build a case for sport as a vehicle for development and nation building.
Enjoy these finals, you have worked hard to get here, give your best, make friends and as always play fair!
In the same token, SRSA would like to convey our heartfelt condolences to the families of the Rugby Players from the Eastern Cape Province who passed away when preparing themselves to come and participate in tournament. We would therefore pay homage to these fallen rugby heroes from the Motherwell Rugby Football Club who drowned in the Blue Waterbay waters on Sunday, 25 March 2012.
SRSA lowers its banners to pay tribute to the colossal contribution of these martyrs towards a representative sport system in the Republic of South Africa and our society. Their death will not go unnoticed, and I hope the management of these games will look at a possibility of naming this tournament after these heroes.
This will make sure that their spirits will bless these games going forward and their participation and contribution in the development agenda in rugby won’t go unnoticed and forgotten. May their souls rest in peace?
Thank you.
Speech of the Minister of Sport and Recreation South Africa (SRSA), Honourable Mr Fikile A. Mbalula (MP), on the occasion of the Lagunya Easter Tournament, Cape Town, Western Cape Province, Republic of South Africa
