Budget Vote Debate 2017/18 Budget Vote No. 40 Theme: “School Sport the bedrock of our Sport System” Honourable TW Nxesi MP Minister of Sport and Recreation
Programme Director
Deputy Minister, Honourable Gert Oosthuizen
The Director-General and officials of Sport and Recreation South Africa
Members of the Media
Let’s get straight into the budget:
The total budget for 2017/18 to Sports and Recreation South Africa is R1.067 billion.
Of this R689.1 million is allocated to mass participation sport and recreation activities under the banner of our Active Nation programme. This means that 64.6% of the budget goes directly to sport development.
Of this R224.5 million (21% of the budget) goes to School Sport.
The total allocation for transfers and subsidies stands at R796.1 million. Of this, R585.8 million is transferred to Provincial Departments by way of conditional grants to support delivery in the provinces.
The balance of the transfers and subsidies – R210.1 million is allocated to support national sports bodies with an amount of R169.2 million, and R79.3 million largely to support high performance sport.
I am pleased to report that the Department will save R27.8 million over the next three years by cutting spending on advertising, contractors, travel and subsistence as well as the cost of venues and events.
I am also pleased to confirm that the Department again achieved a clean audit for the last financial year. [On a lighter note, you don’t know how good that feels – after 5 years at Public Works.]
In general, at international level, South African sport continues to punch above its weight. This week the Blitz Bokke were officially crowned the 2016/17 HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series champions. They have accepted an invitation to be with us at the Budget Vote this morning.
So there is much to celebrate in South African sport… And yet ….
There remains the elephant in the room. The majority of our schools – in the townships and rural areas – provide little or no physical education and sports opportunities. At the same time, many of the national teams draw their players from a relatively small number of private and former model C schools. There are a number of problems with this:
- First, it is morally wrong to exclude any child from fulfilling their potential;
- Second, it weakens the health of the nation; and
- Third, from a high-performance sport stance, it is extremely short-sighted. Just think of all that potential talent out there.
The 2015/16 Annual Report into Transformation in Sport released two weeks ago by the independent Eminent Persons Group argues that School Sport is the ‘Achilles heel’ of the entire Sport System. They go on to suggest that some national codes may not be sustainable in the medium to long term due to projected demographic changes – in brief: the number and percentage of kids in township and rural schools is rising; the percentage in well-resourced schools will fall.
Transformation is not simply about the racial make-up of the national team. The EPG audits what is happening across the whole sport system. For the Transformation Barometer, federations – based on their circumstances – set transformation targets to be achieved annually. It is a system which has been embraced by the national federations – both to support transformation, and for strategic reasons. They know they have to increase the pool from which they can draw for the national teams.
So Community and School Sport development is critical to transformation.
This does not mean that we will give any less weight to existing programmes to support high performance sport such as the academies, the sport focus schools, sports bursaries, the National Training Centre, the sports science programme, as well as funding to support national federations.
As the national department, together with provincial departments, SRSA organises annual national school competitions across sixteen prioritised sport codes. The system works well from the district level up to province and national. But the challenge is the poor participation rates at circuit and school level – approximately 6,000 schools out of 25,000.
Our plans to strengthen the School Sport Programme include the following:
- To review and fully implement the Memorandum of Agreement that exists with the Department of Basic Education – to ensure that access to Physical Education and sport is expanded across the school system. This process is already underway;
- To coordinate with the Department of Social Development in relation to their EPWP programme to train ECD (Early Childhood Development) practitioners – providing trainers and materials - so that children in the ECD phase can be trained in fine motor skills – critical to physical and sports development as they grow older.
- To cooperate with the Department of Higher Education which is piloting the delivery of training courses for Physical Education teachers and coaches through the TVET colleges.
We are also working with SASCOC – representing the national federations - so that we both align with the LTDP (Long Term Player Development) strategy – to build a unified and expanded skills pipeline across the schooling system – so that talent can be identified and channelled from a much larger pool. To this end we will be training more talent scouts – amongst others drawing on retired sportspeople.
I have also said that there can be no school sport without teachers. So one of my priorities is to engage with teacher unions. For that matter, I also want to meet with parent bodies – to see how they can be mobilised.
The sheer number of stakeholders required to strengthen school sport requires that we establish a coordinating platform or structure to provide the kind of coordination and alignment which the sector requires.
At community sports level we are seeking to cooperate with COGTA (Cooperative Governance and Traditional Authorities) and municipalities for the sharing of sports and recreational facilities. From last year it has been agreed to ring-fence a percentage of the Municipal Infrastructure Grant to build community sports facilities.
I am also pleased to announce that the Rural Sports Development Programme is already underway across all provinces. This is based on a partnership with traditional authorities (as well as farming communities in the Western Cape.) The early knock-out rounds have taken place in the provinces – with national championships scheduled for mid-year.
Let me also mention the Indigenous Games Festival which will take place during heritage month in September. The Games will be strengthened by the inclusion of schools for the first time. [Yesterday we visited Reygersdal Primary School in Atlantis. It offers the sport of Ringball – also known as Korfbal. I had to ask what it was. Apparently it is similar to netball – and is a traditional South African game which has been played since 1907 – for 110 years! It is important that we continue to support such indigenous sports.]
