and Recreation South Africa Mr M A Stofile, National Assembly, Cape Town
22 May 2007
Renewing our pledge: A national partnership to build a better life for
all
Madame Speaker / Honourable Chairperson
Cabinet colleagues
Honourable members
Esteemed ladies and gentlemen
During our first Budget Speech on 15 June 2004 we had this to say:
"Sport is a very important part of society. It is also a very important
barometer of how a particular society is organised. For that reason, our
country too has a responsibility to use sport to assist the country and our
people to move in a particular direction; the direction of a deracialised South
Africa which is also sensitive to gender and disability issues."
The government's vision 2014 goals include the above ideals. These ideals
are also enshrined in our Constitution. Section 7 (2) even enjoins us to
promote the values of equality and protection of human dignity. So, indeed we
must use sport as a tool for nation building. We must use it to build
self-esteem and national pride. We cannot continue with paradigms that
perpetuate apartheid stereotypes of some who are destined for greatness while
others are destined for mediocrity and inferiority.
The public debate occasioned by the passing by this august House of our
Sport and Recreation Amendment Bill last Wednesday is about how we think sport
should be run in this country. Some believe it must be used to contribute to
transformation. Others believe things should be left as they always have been.
The first group believes that a democratising state must play a role in
transformation. The second group believes that market forces and pure chance
should be allowed to dictate the route of change.
No government of the people can abdicate its responsibility to chance and
market forces. A developmental state must intervene to make sure the goals of a
nation are attained. Our President correctly points out that market forces are
not sympathetic to the poor. By the same token we must resist the temptation to
ride rough shod on other sectors of our society. "Affirmative Action" or
"Regstellende Aksie" need not be hostile to some groups whilst it is assisting
others to catch up. We want all our children to start from the same line. Who
finishes first must not be pre-determined by the disparities of where they
individually start. Merit selection cannot be achieved if the playing field of
the participants is not level. To pretend otherwise is only to be over-hopeful
or to be simply mischievous.
Programmes
We have chosen to use this opportunity to give members and our people a
cursory view of what we have been doing with public funds. Of course we also
mobilised some private funds to drive some of our programmes.
Mass Participation
When we launched the Mass Participation Programme in July 2004 in Upington,
we committed ourselves to taking sport to all our people. This was informed by
the observation of how sport had died in most communities. I do not believe
there is any member here who has travelled to more rural communities than
myself in the last three years (and before). As always, we stayed away from the
lenses of the media and rather focused on the people and communities
themselves. As I have always said, for us this is a serious business not a
public relations (PR) exercise.
We travelled from the rural and desolate areas such as Machadadorp in
Emakhazeni Municipality and Belfast in Pixley Ka Seme Municipality, in
Mpumalanga as well as the dusty villages of Jozini in Northern
KwaZulu-Natal.
We visited the mountainous areas of Namaqualand right up to the ghost coast.
We visited many other areas. Whilst we were confronted by extreme poverty and
severe scars of infrastructure deprivation, we were inspired by the enthusiasm
of locals, especially teachers, students and sports veterans. The legendary
"Sugar Ray" Xulu leads a formidable squad of dedicated football masters in
KwaZulu-Natal in response to our call of 2005. The old ladies of the
Mafarana-Jamela football club of Limpopo together with others from Vhembe and
Capricorn districts as well as from Mpumalanga, play football. The 60 years old
Elisa Mhlarhi of Mafarama (nicknamed Jabu Pule) avers that she no longer takes
treatment for hypertension since she started playing football. The 58 years-old
Agnes Mushwana passed fitness test and got a job as a fruit packer. Sport is
bringing health, jobs and hope to our people.
It is exciting to see community leaders and non-governmental organisations
(NGOs) as well as the private sector getting involved in the revival of
community sport. The old Easter Tournaments have risen from the dead. Remote
villages like Qugqwala in the Eastern Cape hosted a tournament of rugby,
soccer, netball and horseracing. An amazing 32 rugby teams participated in the
tournament organised by Advocate Dali Mpofu. A similar tournament was organised
in Alice for rugby, netball and soccer. A team from the remote town of
Qobo-qobo (Keiskammahoek) walked away with the spoils in a rugby tournament in
Cape Town. After watching a school's Easter tournament for rugby in
Johannesburg, Mr Ferreira, President of the Gauteng Lions was moved to express
the hope that the demographic mix of the teams would be reflected in future
Springbok teams. We will be watching and monitoring progress.
Madame Speaker, sport is back in our townships and villages. They need our
moral support as well as our logistical support. Various mayors have introduced
mayoral tournaments. Allow me to brag Madame Speaker and mention that yours
truly started this project in 2003 at Cofimvaba/Tsomo already. These
tournaments are growing like wildfire across the country. The idea is to deepen
participation and organisation to the Ward level. Both development and social
integration will be assured.
This programme is giving life to latent and dormant talent and enthusiasm
for sport and physical activity. We have seen some facilities that have been
"white elephants" hitherto being changed into "work horses" as they get almost
over-utilised. We need more facilities and equipment.
Mr Thembinkosi Biyela represented us in KwaZulu-Natal for a facilities
handover. He visited the following areas:
* Gamalakhe in Port Shepstone under the Ugu District Municipality handed
over an Olympic size swimming pool.
* KwaNzimakwe, Icabhana and Kwa-Cele also under Ugu District Municipality
handed over a multi-purpose sports facilities with change rooms and ablution
blocks.
Although the physical handover took place at Ugu District Municipality,
there were many other facilities, a total of 34, throughout the province that
were handed over on the day to 27 local municipalities. Of the 34, 16 were
built by Sports and Recreation South Africa (SRSA) at a cost of R25 million,
the balance was erected by the provinces and the local municipalities
themselves.
The excitement of parents and children and the enthusiasm of all were most
impressive at Gamalakhe when we handed over the Olympic-size swimming pool. A
much needed and much valued facility.
We have now trained 8 000 young volunteers in administration, coaching,
refereeing, events management and first aid. The South African Gymnastics
Federation has given a lot of support to this programme. They have also become
the biggest beneficiary. Many young people from our hubs participated in the
South African. Gymnastrada Championships in Tshwane/Pretoria last year. Some
510 of these young people will now participate in the July World Gymnastrada
festival in Dornbirn, Austria. Children from Calvinia in the Northern Cape,
Taung in the North West, from Seshego in Limpopo, Umthata in the Eastern Cape,
Gugulethu in the Western Cape, Soweto in Gauteng and some from the rural areas
of KwaZulu-Natal. They will join other children from different parts of the
world in Austria.
The sports leaders of Namaqualand spoke very proudly of their Calvinia Boys
who will be off to Austria. Indigenous games like rope skipping have also seen
our children participate in the World Rope Skipping Championships in Canada
where they did us proud.
So you see, honourable members, South African Sport is not just rugby and
the selection of Springbok teams. Yet those events also play an important role
in building or undermining nation-building. Our Mass Participation Programme
also contributed to the National Youth Service by recruiting and training more
than 2 000 unemployed young people who are running programme in
communities.
A research done by the University of Johannesburg indicates that 42% of
these use their stipends to feed up to eight destitute people. Some of them
have since found permanent jobs with sports federations and provincial
departments. This is our humble contribution to Joint Initiative for Priority
Skills Acquisition (JIPSA) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
The introduction of the Club Development Programme last year has to be seen
against the above background. Federations are performing way below par in
organising community clubs. This in turn has a negative effect on the retention
and development of school athletes� talent. Federations go for ready-made
talent. We try to bridge the gap between school sport and senior sport.
Human resource development, infrastructure provisioning and initiating local
leagues are the key components of our Club Development Programme. It tries to
take mobilisation (MPP) to organisation (Club Development). Local predominant
interests guides where we should begin (soccer, netball, athletics etc).
School sport
When we started in 2004 we lamented the fact that school sport was an
orphan. It belonged to neither SRSA nor to Education. Since signing the
Memorandum of Understand (MoU) with my colleague, Minister of Education, things
are getting better. We have been impressed with the response to the School Mass
Participation Programmes. KwaZulu-Natal leads in this respect followed mostly
by the Western Cape. We urge provinces, parents and teachers to put their
shoulders to the school sport wheel. Sports federations have both an interest
as well as a responsibility for school sport. Educators must work under the
guidance of federations who are the ultimate custodians of sport in any
country. It is the federations who must finally account for what is happening
in their codes.
I have directed my officials to do an evaluation of National Co-ordinating
Committee (NACOC). We must always try to sharpen our delivery models and tools.
In my view, NACOC must play a co-ordinating role. Educators should be allowed
to plan and implement programmes for their schools at the local and District
level. This is how school sport works all over world. We need to de-bottleneck
school sport without making it a free for all. Federations should not bully
teachers. They must respect the autonomy of school sport and its co-ordinating
NGOs that are run by teachers.
Our children are participating in various international events in Greece,
Italy, Namibia, Botswana, Argentina, Ethiopia and elsewhere. Our department has
assisted with some costs and so have provincial departments and companies like
SuperSport, Nike, Cadburys and others. Our partnerships with SCORE and United
Kingdom (UK) sport have also been helpful.
We have twinned 26 schools with 26 Sports Colleges in the United Kingdom.
This has assisted in capacity building to 26 teachers who visited their twin
institutions in the UK last year. Also 52 UK sport development officers visited
South Africa and ran workshops for their South African colleagues. We hope to
add 12 more schools to this programme. Our gratitude goes to the United Kingdom
for their contribution to our sport.
Restructuring process
Madame Speaker/Chairperson, I am happy to announce that we have now
completed the integration of staff from the SRSA and from the sports
commission. We are equally pleased to announce that we have met all government
targets i.e. the national question, gender and people with disabilities. For
the first time we have appointed people with disability at the Senior
Management Services (SMS) level. We hope to be ahead of government targets by
the end of this financial year.
The process was not easy as it involved warm bodies. Some had hoped this
would be a vehicle for automatic promotions. We decided to play it strictly by
the law. We are satisfied of the even handedness of the process. We are also
horrified at the weakness the process exposed i.e. our managers. We have put in
place qualified staff to deal with those weaknesses.
Boxing South Africa (BSA) continues to face challenges. Most of them stem
from a difficult centralisation process of the administration of BSA. The
Chairperson of BSA assures me they will solve their problems this year. I am,
however, concerned that their senior managers have still to assume their
duties. We are dealing with this.
International affairs
South Africa continues to play a leading role in fora like the World
Anti-Doping Association, African Union, Supreme Council of Sport and in other
bi-nationals. National federations like netball, cricket, swimming, hockey,
cycling and korfball have been twinned with the United Kingdom, Nederlands and
Flanders. Diving, boxing, handball, judo and volleyball have been linked with
China, Cuba and Algeria. We currently have nine students studying towards a
degree in physical Education and sport in Cuba through a generous scholarship
of the Cuban government. Limpopo and the Free State are beneficiaries of
graduates from this programme.
The South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC)
continues to face problems that face all new institutions. Despite all this
they are ably preparing Team South Africa for the All Africa Games in Algeria
in July. At the same time they are working closely with national federations to
prepare for the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Beijing in 2008. As usual, we
assist with funds to make sure our elite athletes are properly conditioned.
Thirty nine of these are currently on a full-time residential programme at the
high performance centre. Another 691 have been serviced since August 2006. In
addition we assist the athletes with allowances so that they can concentrate in
their preparation without worrying too much about subsistence issues.
Preparations for the Federation International Football Association (FIFA)
2010 World Cup are on track. Everything is now there for all the doubting
Thomasses to see or inspect. But our detractors will continue to be heard long
after a successful 2010. We are aware what the opponents of the rotation of
bidding continents are trying to do to steal the World Event from Africa. Let
us close ranks and protect this privilege. By all means criticise where
criticism is due. Let us not demoralise and demobilise our people by negative
attitudes.
I must conclude by thanking the co-operation and support of the
following:
* Deputy Minister Oosthuizen
* My Cabinet Colleagues
* Chairpersons of the Portfolio committee and of the Standing Committee for
Sport and Education
* MECs and premiers
* Managers and staff of SRSA
* Managers from other Departments who helped with the restructuring
process
* The media and the people of South Africa.
We must also wish our national teams well in their coming commitments.
I thank you.
Issued by: Sport and Recreation South Africa
22 May 2007
