It was a proud moment today in Parliament as Members of Parliament (MPs) welcomed South African Olympians who flew the country’s flag high at the recent London Olympics.
While MPs heaped praise on the country’s heroes and heroines who returned home with a total of six medals (three gold, two silver and one bronze), there was consensus to now focus on developing school sport in a bid to groom future Olympians at an early age. This emerged during a special joint sitting of the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces to welcome and congratulate the successful South African Olympics team.
“The recently approved National Sport and Recreation Plan with school sports programmes as its bedrock will ensure that much more sporting talent will be identified and developed, which will make us more competitive in future international competitions,” said Minister of Sport and Recreation Mr Fikile Mbalula.
Democratic Alliance (DA) MP Mr Winston Rabotapi urged Government to find ways and means of efficiently spending more money on school sport development programmes. This he said, would help the country’s schools to become “nurseries for grooming future athletes and sport administrators”.
ID MP Mr John Gunda said: “If we as South Africans want to develop sport to compete with the great sporting nations of the world, we have to start investing in sport development at primary school level.”
MPs called for the establishment of schools of sports excellence around the country. Inkatha Freedom Party MP Mr Mkhuleko Hlengwa said training facilities and resources should be readily available to athletes in the country. “The continued absence of schools of excellence is a great detriment to future success. Education and sport must be intertwined,” he added.
MPs also called upon the private sector to assume an active role in the country’s sport development. “Recognising funding challenges, we need to look at corporate-sector sponsorship being spread more equally across some sport codes and not only on cricket, football and rugby,” said COPE MP Mr Graham.
