Programme Director;
Deputy Minister of Sport and Recreation, Hon. G Oosthuizen;
Director-General of Sport and Recreation, Mr A Moemi;
Distinguished guests;
Ladies and gentlemen;
Sportsmen and women;
I want us to begin our discussion and debate in this 2013 Think Sport Edition to talk about transformation in sport and recreation in South Africa in a true spirit of Chairman Mao Tse-tung, when he said: “Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend”.
These words from one of the greatest leaders in the world are still relevant today as they were relevant many years ago in the international struggles for people’s power especially in the Socialist Republic of China.These wise words still reverberates in the minds of millions of people across the world that are still in the forefront of progressive and noble struggles for fundamental change.
For us in South Africa; these words are a call to action to transform and change sport and recreation for the better. Mao’s words speak directly to our assertions as contained in our transformation perspective as presented in the National Sport and Recreation Indaba in November 2011. In our transformation perspective we said: “We live no stone unturned, and they will be no holly cows as we embark on a brutally frank discourse on transformation.”
As a result we resolved at the National Sport and Recreation Indaba to put issues of transformation at the centre of every work of sport and recreation bodies in South Africa whilst at the same time making sport and recreation a centre piece of the national discourse in the country to ensure social cohesion and nation building.This in essence should mean access, participation, inclusion, equity, and equality, gender sensitivity towards a united, non-racial, non-sexist, democratic and prosperous society.
Therefore this seminar should take stock on the difficult road we have traveled and showcase the achievements we’ve made before and after the 1994 democratic breakthrough as well as the road we need to travel for the next 30 years and beyond. This seminar should help us to illustrate the contradictions in our society and sport especially on matters of deliberate distortion of facts about transformation in South Africa; and the willingness of the majority of our sport people to advance transformation and some to block transformation and misrepresent the basic principles of transformation to our nation.
From the onset, I would like to use two examples based on two recent newspaper articles in our country. For an example when Makhaya Ntini was talking about difficulties faced by Thami Tsolekile in cricket he had this to say: “Tsolekile would have been playing if he was white. I don’t understand how we can only have one black cricketer in our squad. What is going on? In the whole squad; people will say we are talking politics, but we need to say things”.
Ralph Staniforth in his response to Makhaya said: “Just when we thought that race was no longer an issue in the South African national cricket team; race has reared its ugly head again. Everyone of the team members are there on merit. Yes, there were eyebrows raised over the inclusion of Rory Kleinveldt over Lonwabo Tsotsobe but one can hardly point at racial discrimination for that choice.There are very good cricketing reasons behind that. Ntini is a very well respected person within the world of cricket and such comments can cause plenty of harm.”
On the other hand Makhaya Ntini continued to raise sharply his personal experience with the Proteas to qualify his observations. He shared that with us when he said in the same article: “I always felt as if I was on the verge of being dropped. Whenever a new (white) bowler came into the side; the question always was whether they were coming to take my positio which is the last thing Tsolekile will want to hear as he wonders when he will get the chance he amply deserves.”
Ladies and gentlemen, I am dwelling on the above quotes to illustrate to everyone that regardless of progress we have made in South Africa; our country and nation is full of sharp contradictions. It is a country where the colour of the skin, geographic location and economic status has been used to advance certain communities and individuals in sport and recreation.
The tendency of discrimination, racism and exclusion has been consciously infused in the psyche of our communities and sporting codes including in school sport programmes to breed the desired results of Apartheid Colonial philosophy. This system and structural arrangement became a determining factor for some to be positioned and resourced to succeed and excel in sport and recreation at the expense of those who have been discriminated against.
Distinguished guests, as we mark the first anniversary of the launch of the ThinkSport Journal and the first anniversary of the sitting of the Think Sport Seminar we need to reverse this psyche and behaviour. We need to commit ourselves into principles of fairness, merit and excellence. But our commitment into fairness, merit and excellence should not be blurred by our ignorance into realities of history of sport in South Africa.
Hence we continue to commit ourselves to host structured conversations among our people to discuss important issues in sport and recreation. As we agreed in the National Sport and Recreation Indaba (NSRI); our National Sport and Recreation Plan (NSRP) “has a potential to reconstruct and revitalize the delivery of sport and recreation in South Africa towards building ‘an active and winning nation’ that will equitably improve the quality of life of all South Africans”.
In deed the Think Sport Journal and this Seminar are necessary platforms to ‘reconstruct and revitalize sport and recreation’ in our country. These are platforms designed for all South Africans and sports people in particular to engage on all matters that affect the life of sport and recreation in our country.
We are brought together in this platform to think deep about sport. We are called upon to engage in a robust and dynamic debate about the challenges facing sport and recreation in South Africa. These platforms are provided to us to think innovatively and creatively about what needs to be done to make the life of all our athletes better. We need to think deep about our commitment to transformation in sport and recreation in our country.
Therefore, the ThinkSport Journal and this Seminar are “aimed at promoting dialogue and information sharing amongst and between the stakeholders in sport and recreation in the Republic”. This year we have increased the number of participants and made the seminar bigger and better to draw some huge experience from intellectuals and sport practitioners from South Africa and different parts of the world to share with us their experiences in the advancement and improvement of sport and recreation in South Africa, Africa and the world over.
Let me articulate some of my expectations with regard to the end result of this Seminar. Firstly, we expect this Seminar to articulate the collective positive attitude of the masses of our people in the struggle for a united, non-racial, non-sexist and democratic society, sport included. Secondly, we expect it to reaffirm our collective commitment and wisdom to the NSRP especially on the issue of transformation. Thirdly, we expect this Seminar to provide practical solutions towards a totally transformed sport and recreation landscape in South Africa based on the principles and objectives of the NSRP.
Therefore, this gathering and platform, which takes place hardly twelve days after the hosting of a successful Nelson Mandela Sport and Culture Day, should make the wishes of our former President Nelson Mandela a reality by committing ourselves to his ideals as we deal with the difficult issues in sport and recreation. We must do so subjected to his ideals when he said:
“Let us commit towards our common goal,
A Nation where all of us are winners.
Let us build a nation of champions!
Let us build a nation that Walter Sisulu can be proud of.
When I see him in the next life,
I need to take good news to him.”
Therefore this seminar should do its utmost best to give Madiba a necessary strength and ammunition to live for a purpose that South Africa has triumphed over the demon of racism and racial discrimination, including discrimination based on disability, sexism and gender inequality, xenophobia, tribalism, nepotism, and favouritism in sport and recreation. It is our firm belief that the Think Sport Journal and the seminar should be platforms to showcase our work. They should used as centre to share information about the strides we have made in sport and recreation.
We must begin to utilize our own media and publicity platforms to sell our athletes to the world and the private sector to lobby support for all our sportspersons. It is platforms of this nature that will make sport and recreation to be taken serious by our communities including the business sector. These engagements will improve the quality of the delivery of sport and recreation in South Africa.
We are brought together this evening to share our dreams of a South African sport and recreation landscape that is inclusive, non-racial, non-sexist and democratic that is aimed at building a national democratic society.
Ladies and gentlemen, indeed, our National Sport and Recreation Plan (NSRP) have “instructed us to continue the intellectual debates and discussions about issues affecting sport and recreation”. Therefore, it is of pivotal importance for such gatherings and conversations in order to produce a structured response to the essence of our existence and inform the nation about our core values that enjoins us as a sporting nation to develop and transform sport and recreation in South Africa for the better.
As we are launching and tabling the SRSA’s 2013 to 2017 strategic plan this year, we are equally calling upon all intellectuals, practitioners and administrators in sport and recreation including sport administrators, practitioners and communities to march in unison to breathe life and a new perspective in sport and recreation going forward.
We need to take stock on the road we traversed since the adoption of the National Sport and Recreation Plan (NSRP) as to make checks and balances on the implementation of the plan. We need to embark on introspection about the strides we have made since the adoption of the Transformation Charter and the Score Cards especially on our ability and capacity to implement the School Sport Programme. We need to immediately launch our “Road to the National School Sport Championships 2013” in order to mobilize schools and communities to support our school sport programme.
We must therefore continue these positive intellectual debates and dialogues about the life of sport in our country and the course of transformation in sport and recreation in South Africa. It our conviction and wisdom “to preserve our heritage in sport and recreation through purposefully documenting our intellectual engagements on matters of sport and recreation and share information that could be disseminated in order to share with the generations to come regarding the history and philosophy of sport and recreation in South Africa, Africa and the world”.
By the way the preservation of knowledge and information about our historic advancements in sport and recreation requires dedicated platforms in the form of these seminars to be centres of both academic and organic intellectual engagements to preserve our sporting history and heritage.
Therefore, we must effectively utilize these windows of opportunity opened to us by the Think Sport Journal and the Seminar to make our positive mark in the history of sport in our country and look carefully at the footprints discovered in the process of the implementation of the resolutions of the Unity Agreements in sport and recreation and the National Sport and Recreation Plan (NSRP). This exercise is necessary because it will pave a necessary way forward for building an intellectual community of great thinkers that can take sport and recreation into higher heights.
As a result, following the successful hosting of the 2012 Think Sport Symposium; our country is now in a right direction to influence planning and delivery of sport and recreation services by all the spheres of our government led by the department of sport and recreation.
With the help of these initiatives like ThinkSport Seminar and the Journal, we are sure that the NSRP as anchored in the National Development Plan (NDP) will assist the country to “reconstruct and revitalize the sport and recreation sector in South Africa for an active, healthy, productive and winning nation while at the same time improving the quality of life of all South Africans especially the poor and destitute”.
We are sure that this initiative will translate into the achievement of the NSRI objectives and be made an interactive platform to assist in infusing-in the spirit of the ThinkSport Journal’s thinking and application towards the broader community of sport people in keeping with the pace of debates and discussions that are aimed at supporting the NSRP and the NDP.
In conclusion, these seminars will continue to be a round table, face to face discussions with article contributors and opinion makers to reflect on sport and recreation matters in order to change the face of sport and recreation in the Republic of South Africa. We call upon all sport loving people in South Africa and the world over to join forces with us to make the quality of these debates better, dynamic and robust. This exercise will bring energy and adrenaline to the discussion and debates about the transformation of sport and recreation in our country.
We must accept though that this is not an intention to make this Seminar and the Journal an elitist platform, but an all-inclusive platform which is prestigious but making it robust and vibrant with no intention to make it an aloof forum.
In closing I would like to quote from a famous writer who wrote about the role and function of intellectuals in society in his book titled “Prologue to a theory of revolutionary intellectuals.
Alvin W. Gouldner had this to say: “Nowhere do intellectuals (and thinkers) seek power in their own name. Being a small group they can mobilize power only in alliance with other strata. They also create new structures (and platforms) of their own, rational organizations such as the ‘Seminars’ and ‘Debating Societies’ even vanguard parties. These vanguard structures create an independent organizational power-base for sections of the intellectuals and thinkers, and through which, in turn, they can assert themselves over, routinely mobilize, and develop alliances with other social strata peasants and proletariat”.
This is what we must do in sport and recreation! Let us use this platform to drive our developmental agenda in sport and recreation!! Let us use the ThinkSport Seminars and Journals to advance our school sport programmes and our community sport development projects. Let us together with our communities talk about our youth sport and recreation programmes that are aimed at putting South Africa in the world sport and recreation stage!!!
Thank you.
