Programme Director, Mr Africa Melane
The Leader of our Sport Science Institute, Mr Brent Walsh
The Representative from CATHSETA, Mr Mike Tsotetsi
The Representative from DISCOVERY, Mr Craig Nossel
International Guests and Distinguished Delegates
Honourable Guests and Conference Papers’ Presenters
Fellow South Africans
Ladies and Gentlemen
Welcome to the Republic of South Africa especially when our country is celebrating its national women’s day. As you are all aware South Africa is counted amongst the nations of the world who have stood the test of time realising what it promised its people in 1994 especially the promise of gender equality and human rights. South Africa boosts one of the top countries in its credentials for women empowerment in sport, economy, politics and social discourse. We promise to keep this status quo going forward.
Delegates, again in this month our country is equally celebrating its achievements in the 2012 London Olympics. You are joining us when we are in an exuberant mood after bagging 3 gold, 2 silver and 1 bronze in the London games. This achievement can, in part, be of the result of our focused and organised centres of excellence and our scientific sport movement in the country. The professional training and scientific support our athletes receive from these centres are undoubtedly results of the good these institutions are doing for sport and recreation in the Republic.
The performance of our national teams and athletes on an international stage is a direct testimony to the scientific and professional brain power of sport scientists, institutions of higher learning, excellence centres, sports medicine specialists as well the all-round athletic services we provide.
This beautiful and majestic work by our sport people is evident to the recent performances of Ernie Else in London, the Proteas in London, Team South Africa in London, the Mighty Springbok in their clash with Argentina, our Netball National Team when they defeated Malawi and many more examples we can mention.
Therefore if South Africa wants to remain a winning and active nation, we should continue to invest on the health and wellbeing of our people especially on the grassroots level to provide broader access to sport and physical activity as to build a healthy nation.
We are therefore very grateful to attend here this morning and be part of this historic event in the history of South Africa and the world.
Ladies and Gentlemen, we are gathered here this morning with a common conviction to address issues of wellness and recreation in South Africa and the world over. As a result, we are particularly assembled here this today to provide well deserved answers to the world challenges of ill-health and the deterioration of world health standards across the globe. The ill-health and world deteriorating health standards are of the result, in part, of the on-going unwell living of the people of the world.
One of the biggest contributory factors to the above challenge, which have been identified by international scholars, is lack of sports and physical activity. In poor countries across the globe lack of and poor provision of sport and recreation services and facilities became a spot light in the declining health and wellbeing of the people. The deteriorating health standards of the people across the world are a direct result of the deteriorating standards of living of millions of the people in the world.
Lack of physical exercise and meaningful ways to invest positively in free time are significant contributors to well-known diseases in the world including obesity, lifestyle diseases and other communicable diseases including TB and HIV/ Aids.
I would like from the onset to take conference through a brief contextual analysis of the wellness and recreation discourse in the world. The need to be involved in wellness and recreation is an essential element of human biology and psychology. Access and opportunity to recreation and wellness involvement imply activities which develop skills that provide incentive, motivation and means for investing in positive leisure time, making meaning lifestyle choices and thus contributing to holistic wellness (individual and social).
In this regard, wellness “involves processes and actions within recreation contexts through which individuals, societies and organisations become aware of, and makes proactive choices towards optimal levels of functioning, performance and effectiveness. Wellness through recreation processes and actions imply deliberate and directed interventions in the form of developing recreation leadership, designing and implementing appropriate recreation management models, building social capital through recreation, and establishing sustainable recreation programmes to create, adapt and maintain patterns of wellness behaviour.
Appropriate wellness behaviour reflects healthy and responsible lifestyles, responsible citizenship and ethical and moral behaviour that could result in improved quality of life and optimal levels of functioning, performance and effectiveness of all South Africans.
By proactively acknowledging and adopting “Wellness” in a recreation context, we recognise the multi-dimensionality of the construct. “Wellness” has moved beyond mere absence of physical illnesses and is linked to conscious progress and interventions towards achieving optimal levels of holistic functioning, performance and effectiveness on individual, societal and organisational levels in any society.
This calls for the whole world and South Africa in particular to, among other things, implement sustainable recreation programmes, select appropriate recreation policy, delivery models and strategies, encourage all citizens to make healthy lifestyle choices, as well as basic political, social and management decisions related to recreation, wellness, fitness and coaching environment in order to serve the best interest of individuals and societies.
According to Professor A. E. Goslin, Chair of the Recreation Advisory Committee the presence of recreation activities in human existence can be traced to the early beginnings of recorded human history. Athletic ability, physical fitness, competition games and cultural pastimes as expressions of recreation activities formed part of Sumerian and ancient Egyptian cultures as early as 4000BC. Modern organised public recreation service provision is however regarded as a product of industrialisation and the leisure-work trade off. Workers in the industrialised societies had increased amounts of free time and were inclined to use that time for pleasurable pursuits.
A system of services and activities therefore evolved in response of these needs, expectations and demands of modern society. The organised public recreation provision system as a social movement during the early 1900’s particularly focused on improving the livability of communities and wellness of individuals.
The advent of the democratic and constitutional order in 1994 ushered in significant changes to policy formulation and articulation. Legislation beyond 1994 impacted on all sectors of society including sport and recreation. This paradigm shift in policy formulation and articulation addressed all aspects of political, social, economic and human rights of all the people of South Africa. Since 1994, government emphasised social inclusion of all South Africans as imperative for individual and social wellness in South Africa.
Ladies and Gentlemen, social inclusion is about ensuring that all South Africans have access and opportunity to participate in recreation as valued, respected and contributing members of our society. Social inclusion therefore reflects a proactive, human development approach to social wellness that calls for more than the removal of barriers of risks of recreation participation. It requires focused investments in human power in the form of trained recreation leadership and actions and policies to bring about the conditions for social inclusion.
We are imploring you to rise to the challenge by tackling all issues pertaining to this topic in a forward looking and developmental fashion. What is the contribution of nutrition to wellness? What is the impact of malnutrition and starvation to wellness? What is the impact of crime and stress to wellness? What is the contribution of access to facilities and equality to wellness?
Recreation as a social phenomenon has the potential to be a powerful social tool to facilitate individual and social wellness as it contributes to valued recognition and respect for the diversity of South Africa’s human capital. It facilitates human development through meaningful recreation choices to nurture talents, skills, capacities of all individuals to live lives they value and make contributions that both they and others find worthwhile – all prerequisites of individual and community wellness.
In the 2011 National Sport and Recreation Indaba, a diverse range of role players and participants made substantial contributions about the history of wellness and recreation as well as fitness and coaching environment in the Republic. Experts from recreation, wellness and leisure background made an historical presentation and a documentation of organised recreation provision from a service delivery approach in the public sector and a service provision approach in general.
The following are some of the research findings from recreation, wellness and leisure experts:
- An inequitable, unequal and divided sport and recreation landscape as a result of South Africa past.
- An inequitable and inaccessible provision of sport, recreation and wellness infrastructure at community level, especially in peri-urban and rural areas.
- The lack of physical education and participation in sport in schools which has led to increased inactivity, obesity and social deviant behaviour; and that Recreation and wellness are neglected as key elements of an active nation.
The indaba also reminded us of the importance of personal training and physical activity, of kids wellness and elderly wellness, nutrition as well as biokinetics and wellness, of sport medicine and sport coaching if we want to stay a healthy nation, excel in sport and even being a productive nation at work places.
In response to the findings of this research exercise and the deliberations of Conference, the National Sport and Recreation Indaba mandate us to appoint the Eminent Persons Group on Transformation in Sport and the Advisory Committee on Recreation.
During this year we have appointed both these committees to work together with the Department of Sport and Recreation South Africa (SRSA) as well as the South African Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC) to implement the resolutions of the National Sport and Recreation Indaba which was held in November 2011.The National Sport and Recreation Plan (NSRP) which was adopted by the National Sport and Recreation Indaba (NSRI) is raising the bar of recreation and wellness in the provision of services to all South Africans. The NSRP is raising concerns into our unfortunate neglect of the recreation and wellness part of our mission especially the pillar of building ‘an active and healthy nation’.
Hence, in establishing the Advisory Committee on Recreation, we outlined that the role of this committee will be, (but not limited to) to research on the best practice in recreation and recreation delivery, norms and standards on the delivery, management and maintenance of recreational facilities as well as advising the Ministry on best way to administer and manage both sport and recreation in South Africa.
It is our intention not to philosophise on recreation. We are fully aware of the on-going debates about ‘what recreation is all about, especially, in relation to sport’; whether there is a symbiotic link between ‘recreation and sport’; and whether sport is recreation and vice versa?
These, however, might be necessary and pertinent questions this conference should be pre-occupied with in the work to deliver a comprehensive wellness and recreation strategy for the people of the world.
This is particularly important because we should build on work that is already completed in this field and fast-track the recent findings of recreation and wellness as alluded to above and quantify our qualitative and quantitative scientific research findings about recreation and wellness in South Africa and beyond.
In this regard this conference could learn from what Australia is thinking about sport, wellness, leisure and recreation. At their recent conference they agreed that:
“Sport (and Recreation) is important for more than just reasons of national pride, or even as a way of building a fitter, more vibrant nation. Sport (and Recreation) reaches across our society in ways which are not always apparent, and involves even those who profess no love of sport (and Recreation).Sport and recreation are major components of the national economy, be it through employment in the sport and recreation industry (75,155 people in 2006), sales of goods and services both domestically and internationally and small business development.
In 2004/05, the total income generated by the sport and recreation industry in Australia was estimated at $8.82 billion. The income reported by sports and physical recreation clubs, teams and sports professionals was $1.88 billion and sports and physical recreation administrative organisations was $1.53 billion. Sport (and Recreation) is also a powerful tool for international engagement”.
Therefore this conference is tasked to tackle such issues, once and for all. I am resting on your shoulders to bring comprehensive and inclusive sport and recreation to the masses of our people.
Recreation and positive use of leisure time and wellness should be the epicentre of our developmental strategies. It is not important for us to remain arguing about semantics and validity of definitions and descriptions of concepts. Let us seize this opportune moment to use this conference as a springboard to acknowledge and advocate ‘wellness through recreation”.
We must as a matter of urgency put issues related to recreation, wellness and constructive use of leisure at the centre of policy in South Africa. International and national best practices related to wellness through recreation could provide valuable guidelines. The Chair of the Recreation Advisory Committee, Prof Anneliese Goslin indicated that future policies on recreation could be powerful catalysts to achieve wellness if they successfully address the following:
Create safe spaces and facilities for recreation participation
This is especially important in the case of participants who are marginalised in society and have to survive everyday threats to their physical and psychological wellness. Recreation programmes and responsible interventions emphasise nonviolence, inclusivity and accept and respect diversity conducive for wellness.
Provide opportunities to develop and display competence
The inclusivity and non-competitiveness of recreation opportunities allow all participants to engage on levels where subjective competence can be experienced and be converted into individual wellness and self-worth.
Establish social networks
Recreation provides opportunities for forming social networks that in turn develop social capital, a prerequisite for social wellness. Recreation has the ability to provide opportunities to facilitate social connections with peers, to nurture supportive friendships and to promote communication and conflict resolution skills. Facilitating social networks as support systems are especially important among participants who regularly face conflict and adversity in their everyday lives.
Ensure autonomy and control in the structures in which recreation experiences occur
In order to nurture individual wellness that spills over into social wellness, South Africans need to experience some control over their lives and living contexts. This emphasises the need for opportunities and responsible recreation interventions to include systematic opportunities for participants to be involved in decision-making processes.
Best practices in the areas of delivery mechanisms of recreation as well as norms and standards for the delivery, management and maintenance of recreational facilities are also of significance. The starting point is to pause and take stock on the ability of all nation states to provide the well awaited sport and recreation facilities and opportunities to the people. All participants in this Conference should without fear of contradictions familiarise themselves with International Norms and Standards on the provision of wellness, recreation and sports facilities and opportunities. If there are no norms and standards on the access to and provision of inclusive recreation, wellness and leisure facilities this conference is duty bound to devise such.
Delegates the task ahead for you is not easy. You have to debate some of these controversial subjects. This 8th Conference must be a landmark one and people must always talk about it. Your grandchildren must refer to the conference as the one where grounds were broken.
The conference must ask the following questions:
- Is television and computer games good for our children and sport?
- Does these games impact positively or negatively on physical wellness, sport and children?
- Which is an important wellness activity on the wellbeing of nations; is it outdoor training better than indoor?
- Are nations state effectively provide activities for the elderly and the frail. What are those programs?
- Has our children and the elderly became couch potatoes?
- Are our nations watching too much TV and playing too much computer games?
The Conference needs to ask these pertinent questions and more difficult and controversial ones if we want to promote healthy lifestyles and healthy nations.
The SA government understands the important socio-economic and developmental challenges of society and those of recreation and wellness in particular. Our government identified sport and recreation as a fundamental sector to be utilised for unity and cohesion. We agreed to ensure equitable access to recreation opportunities to facilitate holistic wellness.
Together with all our stakeholders in sport and recreation in our country we recognise the potential of sport, recreation, wellness and leisure towards the building of a vibrant sport and recreation economy including the increase of the social development impact of sport, recreation, wellness and leisure.
This, according to our state and our society, could harness and develop the health of our nation and develop the abilities of our people to participate actively and meaningfully in society.
In order to experience individual and social wellness South Africans need to deal successfully with challenges in their lives. This emphasises the need for recreation access and opportunities to expose all citizens to a wide range of possibilities and visions for their lives as well as hope for the future.
This value and accompanying strategies should be at the forefront of the minds of decisions makers in South Africa and the world.
Keep up the good work. I wish this conference great success.
I thank you.
