Ladies and gentlemen;
This evening we witness the official closing of the 123rd International Olympic Committee (IOC) session hosted by the South African Sport Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC) in partnership with the government of the Republic of South Africa (RSA). We hope your stay in the Republic has been pleasant and we believe your sessions were very fruitful.
We also hope you have enjoyed your stay in Durban and the hospitality of our people here in KwaZulu-Natal. A vivacious, effervescent; and dynamic city of contrasts with a potent and exciting mix of culture and people. A people who stayed side by side in peace and harmony for more than hundred and fifty years; sharing scarce resources, heritage and history. A city laden with possibilities!
Perhaps some of you have taken time off to indulge yourselves through the speckled and tremendous landscape in and around the City of Ethekwini which offers the perfect place for adrenalin junkies. This include the coastal forests, mangrove swamps and river estuaries which are rich in animal and bird life, as are the hills and valleys of the Valley of one thousand (1000) Hills. Ethekwini (Durban) is also one of the sport capitals of the world, South Africa.
Ladies and gentlemen, let us also take this opportunity to congratulate the people of South Korea, especially the City of Pyeong Chang and its people for winning the bid to host the 2018 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.
We know that this task was not an easy one for you especially when competing against experienced countries and well matured economies like France and Germany. It takes the agility of a cat and ferocity of a cornered bull to defeat and win against such big nations.
This is an attest to your “Dream Programme” which you placed to your nation and people. A programme to “provide a fresh new approach for the Olympic Movement, placing the Winter Games outside the traditional home of winter sport and harnessing new potential for growth in Asia and beyond”.
You convinced the world that “together, we can achieve New Horizons through the peace, fraternity and goodwill that sport and the Olympic Spirit in particular, teaches all mankind”. Well done!
Dr Ramsamy and distinguished guests, as a gift for Dr Rholihalhla Nelson Mandela, our national netball team, affectionately known as amaNtombazana defeated the host country, Singapore in the World Netball Championships that are underway on Tuesday, 5 July 2011. With that spirit amongst the girls, they won against Botswana on Wednesday, 6 July 2011, joining Jamaica in the quarter finals for the Championships. We trust that these girls will make us proud and deliver to Tata Madiba, Isithalandwe, Seaparankwe, a fitting tribute for his 93rd anniversary of his birthday on 18 July 2011.
Friends and compatriots, indeed, South Africa is a country with a long and prosperous tradition of sport participation and triumphs. Many continue to say, we are a sport fanatical nation and a people full with possibilities. Thus, South Africa has enjoyed global accomplishments since the early nineteenth century.
In 1884 two of our heroes, EW Lewis and EL Williams got to the final of the first men’s doubles at Wimbledon Tennis, but regrettably lost.
In 1893, Laurens S Meintjes became South Africa’s first world record holder, in the sport of cycling. At the World’s Fair Cycle Meeting in Chicago he won the sixty-two (62) mile international championship. In the same year in Springfield, Massachusetts, he set a world record in the hour’s race.
In 1896, South Africa won its first rugby test ever against the British Isles. And we repeated the victory in November 2010 against England on their home soil.
In this regard, you may have discovered in your hotel rooms that South Africa have more televised sport round the clock than most countries. You can watch more English Premiership Football games live here in our country than in England. Need I say more?
Ladies and gentlemen, South Africans have had a long and special relationship with the Olympic Movement. The apartheid junta and colonialist regime allowed the minority white South Africans their first official participation in 1908 Olympic Games in London. It is significant that Reginald E Walker, from this city, Durban, won the Olympic Gold Medal in the hundred (100) meters and equaled the Olympic record of 10.8 seconds for the second time. In the same year he equaled the world record of 11.4 seconds in the 120 yards. As a matter of interest, Walker wrote the first textbook on sprinting in 1910, which was part of health and strength’s series on sport coaching, two years after winning Olympic Gold.
One of the biggest victories at the Olympic Games was in 1912 when Rudolph Lewis won the 320 km cycle road race in Stockholm. This was the only cycle event at these Games and he was the only South African among the hundred and twenty three (123) riders from sixteen (16) countries. At these games, Ken McArthur and Chris Gitsham won singles tennis championship beating his teammate, Harold Kittson into the silver medal. Together they won the gold medal in the men’s doubles.
But we also know that the Olympic Movement has played a pivotal role during the dark days of apartheid South Africa by assisting the people of this beautiful country in the fight against the brutal apartheid colonial system. You expelled apartheid South Africa from the Olympic Movement in 1970, leading to almost three decades of sport isolation, and helped tighten the noose around the rebel rugby tours from Australia and New Zealand to this country.
This was a direct political response to Resolution 395 (V) of the1950 United Nations (UN) General Assembly which declared that “a policy of racial segregation (apartheid) is necessarily based on doctrines of racial discrimination”. This decisive action by the IOC humbled a non-racial delegation of South Africans, led by Dr A.B. Xuma, President-General of the African National Congress (ANC), who represented the toiling masses of South Africa on the 31 October 1946 to follow discussions at the United Nations, advising the Indian delegation on the question of the treatment of Indians in the Union of South Africa.
In aftermath, the Security Council of the United Nations, in Addis Ababa, adopted resolution 311 of 1972 condemning apartheid; “recognising the legitimacy of the struggle of the oppressed people of South Africa; calling upon South Africa to release all those imprisoned as a result of apartheid”.
With that baggage, you also warmly welcomed the rising new rainbow nation back into the Olympic family in 1991. How can we ever forget our indebtedness to our sport heroes and heroines who sacrificed their lives and careers for refusing to part take in the undemocratic and divisive apartheid sport; and dedicated their lives in the peaceful struggle to demolish apartheid in all its manifestations?
These heroes and heroines include, but not limited to, Mr Ron Elland who could not represent South Africa because of the colour of his skin, but represented Great Britain, in the 1948 Olympic Games in London. Here, I am talking about Mr Filbert Bayi of Tanzania who sacrificed his opportunity to win a Gold Medal in 1976 in Montrion when he protested against apartheid sport in South Africa.
We do this in recognition of the immense contribution of our comrades like Mr Bayi a world record holder and a certain gold medallist and many more who equally sacrificed their fortunes in international sport.
Lest we forget people like Sam Ramsamy, Dennis Brutus, and Jean-Claude Ganga, who with the support of the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa, and the IOC and entire Olympic Movement, mobilised the world to bring about this change through sport? We hope that this liberated and democratic country made you feel that you have come home, away from home.
We trust that the last few days in our shores gave you a well-deserved opportunity to experience our rich heritage and culture. I believe you experienced for yourselves what ubuntu is all about!
Ladies and gentlemen, because this is an Olympic gathering, we are proud to announce that South Africa, since her re-acceptance in the world sport in 1991, have taken part in all summer and winter Olympics. Our involvement with IOC can’t be in doubt as we participated in important IOC events.
We began in Barcelona in 1992; we went to Liliana in 1994; gone to Atlanta in 1996; flew to Nagano in 1998; sailed to Sydney in 2000; galloped to Saltlake City in 2002; jetted to Athens in 2004; back to Torino in 2006; cruised to Beijing in 2008; and we rested in Vercouona in 2010.
We now stand on the threshold of the 2012 Olympics in London. We are going to the London 2012 Olympic Games as different people; a people fundamentally different from the apartheid colonialist regime that allowed the minority white South Africans to represent them on the first official participation South Africa in 1908 Olympic Games in London.
Hence, today, we welcome the recommendations from the second International Forum on Sport for Peace and Development which was held at the United Nations office in Geneva on 10 and 11 May 2011.
Our country and nation is reverberated by reaffirmation of sport and recreation as a meaningful tool for community development, peacekeeping and reconciliation. And that the Olympic Movement and the UN share the goal to strive for the harmonious and peaceful development of society.
We would like to find ourselves by joining the Olympic Movement to recall the 2010 Millennium Summit Declaration, which recognises “that sport, as a tool for education, development and peace, can promote cooperation and solidarity, tolerance, understanding, social inclusion and health, at local, national and international levels”.
In the same token, we like to note with satisfaction the increasing number of joint endeavours of the sports movement and the international community in the field of community development, education, health promotion and HIV and AIDS prevention, gender equality, environment and sustainability, humanitarian assistance, youth empowerment, as well as social integration of persons with disabilities, and thereby directly contributing to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
We are committed in this struggle because we are excited about the role you have played in conflict resolution and peace in Africa and elsewhere through sport. This is a token of appreciation rendered to you by the peoples of Africa and the counties of the South in your strategic intervention in Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) in 2009 through a football tournament which brought together the armed forces of the rebel-led armed forces of the New Forces (FAFN) and the government-led Defence Forces and Security (FDS) to promote reconciliation and unity.
We also recall your involvement in Liberia in 2007 where together with the United Nations Office on Social Development Programmes (UNOSDP) teamed up to implement the country-wide “Sport for Peace” programme with the goal of fostering peace in the aftermath of the civil war and to educating youth about HIV and AIDS issues.
We were thrilled by your swift intervention in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to promote the reconciliation process in 2006 when you and the UN Organisation Mission in the DRC (MONUC) organised a two-week long “Jeux de la Paix” (Peace Games), which included a variety of sports competitions and brought together youth from all parts of the country.
We were equally delighted by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Burundi and your collaboration in a sport project for the promotion of inter-ethnic tolerance and understanding involving thirteen thousand children.
We know that you have used sport and play, in particular in the settings of refugee camps, to bring physical and psychological relief to refugees, internally displaced persons and victims of violent conflict.
Since the mid-1980s, you and United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) have played a key role in advocating and securing the release of children from armed forces and other combatant groups as well as facilitating their demobilisation and re-integration into society in countries like Afghanistan, Angola, Colombia, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan and Uganda. You went further to El Salvador, Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Panama.
We are saying, keep up the good work!
In closing, on behalf of the democratic and developmental state of the Republic of South Africa would like to reaffirm our country’s and people commitment to reinforce partnerships with the Olympic Movement, the international community and global civil society on sport, recreation, development and peace as a pillar for ‘sport for all’.
Join the requests to governments to increase their support for the development of quality physical education and sports for all, and also stresses the need for closer cooperation with the private and business sector and global, continental and national financial institutions as key stakeholders in social development and economic participation strategies.
Lastly, we would like to join the calls upon UN Member States “to cooperate with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in its efforts to promote the ‘Olympic Truce’ in the framework of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in London in 2012, and to abide by it, individually and collectively; to pursue the peaceful settlement of all international conflicts, in conformity with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations”.
We would want, at this moment, to thank the President of the Republic of South Africa, His Excellency, Mr JG Zuma, for his undoubted support of this session.We also want to take this opportunity to thank all members of the Inter-Ministerial Committee for putting political leadership on the organisation of this gathering.
We also thank the Technical and Organising Committees that have put all their efforts into the success of this General Assembly. In the same vein, we would like to thank you, Dr Sam Ramsamy and your team in SASCOC, the Department of Sport and Recreation South Africa, eThekwini Municipality; and KwaZulu-Natal government for making this event a historic one.
Lastly, I would like to thank Ms Onke Mjo for her verve, zeal and zest to put together a large conference that will tell stories about the ability of Africans to organise events of this magnitude. We thank all of you for that!
Ladies and gentlemen, as we move forward into the Centenary of the African National Congress in 2012, I would like to call upon all Olympians and sport loving people to join President Nelson Mandela this month and every day to do good for humanity.
May the spirit of Olympism and comradeship, solidarity and cadreship, service and humanity be spread across the length and breadth of our beloved land, South Africa, so that all our people are exposed to its philosophy and the positive lessons, values and attitudes. May we in the spirit of Olympism accomplish that, and we will? Long live Olympic Movement! Long live! Long live Olympism! Long live! Long live Sport and Recreation! Long live!
Thank you.
Source: Sport and Recreation South Africa
Official keynote address of the Minister of Sport and Recreation, Mr FA Mbalula (MP), on the occasion of the official closing dinner of the General Assembly’s delegates hosted by Dr Sam Ramsamy, International Olympic Committee (IOC) executive committee me
