Programme Director, Mr Jurie Roux
Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee for Sport and Recreation, Honourable Mr Mzomeni Richard Mdakane and all the Members of the Portfolio Committee present here this morning
All the Honourable MECs of Sport and Recreation who are here to grace this very august rugby indaba
President of SASCOC, Mr Gideon Sam
President of SARU, Mr Oregan Hoskins and members of SARU Executive Committee
All the Affiliates and Rugby Unions’ Delegates from different provinces who are present here
All sport councils and other rugby bodies who are here to grace this important gathering
Distinguished Guests
The media
Ladies and Gentlemen
We must thank the South African Rugby Union (SARU) for the invitation to this important gathering to discuss one of the important and thorny issues in the history of sport in South Africa i.e. transformation in rugby.
We must also congratulate SARU and the Springboks on the work well done in both the preparation of the Springboks for the 2011 Rugby World Cup and the performance of our national team in the World Cup.
We must further congratulate the Western Province for winning the Currie Cup after so many years of waiting, to be precise 11 years without winning the Cup. Well done!
Let us also welcome one of our soccer fraternity, the Kaizer Chiefs, to the rugby community. Kaizer Chiefs unveiled yesterday their Sevens Rugby Squad as an attempt to bring more black people into rugby whilst at the same time taking Kaizer Chiefs brand to the white community. This action will speak volumes to the current discussion about the transformation of rugby.
This gathering is taking place when our country emerged from the successful hosting of the National Sport and Recreation Indaba that took place in November 2011.It also takes place few months after Cabinet adopted the National Sport and Recreation Plan.
The strategic focus of the NSRP is to reconstruct and revitalise the sport and recreation landscape in South Africa whilst improving the quality of lives of all sportsmen and women.
This stance lies from the understanding that “there cannot be a normal sport in an abnormal society”. This is to say in essence that we must build a normal, united, democratic and non-racial society as a foundation for a normal sport and community.
It talks directly to the symbiotic relationship between the sport movement in particular and society in general. It spells out clear that you are members of society before you are members of the sport movement in this country. Therefore challenges that face sport at particular time in history are the challenges that the broader society is facing and it must fix.
Indeed, South Africa is a country full of contradictions submerged from her painful historical reality. It is a country where the colour of the skin and economic positioning has been made a yard-stick for success and excellence. The tendency of discrimination, racism and exclusion has plagued our country for many years and was infused in the structure and systems of our country including in sport.
The fertile ground ploughed by the apartheid colonial government to maintain white (male) dominance in all walks of life is still evident today.
The political grounding and entrenchment of a divided, racist and patriarchal society where denial and exclusion are a legacy of key features of our society today is a testimony to the apartheid nation building philosophy.
Sport and Recreation did not escape this vision of the apartheid architects especially sporting codes like rugby.
The tendency of discrimination, racism and exclusion has been consciously infused and entrenched in sporting codes like rugby in South Africa to maintain white dominance and hegemony.
This system and structural arrangement became a determining factor for structurally and systematically excluding the majority of our people who are black and favoured the minority which happened to be white.
The 1992 breakthrough sought to reverse this and was a watershed moment in the history of rugby in South Africa. However the rush, rush resolution of the challenges left many questions about fundamental transformation hanging in the balance.
The so-called big guns and big folks in sport who some are still with us today positioned themselves and their personal egos at the expense of true transformation in this country. That is why transformation as a discourse in South Africa is a very sensitive and thorny issue in our country. It needs a frank and honest debate.
At this time, in 1992, rugby leadership and administrators charted a very ambitious way forward for transformation and inclusion at all levels of participation in rugby including management and leadership.
However, twenty years since the unity talks, South Africa and sport fraternity has moved through turbulences in an attempt to totally transform rugby in particular and other strategic sporting codes in general.
After 20 years of unity talks we have seen little transformation in sport in general and rugby in terms of participation of players from historically disadvantaged communities, blacks in general and Africans in particular.
The National Sport and Recreation Indaba was, on one hand, a particular conjuncture in the history of sport in South Africa to deepen the debate about transformation and the pace of transformation in Sport and Recreation on the other.
The NSRI made another important submission that sport in South Africa is a national asset Sport is not a private property of some individuals in our society. There is no single individual in this country who can claim to be a custodian of sport in our society other than the people of the Republic.
It is therefore important when we engage with this sensitive subject to first understand that government on behalf of the people of South Africa is a custodian of sport and recreation in South Africa and must monitor the implementation of all policies that are aimed at levelling the playing fields in this country including good governance.
The position on this matter is that, on the issue of the retired Judge Chris Nicholson’s recommendation on sport especially on issues of good governance are simple and clear. Even Cricket South Africa agrees with them and concurs that these recommendations are recommendations of the Nicholson’s report not of the department of sport and recreation.
It is therefore the responsibility of Cricket South Africa and the sport fraternity in general to actively interact with report and implement its recommendations. They must do this in the best interest of sport in South Africa.
I must saying it categorically in this meeting that substantial matters raised in the report are issues of good corporate governance, not necessarily representation. I believe it is mischievous for some amongst us will contest the Nicholson’s report on the basis of representation only.
This confirms the argument of civil society in sport when they accuse some of the sport administrators of gate keeping and attitudes of die hards and dinosaurs.
The National Sport and Recreation Indaba (NSRI) have made a point of retaining the quotas due to the slow pace of transformation in sport and recreation in general and the reality of transformation in many sporting codes including rugby.
The NSRI concluded though that the quotas are a necessary tool in the interim and short-term, but emphasised that we need an organic and all-round development plan from all our national federations in the long-run which will be aimed at closing the gaps created by decades of exclusion and discrimination.
To this effect, the National Sport and Recreation Plan (NSRP) adopted the Transformation Charter and its stated score cards which is aimed at bringing about a competitive and demographically representative sport system in South Africa including in rugby.
This system is guided by a value set based on equal opportunity, fairness and just behaviour, equitable resource distribution, empowerment and affirmation.
Our codes like rugby should prioritise school sport and grassroots development as anchors and incubators for their high performance support. We want SARU to focus on school sport and mass participation as foundations to break the backbone of exclusion and discrimination.
This should include coaching, club development, academy development, support and officiating skills transfer programmes.
Pertinent issues of access to rugby as a sport of choice for many young people in this country should take a centre stage as well as issues of demographic representation including skills development and transfer; and good corporate governance.
If these are sorted out, I do not doubt that every indication is that South Africa has a potential to be one of the sports powerhouses in the world, particularly in rugby.
This can only happen if rugby utilises all its full potential by transforming and being truly inclusive thus taking advantage of the full strength of the diverse population of rugby players in South Africa.
If this happens in earnest there is no doubt that rugby can play an important role it needs to play that of nation building by fostering unity and social cohesion as it began to do in the last world cups.
The abovementioned potential can only be realised if rugby in particular and sport in general landscapes can be fully transformed not only in terms of the composition of the national team, but, also of provincial teams, including development of rugby at community level.
The transformation of the composition and outlook of the rugby bodies responsible for teams’ selection, management, governance, procurement, policy making and implementation as well as resources to various sub-committees including transformation sub-committee, and etc.
This outlook does not at any stage suggest that there has been no progress made in transformation since the unity talks in 1992. Good work has been done in the area of transformation from 1992 until to date.
However, it is important to take a cursory look at factors that have caused crisis and decline in the progress made from the early promise of the 1990s.This exercise immediately reveals that governance and administrative crisis is one of the key causes that need urgent attention in rugby.
Interest groups, in particular those that stand to commercially benefit from certain sporting codes, in this case rugby, and their contestations over the soul of rugby have stifled any effort to have transparent, accountable and patriotic rugby administration or leadership.
Accountability and patriotism can be seen in our national team, the Springbok, it is difficult to say the same about the administration and leadership. A point to be interrogated by this forum.
Resistance to genuine transformation often does not come from sport persons themselves but these networks and interest groups who have turned sport codes in general and rugby in particular into their fragmented fiefdoms with patronage-clientage structures that do everything to be immune to any public scrutiny, accountability even when there are instances of leadership and governance crisis.
A careful clinical diagnosis of the problem does indicate that tackling these interest groups and networks which have their representatives in our federations and confederations who have captured some of the sport codes including rugby are quick to task their human proxies to attack transformation.
But if rugby and sport movement in general are genuine to the cause they could be one of the crucial elements that can unlock the potential for genuine transformation and development in rugby and other sporting codes in South Africa.
This will make rugby in South Africa to realise its nation-building, commercial and turning the country into a rugby powerhouse.
One often-predictable argument these networks use to preserve their self-referral schemes is to pre-emptively indicate which communities should be the exclusive constituencies from which to select administrators or persons to serve in governing bodies.
This strategy is meant to exclude those who are considered “outsiders” and confine choice into that which recycles the same persons from the same networks thus making it impossible to break the vicious circle that had brought crisis in many sporting codes, rugby included in the first place.
The other conventional strategy for those who do not want change is the notion or principle of “institutional autonomy”, a strategy that has been used in many universities in South Africa, in the media houses, in the economic sectors, and etc.
This principle of “non-interference”, which I believe should be respected in principle when things are normal or inclusive transformation has taken place, is faulty notion that those who had failed to transform or who stand to lose from transformation can then dictate the terms, scope and pace of transformation from within without any external intervention.
Most of the people who appeal to this principle would have been resisting transformation or greater accountability in the first place and it is expected that the same lot would now magically become champions of the process that which they resent.
This strategy is a predictable conventional control of it so that it does not go too far to jeopardise your interest or frustrate it from within creating an impression that you have accepted the need for transformation and change.
The cross-section of participants at the National Sport and Recreation Indaba had spotted this weakness of networks who are stifling our sports development and transformation in general and resoundingly proposed that a different approach that is not held at ransom by these groups be effected as theirs is a self-serving interest which neither serve the national interests nor those of the sports fraternity.
Another strategic point in this debate is the transformation of the management and administration of sport in general and rugby in particular including the boardroom, selection committees and chain management and local, regional, provincial and national teams coupled with development and selection at club level throughout all structures including at academy levels.
This strategic point of departure will see to it that we desist from ‘eventisation’ of transformation where we only think of transformation when we have world cups and other big rugby events where our national teams represent the country.
Transformation is not about events, and is not an event, it is a process. We must carefully focus our energies to what is going to succeed. Events come and go; but transformation as a discourse will stay with us for many years to come as we deal decisively with the decades of apartheid, discrimination and exclusion.
This should pre-occupy our minds and should be a corner stone for our sustained programme of transformation in rugby. Our long term plan should continue to take into account the transparent selection of all our teams at all levels including the provision of support and resources as well as facilities.
Our aim in this case should be to build a solid infrastructural base, delivery architecture and sustainable human capital development programmes.
To this end, we should emphasise the fact that the leadership and management of rugby administration should account for immediate, medium and long-term development and transformation of their code so that it is inclusive and non-racial; and over and above, a reflection of the South African talent and demographics.
Rugby should like any other national federation is expected to provide us with their transformation programme, transformation targets, transformation deliverables as well as timeframes.
It is important to also note that since 1994, our pre-occupation and prejudice has been shown through our bickering about quotas and lack of representatively only in the national team. As a consequence even lunatic fringes entered the debate about transformation on the basis of the false notion and polarisation thus leading to untold confusion and mayhem amongst our sportspersons, players and our sport loving nation.
Thus, the issue of representatively, quotas and springbok merchandise is raised sharply with much alacrity during the world championships; and in my view this serves only our purpose to denigrate the players and sell South Africa short to the international community.
It is for this reason that we re-state the fact that we are for excellence and quality. Indeed, our Springboks are an epitome of these values that we together with many South Africans cherish and find in our fellow countrymen – the World Champions.
I would like to take this opportunity to wish the Springboks well in the forthcoming Northern Hemisphere Rugby Campaign, we are very sure that you will again make South Africa proud.
Thank you.
Speakers Notes of the Minister of Sport and Recreation South Africa (SRSA), Honourable Mr Fikile April Mbalula (MP), on the occasion of the Rugby Transformation Indaba, Pivot Conference Centre, Southern Sun Monte Casino, Johannesburg, Republic of South Af
