Program Director,
Colleagues,
Honoured guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Comrades and friends.
It is again with pride and honour that I stand here before you today as we meet in this Provincial Boxing Indaba. We host this Free State Provincial Boxing Indaba following a clarion call made by our Minister of Sport and Recreation, Mr Fikile Mbalula.
The Minister has issued this call for all involved in boxing to convene Boxing Indaba’s in each of the nine provinces, which must then culminate into a national Indaba at the end of September 2013. The purpose of this Indaba is for us to conduct a diagnostic analysis on the status of boxing in South Africa and develop a turn-around strategy for the success of boxing going forward.
The Indaba is therefore convened to conduct a frank but constructive consultative process and dialogue to ensure that boxing can be transformed into a well-developed and supported sport in South Africa.
However, our hosting of this Indaba as the Free State goes far deeper than a response to this important call made by the Minister. We view the promotion of boxing as our responsibility in the context of this sport code being one of those sporting codes that have been long in the margins.
As role players and stakeholders it is certainly our responsibility to ensure that Boxing in our province and our country receives the same support and development as any other sport code.
We must never lose focus on the fact that boxing has been part of our heritage for decades, and thus it remains a priority in the unifying world of sport. It is unfortunately the case, that in recent years, not enough has been done to promote and support the sport in South Africa.
We in the Free State pride ourselves on the establishment of developmental and support structures that the Department of Sport, Arts, Culture and Recreation have put in place, and again have proven to be the trend setters in the country with regards to sport development and support.
The department has embarked on a programme to establish Local Talent Development and District High Performance Centers as well as Community Gyms across the province. The primary objective of these centers is, by implication, to identify local sport talent in various localities and ensure that this talent is developed along the sport continuum.
This programme has started to bear visible results as epitomized by one of the identified local talents in the form of an 18 year-old boxer from Thabong (Welkom), Lerato Dlamini, who won a gold medal during the bi-annual Zone VI games in Lusaka in December last year. Dlamini is the newly crowned zone VI champion in the lightweight division following his intensive training at one of the department’s LTDC and DHPC located in Thabong.
Through his sterling performance at the zone VI games Dlamini has put the Free State on the map. Last year in March, the department launched a Provincial Boxing League for the development of boxing in the Free State.
The purpose of this programme is to ensure that such talent in this sporting code as exhibited by Lerato Dlamini in Lusaka does not go to waste but is escalated to the highest level of competitiveness in the sport.
The launch of the Free State Amateur Boxing League in the Free State served as a demonstration of our resolve to the overall development of different sporting codes throughout the province. Boxing is one of those sporting codes which still require serious and meaningful attention at the developmental or armature level.
We launched this Provincial part of a concerted effort to ensure the full development and implementation of boxing in the Free State. The launch of the Free State Amateur Boxing League in the province was based on the rich history of the sport in the province.
Amateur boxing has been identified by the department as one of the priority codes that needs revamp, realising that Free State is one of the province that has been consistently producing the best boxers in the country.
It is our vision to have prospective boxers in each town, local and district municipality who should be developed up to the provincial, national and international levels. This Provincial Amateur Boxing League has been tasked with providing the necessary capacity to empower athletes, administrators and technical officials to maintain the highest ethics and standards of professionalism in the sport of boxing throughout the province.
As part of this programme, the first three legs of the league were held in Kroonstad, Bethlehem and Welkom and the boxers who have progressed from these tournaments competed in the Free State Boxing League Finals.
Through the boxing league tournaments that have been staged, a number of boxers have been selected to undergo training at our Provincial High Performance Centre for Boxing here in Bloemfontein.
To ensure that this programme becomes fully effective we have also handed over boxing equipment and attire to all boxing stables that are in existence in the Province, about 26 of them.
Programme director, the kind of excellent performance by athletes like Lerato Dlamini has found expression even in other sporting codes such as Karate, Netball and Badmington after we have established High Performance Centres dealing with these sporting codes.
I want to emphasise that the Free State is taking the development of sport in general very seriously, and an Indaba like we are having now is a positive step in the right direction
for boxing.
Let us use this Indaba to come up with a sustainable way forward for the sport, and again show the rest of the country that the Free State will lead the outcome of development and support, as we have shown that this code is already a priority in the province.
I thank you!
