Theme: “30 Years of the Nedbank Golf Challenge – A Celebration”
Programme Director;
Nedbank CEO: Mr Mike Brown
Nedbank Chair: Mr Reule Khoza
Chief Executive: Sun International: Mr David Coutts-Trotter;
Group CEO MultiChoice South Africa: Mr Imtiaz Patel;
Ambassadors present here today;
International and local players;
Distinguished guests;
Ladies and gentlemen
We take this opportunity to welcome you all on the occasion of the 30th Anniversary of the Nedbank Golf Challenge. The Nedbank challenge has become a flagship annual event that signifies the beginning of the festive season in South Africa. This Challenge provides all sport loving people with verve and freshness that so many relish at the end of grinding year.
So big has the tournament become over the years, that it attracts not only the die-hard golf fans and masters like you but even budding golfers like me, whose role can only be to join the rest on the nineteenth hole.
Tonight is yet another symbolic event and an important landmark in the history of our burgeoning and progressing democracy. We have in the past sixteen years experienced rapid growth and fundamental movement towards national unity, social cohesion and all round development.
This movement has inevitably placed South Africa on the world map and shown to all and sundry that our South Africa is indeed alive with possibilities. True to this, is our success over the years to host a surfeit of international events such as:
- The Rugby World Cup in 1995
- The African Cup of Nations in 1996
- The World Conference Against Racism in 2001
- The World Conference on Sustainable Development in 2002,
- The recent FIFA World Cup in 2010 and many other significant events
The Nedbank Golf Challenge for the past 30 years have also contributed immensely to put South Africa on the World map and compete as equal partners in the international arena.
This evening as we join you to celebrate this historic 30th anniversary of the Nedbank Golf Challenge, it is off course, yet another significant milestone to prove that South Africa has indeed cemented itself in the global space as a destination of choice.
With an attraction capacity of more than 1.4 billion viewers across the globe, and more than 60 000 spectators locally the Nedbank Golf Challenge is undisputedly one of the premier golf tournaments in South Africa and even Africa in general. This course have hosted the world golfing greats from Seve Ballesteros, Tiger Woods, and very of our South African greats like Ernie Els, Nick Price, Mark McNulty and many more.
It is a premier tournament because it attracts the most senior and familiar champions in the world of golf.We are impressed that it has grown so rapidly into a fully fledged tournament with official ranking points.
This hosting venue of this tournament, the Gary Player Country Club’s golf course, is one of the internationally recognised and respected golf courses in the world. It is respected not because of an accident of history but due to its standards of conditioning that have set threshold for many great golfers in the caliber of Tiger Woods, Seve Ballesteros, Ernie Els, Lee Westwood and many to play on only a few have managed. For the fact that we have a person like James
We are impressed by the management of this resort for their concerted effort to be environmentally conscious to make this place carbon neutral. This is a strategic response to negative impact of litter and wasteful practices such as resort irrigation, illumination and air-conditioning. We would like to encourage you to fast-track the installation of additional controls to eliminate the excessive use of non-recyclable packaging and print collateral and pollution.
On this august occasion, it is also befitting for us to pay homage to all who made this possible you made us proud. In the same vein, we would like to invite you ladies and gentlemen to join forces with us in the efforts and campaigns to take Golf from abstract to concrete. We can successfully do that if all of us commit to contribute meaningfully into the strategic development of Golf in particular and sport and recreation in general.
Golf in South Africa is perceived as the sport of affluent people, who are predominantly male and this does not represent the overwhelming majority of South Africans. The changing face of golf in South Africa from professional competition to golf development should be a welcomed opportunity to transform sport in general and golf in particular.
In 1982 a friend of mine worked at the Gary Player Country Club as a barman.Twenty years later he came back to the same golf course to play, this time as an executive. His name is Tumie Magasa who was born just 20 km from Sun City, in a village called Mabeskraal. This is how some black people have tried hard to play golf.
Today some of them you see them walk the fairways of Sandton Golf Course, during working hours, then you wonder; when are they working? Maybe they are there to lobby their counterparts to support development in golf.
We must therefore hold hands with the South African Golf Development Board in its mission, which it articulates as, “to make golf accessible to all South Africans by providing and facilitating practice and playing opportunities for learners and talented players from all communities including the underprivileged and previously disadvantaged communities.”
Through our collective engagement, we must attaint a concrete plan that outlines in explicit terms the strategic activities that are aimed at vulnerable groups in our society. This plan should give a meticulous account on how we intend to deal with the difficult contradictions of race and class, demographics, gender, age and disability through the sport of golf.
My veteran and mentor, comrade Andrew Mlangeni, at the age of +-86 years is playing of thirteen handicap and in our surprise is giving young players a run for their money besides spending twenty-seven years of his life in the Robben Island prison. It is important that all South Africans should be fully engaged in the process of fundamentally changing the face of golf in South Africa into the non-racial, non-sexist and democratic sport.
This is critical because South Africa produced many black golf legends, some recognised and some not, like James Skamte who played a practice round with Tiger Woods in the 2009 US Open, Papwa Segolim who won South Africa Open in Durban in the 70s but received his trophy outside the venue under a heavy rain and many unsung heroes and heroines.
Ladies and Gentlemen
Events like the Sports Trust Golf Challenge which is the joint initiative between Nedbank and Sun International and is aimed at fundraising to contribute in aid of sport development in South Africa should be supported and sustained. As the developmental state, we greatly appreciate this initiative, and further urge The Sports Trust Golf Challenge to work even harder to raise the aid to its current cover.
It is however perturbing that while you have such beautiful initiatives as the Sports Trust Golf Challenge on the one side; on the other hand, they are met by emerging trend of disinvestment in sport development by other strategic private sector companies in our country.
Ladies and gentlemen, the pertinent question to ask, is, if sport and recreation is indeed a unifier, nation-builder, and a tool for excellence, what does disinvestment in sport and recreation say about our commitment to these noble objectives?.
We want to take this opportunity to reiterate our plea to everyone in our country especially those who benefit extremely from the political stability provided by the developmental state to use their corporate social investment agenda as part of their pledge to take youth out of the streets.
Some can do this by merely investing in a programme to assist children from historically disadvantaged backgrounds by exposing them in such prestige events, like the Nedbank Golf Challenge, through paying for entrance, catering and transport fees.
We sincerely call on every sport loving person particularly those in golf “to strive to create an active and winning nation by maximising access, development and excellence at all levels of participation in sport and recreation in order to improve social cohesion, nation building, national consensus and changing the quality of life of all South Africans”.
We thank you and like we said earlier, we’ll join you on the nineteenth hole.
