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I will today be writing to the Chairperson of the Sport and Recreation Portfolio Committee to request that Sports Minister, Fikile Mbalula, appears before the committee to clarify government's position on quotas.

Last week, the Minister said that sports quotas are generally unproductive. He stated that, “sport was about talent, and not a question of electing people to achieve representivity”.

However, he was yesterday quoted at the Sports Indaba as saying, “it was decided that the quota system would not be scrapped”.

The minister's policy flip-flop has generated major confusion among sporting bodies.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) fully supports measures to increase the diversity of our national sports teams. But quotas don’t work, as the Minister himself has said. The only way to do it is by adopting a grassroots approach that gives young people access to sporting opportunities.

Indeed, this has been our approach in the places where we govern. In the DA-run Western Cape, we have successfully rolled out initiatives such as the following:

• Mass participation, Opportunity and Development (MOD) centres, which give children in underprivileged communities access to sports as a way of promoting youth development, and protecting them from social dangers like gang involvement and drug use.
• The Sport, Health, Advancement through sport, Research and Policy development (SHARP) Programme, which develop the skills of talented young sportspeople drawn from MOD centres so that they can become the stars of tomorrow.
• The Western Cape government has prioritised the establishment of sports clubs across the province, especially in rural areas, which help to build a new generation of sportsmen and women.
• The provincial government has established Western Cape Sports Schools, which recruit talented sports oriented students, and provide them with the resources and facilities to turn them into champions.

Initiatives such as these reflect the DA’s commitment to progressively develop sporting talent.

In the same way that the Western Cape Provincial Government has helped to create an environment in which sports participation can grow, the national government has an important role to play in helping South Africans to realize their sporting potential.

Government must start by delivering a clear, coherent message about how it plans to do so.