Accelerating sport development: our non negotiable mandate

Chairperson of the NCOP, Honourable Thandi Modise
Honourable Members
MECs of sport and recreation from various provinces
The Director-General of sport and recreation
Leaders from various sport bodies
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen.

Chairperson, development remains the critical foundation for progress at grassroots level through to elite sport and high performance levels. Hence our theme for this year’s budget vote speech is correctly coined “accelerating sport development: our non negotiable mandate.” We implore all stakeholders to walk hand in hand with us in addressing the issues of development across all the sporting codes in South Africa.

We reflected in our National Sport and Recreation Plan (NSRP) that “world wide sports strategies are focused on increasing levels of participation in sport and recreation, as well as achieving success at an international level.” As we have further argued in the same document, “no country can expect to achieve and sustain success at an elite level without a strong participation base in the community.” We therefore have identified schools sport as the central starting point for sport development in this country. We shall indeed not end there, as we will also be putting in place facilities in the communities, working together with the municipalities and the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs.

In order for us to realise our objective for this term we have adopted a programme of action with various stakeholders, which is guided by the NDP-aligned National Sport & Recreation Plan (NSRP) – our sector-specific plan. Emanating from the engagements with these stakeholders, we then agreed on the programme of action as reflected below:

On school sport

Chairperson, our philosophy, approach and believe is that School Sport is the bedrock of our entire sport development continuum. In 2011, we made a commitment with the Department of Education whose aim is to ensure that each and every learner at schools do participate in sport. I have said during that time that we need to move away from a situation where school sport is just an extra mural activity, but a core element of school curricular.

Currently there are about 24 000 schools in South Africa, constituted by about 12.2 million learners. Of these schools 18 786 are registered to participate in the league system. As a department we intend to set aside 25% of our budget which is approximately R400 million for schools sport development. When we started with this programme in 2012 there were only 5 137 participants, a number which has grown over the years.

At this year’s championships, we will further include new codes. Swimming and Goalball have been added to the championships and a further addition has been on two new codes for indigenous games (Kho Kho and Kgati). We anticipate that the number of participants will increase to above 15000 at the 2014 championships.

It is our state policy commitment that all schools in our country and all children should be afforded the opportunity to at least play one code of sport during their schooling days. We will also continue to integrate the rest of the priority sporting codes and indigenous games into the school sport system over the medium-term and to pursue the alignment of the school code structures and the federation structures. As we mentioned in our Budget Policy Statement two weeks ago in the national assembly, the issue of teacher capacity to deliver on this remains a challenge, but also the issue of sport apparel.

Chairperson, one of the most important policy initiatives government has undertaken is the National Norms and Standards for building of new Schools. Although this policy clearly directs that all new schools that are being built should have sport and recreation facilities as part of the establishment process, this unfortunately is often ignored and the sport facilities are left out of the new schools, which we find extremely problematic.

Honourable members, following on the success of the school sport league system the option of introducing a University Sports Cup and supporting leagues will be explored. This will provide a clear developmental pathway for talented athletes as they leave school.

The main activity in the school sport sub-programme is the National School Sport Championship. The amount allocated is R32.2 million at national level and R210 million which is 40% of the conditional grant. But as I reflected, this amount is too little to meet the objectives that we have set ourselves in school sport.

Given the magnitude of the school sport programme and the limited available public funds, we have commenced a process of mobilising private partnerships and funding to increase the participation base for school sport, particularly the age specific league programmes, within specific codes. We have formulated a new funding model to finance the National Sport and Recreation Plan.

The elaboration of which is in our main budget vote speech presented two weeks ago. Most importantly however, the model provides for ring-fencing of the conditional grant for school sport and for provinces to budget for school sport from their own equitable share budgets a proposed new ticket levy to be imposed on Sport Tickets which will become a new revenue stream that will generate funding for school sport development programmes. The model is anticipated at peak to raise just above R1.5billion per annum by the 5th year of implementation for school sport.

The second priority programme is club development - Honourable members, even though an integrated and sustainable club structure is recognised as a prerequisite for the foundation of the South African sports system, currently there is no accurate picture of what clubs exist and their membership status, and many of the clubs developed have not been sustainable. To this effect, we have produced a club toolkit towards classifying and grading clubs and conducted a pilot study in Mopani District Municipality (Rural) in Limpopo province, and eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality (Urban) in KwaZulu-Natal province, where we are piloting a franchise system of club development. Our community club design should provide a useful compendium that leap from SA sport into new era of sport activism and increased participation.
 
Sports participation opportunities will continue in 2014/15 to be provided to communities through our Community Sport sub-programme. We will continue to fund loveLife with the funding choices aligned to the objectives of the sports plan and the department. loveLife will continue its focus on developing the capacity of young out-of school and unemployed people in rural and marginalised communities with limited opportunities.

A new crop of ground breakers will be supported, that are SRSA-specific, from communities surrounding the 2010 FIFA legacy pitches, SRSA sports hubs, sports federation-driven hubs and the current 21 love Life YCentres. These young people will be recruited annually into the one-year internship programme and will be trained on love Life programmes and SASCOC approved coaching framework programmes in order to increase the capacity of trained young coaches, referees and administrators at a community level.

Our third consideration for this term is facilities. This financial year, we will intensify our lobbying and redouble efforts for provision of facilities. We will conduct audit of all existing facilities as a first step towards establishing a facilities roll out plan in line with the NSRP. We will introduce a Geographical Information System (GIS) to assist with a database on facilities and the implementation of the National Facilities Plan (NFP) in the Medium Term Strategic Framework (MTSF) period.

We note that in order to effectively plan for and manage sport and recreation facilities, a common, standardised classification and categorisation system is necessary. We will therefore further engage relevant parties with the intention to comprehensively audit the sport and recreation facilities where after they will be graded and classified in line with the profiles adduced from the audit.

We will continue to develop and/or refurbish children’s play parks by facilitating discussions between the relevant municipalities and organisations, wishing to invest through corporate social investments. To further encourage participation, we will engage municipalities further towards the delivery of community gyms for use in public open spaces within communities. The provision of these community gyms will link with the community sports project to deliver recreation to the community.

Honourable members, we will work closely with the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, the South African Local Government Association (SALGA) and municipalities, to maximise the use of the 15 percent of the P-component of the Municipal Infrastructure Grant (MIG) earmarked for building sports facilities.

Following the decision of the National Sport and Recreation Indaba in 2011 to engage with SALGA regarding the transferring of the ring-fenced grant from MIG to a new centralised grant administered by the Department of Sport and Recreation South Africa, I must report that this work began in earnest in 2012. Although the facilities’ conditional grant will not be allocated and administered by the department during the current financial year, we are going ahead with planning to ensure that once allocated, they will be properly administered in the next financial year, 2015/16.

We will also continue to provide technical assistance to local authorities and other relevant stakeholders for constructing and managing sports facilities to ensure compliance with national standards.

Honourable members, we shall also be building outdoor gyms in rural areas. Expenditure for infrastructure support for the year have been allocated at R10.4 million to achieve this purpose.

Our fourth consideration is the academy system. Chairperson, we have through the National Sport and Recreation plan, made a commitment to support the development of South African Sport through a coordinated elite sport academy system. The essence of this system will be to create centres of excellence which will support and enhance levels of performance of talented athletes and to create a new generation of coaches, administrators and technical officials.

We have signed a cooperation agreement with the government of the Kingdom of Lesotho on the High Altitude Training Centre at Ha Rapokolana in the Lesotho Highlands. We have further to this established a national Training Centre for South African elite athletes in partnership with the Free State Department of Sport and Recreation, SASCOC, the Free State Sports Science Institute and the Free State Sports Confederation.

Our fifth consideration will be our work with non governmental organisations (NGOS).

Honourable members, we have formulated new guidelines for recognition of recreation bodies which will be Gazetted in the current financial year. These new framework will enable NGO’s to be recognised as recreation bodies and will enable them to receive funding for their programmes of supporting sport from the department. This is in line with the NSRP.

The new national sport leagues become our sixth priority programme for the current term. We are pleased to announce that the Netball Premier League and the National Basketball League that we have always promised to implement, have successfully seen the light of day. Basketball is currently underway in their second season while Netball has recently concluded their first season. We have now commenced the scoping exercises of establishing a Volleyball Premier League and will engage with South African Hockey Association to consider the creation of the National Professional Hockey League for South Africa.

Transformation is an integral part of our programme of action during this term and beyond. Despite the transformation scorecard that highlights different elements such as governance as part of transformation, public discussions have always degenerated to simple equation of colour and quotas. The NDP clearly stipulates that participation in each sporting code should begin to approximate the demographics of the country. Coupled with that is the expectation that South Africa’s sporting results should be reflective that it is a middle-income country, with a population of about 50 million and with historical excellence in a number of sporting codes.

Over the past 20 years, our country’s transformation initiatives in sport have proven to be mostly ineffectual. Over simplistic and ‘quick fix’ strategies essentially focused on demographic change at the highest representative levels. One-dimensional demographically based processes ignored the need for a multi-dimensional approach based on cause and effect principles to bring about meaningful change.

We have entered the second phase of the transformation process after a successful pilot. We are now setting targets agreed mutually between the Eminenent Group of Persons on (EPG) on transformation and the federations. We will not back down on this important matter. This is a national imperative and we will implement the transformation Charter and its accompanying Scorecard to the very end.

Chairperson, our Provincial Sport Support and Coordination will continue to be mainly funded through the transfer of the mass participation and sport development conditional grant. We have once more tightened the Grant Framework to improve accountability of provinces. We are steadily improving the monitoring of the grant while collaborative initiatives between us and the provinces are ongoing. While joint planning challenges were ironed out, quality and timeous reporting still require more attention.

The Grant intends to contribute towards increased and sustained participation in sport and recreation as well as the improved sector capacity to deliver sport and recreation. In terms of school sport, the Grant assist with the support of learners to participate in district, provincial, and national school sport competitions; training of Educators and volunteers; provision of equipment and/ or attire.

The Grant is also used to support district and provincial school sport structures; the remuneration of school sport coordinators, as well as the support of sport focus schools. In terms of funding, 40% of the Grant allocation is for school sport; 20% each, for hubs and club development; 6% for employment of permanent staff; 5% for provincial programmes; 4, 5% for district and provincial academies; 4% for provincial Sports Councils and 0.5% for branding.

As part of the conditions for the Grant, provincial departments responsible for sport and recreation are required to ensure that they deliver Sport and recreation to the citizens within their provincial jurisdictions and are required to further ensure that the funds are properly accounted for. The grant is intended to drive the priorities in sport.

These include the delivery of school sport, provision of support to grassroots Clubs in communities, establishment of community based Sport Hubs, support to provincial and district Academies of Sport and the provision of funding and support to the programmes of the Provincial Sport Councils. As part of the emphasis on our focus on rural sport, we have now made it a condition of the grant that provinces should ensure that 50 per cent of the Clubs and Sport Hubs established are from rural and farm areas.

The MTEF Grant allocations are: R526 million for 2014/15; R550 million for 2015/16; and R579 million for 2016/17. Using 2012/13 as an example of audited allocations and spending, the Department allocated and transferred R469. 6 million of Grant funds to provinces. Of the total available of R473 million (including provincial roll-overs of 3.8 million), R444.8 million (94 per cent) was spent. The spending related to training of 7 405 educators for school sport programme; hosting of 33 mass mobilisation campaigns; and participation of 2 900 758 people in school sport, community hubs and clubs from schools, districts, provincial and national level, took part.

To unblock the existing service delivery bottlenecks, provinces may transfer funds allocated to provincial sports councils and academies with the following conditions in cases where the transfer was planned for and it is part of the provincial business plan approved by the national department. Also, the transfer of funds is to be used in line with the main purpose of the grant, and there must be a service level agreement or memorandum of agreement between the provincial department and the provincial sports council and / or academies.

Chairperson, we are advancing with our flagship FLAGSHIP PROGRAMMES. In this regard, we have identified several programmes, which we hope will also increase our footprint in various localities in South Africa.

The Andrew Mlangeni Golf Development Day, which will be held again in October 2014 will be aimed at exposing amateur golfers to a professional tournament and to give them the opportunity to play alongside professional golfers. A portion of the funds raised from the Andrew Mlangeni golf development day will be channelled into the Andrew Mlangeni Chapter of the South African Golf Development Board. This Chapter is based in Soweto and will provide approximately 50 young and aspiring golfers the opportunity to receive professional coaching and assistance with the equipment and attire required.

We will once again honour the iconic Nelson Mandela through the Nelson Mandela Sports and Culture Day which will take place again in August in partnership with the Department of Arts and Culture, South African Rugby Union (SARU), the South African Football Association (SAFA), and other social partners. For the first time this year, we will expand the scope of the event to include Netball and Cricket as part of the festivities and also conduct coaching clinics run by the visiting international teams. The Nelson Mandela Sports and Culture Day is part of our social cohesion initiative, called UNITE Campaign.

In 2012 we launched the National Sport Volunteer Corps Programme to among others, register and thereafter keep a record of sporting greats in the form of sports legends and former players/athletes/coaches and administrators in order to utilise their experience in developing sport in schools as most public and rural schools do not have specialist coaches to train their teams and to run their leagues. This financial year will see the deployment of some of these volunteers to various hubs of sport and recreation activity.

We will continue to re-position as a family festival with a vibrant carnival atmosphere, the Indigenous Games, which have grown exponentially. The games will take place in September 2014. We are engaging the Indigenous Games structures towards accrediting them as recognised federations with the intention to establish a league system to encourage broad participation.

The sport and recreation hub programme that is the core of community mass participation will continue to receive attention. Once the reviewed club system properly takes shape, this programme should see more support and value-add.

The department will continue to support the Sports Trust who’s primary focus is on assisting communities by providing them with equipment, facilities and other resources required for development of sport and recreation. The funds allocated to the Sports Trust are mainly used for priority projects identified by the department.

South African Sport Awards is our flagship programme for recognition of outstanding sport people. South African athletes who have represented the country in different sports and achieved outstanding results have to be recognised as results become known. This recognition of outstanding performance will with effect from this year, be held quarterly as a build up to the South African Sport Awards. We will also align and integrate the provincial Sport Awards into the national framework to streamline our efforts in this regard.

Chairperson, the exhibition of sport equipment that you all saw on the foyer of this house, is but just a sample of some of the sport equipment that we will be handing over to communities of Paarl and Phillipi, Tomorrow on the 30th of July 2014. This is our outreach programme for communities identified as being amongst higher in need of such equipment.

In conclusion honourable members, lets appreciate the work that our team is doing at the Common Wealth games in Glasgow. We are a nation of winners. To date, we have collected 24 medals and I want to congratulate all our athletes who are continuing to do well in Glasgow. I am positive the target of 43 medals set by South African Sport Confederations and Olympic Committee (SASCOC) will be achieved. Chairperson, let me also take this opportunity to congratulate Zolani Tete in his IBF Super-fly weight Championship triumph.

We are encouraged by his courageous win. And chairperson, one of the most significant decisions about our football was taken this weekend, the appointment of the National Team coach. Let me congratulate Shakes Mashaba on his new, highly expectation - laden post. We wish you all the best Ntate Mashaba.

Now is the time, ke nako, I thank you.