Budget Vote 2007/08 speech delivered by the Minister of Sport and Recreation South Africa Mr M A Stofile, National Assembly, Cape Town

Renewing our pledge: A national partnership to build a better life for all

Madame Speaker / Honourable Chairperson
Cabinet colleagues
Honourable members
Esteemed ladies and gentlemen

During our first Budget Speech on 15 June 2004 we had this to say:

"Sport is a very important part of society. It is also a very important barometer of how a particular society is organised. For that reason, our country too has a responsibility to use sport to assist the country and our people to move in a particular direction; the direction of a deracialised South Africa which is also sensitive to gender and disability issues."

The government's vision 2014 goals include the above ideals. These ideals are also enshrined in our Constitution. Section 7 (2) even enjoins us to promote the values of equality and protection of human dignity. So, indeed we must use sport as a tool for nation building. We must use it to build self-esteem and national pride. We cannot continue with paradigms that perpetuate apartheid stereotypes of some who are destined for greatness while others are destined for mediocrity and inferiority.

The public debate occasioned by the passing by this august House of our Sport and Recreation Amendment Bill last Wednesday is about how we think sport should be run in this country. Some believe it must be used to contribute to transformation. Others believe things should be left as they always have been. The first group believes that a democratising state must play a role in transformation. The second group believes that market forces and pure chance should be allowed to dictate the route of change.

No government of the people can abdicate its responsibility to chance and market forces. A developmental state must intervene to make sure the goals of a nation are attained. Our President correctly points out that market forces are not sympathetic to the poor. By the same token we must resist the temptation to ride rough shod on other sectors of our society. "Affirmative Action" or "Regstellende Aksie" need not be hostile to some groups whilst it is assisting others to catch up. We want all our children to start from the same line. Who finishes first must not be pre-determined by the disparities of where they individually start. Merit selection cannot be achieved if the playing field of the participants is not level. To pretend otherwise is only to be over-hopeful or to be simply mischievous.

Programmes

We have chosen to use this opportunity to give members and our people a cursory view of what we have been doing with public funds. Of course we also mobilised some private funds to drive some of our programmes.

Mass Participation

When we launched the Mass Participation Programme in July 2004 in Upington, we committed ourselves to taking sport to all our people. This was informed by the observation of how sport had died in most communities. I do not believe there is any member here who has travelled to more rural communities than myself in the last three years (and before). As always, we stayed away from the lenses of the media and rather focused on the people and communities themselves. As I have always said, for us this is a serious business not a public relations (PR) exercise.

We travelled from the rural and desolate areas such as Machadadorp in Emakhazeni Municipality and Belfast in Pixley Ka Seme Municipality, in Mpumalanga as well as the dusty villages of Jozini in Northern KwaZulu-Natal.

We visited the mountainous areas of Namaqualand right up to the ghost coast. We visited many other areas. Whilst we were confronted by extreme poverty and severe scars of infrastructure deprivation, we were inspired by the enthusiasm of locals, especially teachers, students and sports veterans. The legendary "Sugar Ray" Xulu leads a formidable squad of dedicated football masters in KwaZulu-Natal in response to our call of 2005. The old ladies of the Mafarana-Jamela football club of Limpopo together with others from Vhembe and Capricorn districts as well as from Mpumalanga, play football. The 60 years old Elisa Mhlarhi of Mafarama (nicknamed Jabu Pule) avers that she no longer takes treatment for hypertension since she started playing football. The 58 years-old Agnes Mushwana passed fitness test and got a job as a fruit packer. Sport is bringing health, jobs and hope to our people.

It is exciting to see community leaders and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) as well as the private sector getting involved in the revival of community sport. The old Easter Tournaments have risen from the dead. Remote villages like Qugqwala in the Eastern Cape hosted a tournament of rugby, soccer, netball and horseracing. An amazing 32 rugby teams participated in the tournament organised by Advocate Dali Mpofu. A similar tournament was organised in Alice for rugby, netball and soccer. A team from the remote town of Qobo-qobo (Keiskammahoek) walked away with the spoils in a rugby tournament in Cape Town. After watching a school's Easter tournament for rugby in Johannesburg, Mr Ferreira, President of the Gauteng Lions was moved to express the hope that the demographic mix of the teams would be reflected in future Springbok teams. We will be watching and monitoring progress.

Madame Speaker, sport is back in our townships and villages. They need our moral support as well as our logistical support. Various mayors have introduced mayoral tournaments. Allow me to brag Madame Speaker and mention that yours truly started this project in 2003 at Cofimvaba/Tsomo already. These tournaments are growing like wildfire across the country. The idea is to deepen participation and organisation to the Ward level. Both development and social integration will be assured.

This programme is giving life to latent and dormant talent and enthusiasm for sport and physical activity. We have seen some facilities that have been "white elephants" hitherto being changed into "work horses" as they get almost over-utilised. We need more facilities and equipment.

Mr Thembinkosi Biyela represented us in KwaZulu-Natal for a facilities handover. He visited the following areas:

* Gamalakhe in Port Shepstone under the Ugu District Municipality handed over an Olympic size swimming pool.
* KwaNzimakwe, Icabhana and Kwa-Cele also under Ugu District Municipality handed over a multi-purpose sports facilities with change rooms and ablution blocks.

Although the physical handover took place at Ugu District Municipality, there were many other facilities, a total of 34, throughout the province that were handed over on the day to 27 local municipalities. Of the 34, 16 were built by Sports and Recreation South Africa (SRSA) at a cost of R25 million, the balance was erected by the provinces and the local municipalities themselves.

The excitement of parents and children and the enthusiasm of all were most impressive at Gamalakhe when we handed over the Olympic-size swimming pool. A much needed and much valued facility.

We have now trained 8 000 young volunteers in administration, coaching, refereeing, events management and first aid. The South African Gymnastics Federation has given a lot of support to this programme. They have also become the biggest beneficiary. Many young people from our hubs participated in the South African. Gymnastrada Championships in Tshwane/Pretoria last year. Some 510 of these young people will now participate in the July World Gymnastrada festival in Dornbirn, Austria. Children from Calvinia in the Northern Cape, Taung in the North West, from Seshego in Limpopo, Umthata in the Eastern Cape, Gugulethu in the Western Cape, Soweto in Gauteng and some from the rural areas of KwaZulu-Natal. They will join other children from different parts of the world in Austria.

The sports leaders of Namaqualand spoke very proudly of their Calvinia Boys who will be off to Austria. Indigenous games like rope skipping have also seen our children participate in the World Rope Skipping Championships in Canada where they did us proud.

So you see, honourable members, South African Sport is not just rugby and the selection of Springbok teams. Yet those events also play an important role in building or undermining nation-building. Our Mass Participation Programme also contributed to the National Youth Service by recruiting and training more than 2 000 unemployed young people who are running programme in communities.

A research done by the University of Johannesburg indicates that 42% of these use their stipends to feed up to eight destitute people. Some of them have since found permanent jobs with sports federations and provincial departments. This is our humble contribution to Joint Initiative for Priority Skills Acquisition (JIPSA) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The introduction of the Club Development Programme last year has to be seen against the above background. Federations are performing way below par in organising community clubs. This in turn has a negative effect on the retention and development of school athletes� talent. Federations go for ready-made talent. We try to bridge the gap between school sport and senior sport.

Human resource development, infrastructure provisioning and initiating local leagues are the key components of our Club Development Programme. It tries to take mobilisation (MPP) to organisation (Club Development). Local predominant interests guides where we should begin (soccer, netball, athletics etc).

School sport

When we started in 2004 we lamented the fact that school sport was an orphan. It belonged to neither SRSA nor to Education. Since signing the Memorandum of Understand (MoU) with my colleague, Minister of Education, things are getting better. We have been impressed with the response to the School Mass Participation Programmes. KwaZulu-Natal leads in this respect followed mostly by the Western Cape. We urge provinces, parents and teachers to put their shoulders to the school sport wheel. Sports federations have both an interest as well as a responsibility for school sport. Educators must work under the guidance of federations who are the ultimate custodians of sport in any country. It is the federations who must finally account for what is happening in their codes.

I have directed my officials to do an evaluation of National Co-ordinating Committee (NACOC). We must always try to sharpen our delivery models and tools. In my view, NACOC must play a co-ordinating role. Educators should be allowed to plan and implement programmes for their schools at the local and District level. This is how school sport works all over world. We need to de-bottleneck school sport without making it a free for all. Federations should not bully teachers. They must respect the autonomy of school sport and its co-ordinating NGOs that are run by teachers.

Our children are participating in various international events in Greece, Italy, Namibia, Botswana, Argentina, Ethiopia and elsewhere. Our department has assisted with some costs and so have provincial departments and companies like SuperSport, Nike, Cadburys and others. Our partnerships with SCORE and United Kingdom (UK) sport have also been helpful.

We have twinned 26 schools with 26 Sports Colleges in the United Kingdom. This has assisted in capacity building to 26 teachers who visited their twin institutions in the UK last year. Also 52 UK sport development officers visited South Africa and ran workshops for their South African colleagues. We hope to add 12 more schools to this programme. Our gratitude goes to the United Kingdom for their contribution to our sport.

Restructuring process

Madame Speaker/Chairperson, I am happy to announce that we have now completed the integration of staff from the SRSA and from the sports commission. We are equally pleased to announce that we have met all government targets i.e. the national question, gender and people with disabilities. For the first time we have appointed people with disability at the Senior Management Services (SMS) level. We hope to be ahead of government targets by the end of this financial year.

The process was not easy as it involved warm bodies. Some had hoped this would be a vehicle for automatic promotions. We decided to play it strictly by the law. We are satisfied of the even handedness of the process. We are also horrified at the weakness the process exposed i.e. our managers. We have put in place qualified staff to deal with those weaknesses.

Boxing South Africa (BSA) continues to face challenges. Most of them stem from a difficult centralisation process of the administration of BSA. The Chairperson of BSA assures me they will solve their problems this year. I am, however, concerned that their senior managers have still to assume their duties. We are dealing with this.

International affairs

South Africa continues to play a leading role in fora like the World Anti-Doping Association, African Union, Supreme Council of Sport and in other bi-nationals. National federations like netball, cricket, swimming, hockey, cycling and korfball have been twinned with the United Kingdom, Nederlands and Flanders. Diving, boxing, handball, judo and volleyball have been linked with China, Cuba and Algeria. We currently have nine students studying towards a degree in physical Education and sport in Cuba through a generous scholarship of the Cuban government. Limpopo and the Free State are beneficiaries of graduates from this programme.

The South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC) continues to face problems that face all new institutions. Despite all this they are ably preparing Team South Africa for the All Africa Games in Algeria in July. At the same time they are working closely with national federations to prepare for the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Beijing in 2008. As usual, we assist with funds to make sure our elite athletes are properly conditioned. Thirty nine of these are currently on a full-time residential programme at the high performance centre. Another 691 have been serviced since August 2006. In addition we assist the athletes with allowances so that they can concentrate in their preparation without worrying too much about subsistence issues.

Preparations for the Federation International Football Association (FIFA) 2010 World Cup are on track. Everything is now there for all the doubting Thomasses to see or inspect. But our detractors will continue to be heard long after a successful 2010. We are aware what the opponents of the rotation of bidding continents are trying to do to steal the World Event from Africa. Let us close ranks and protect this privilege. By all means criticise where criticism is due. Let us not demoralise and demobilise our people by negative attitudes.

I must conclude by thanking the co-operation and support of the following:

* Deputy Minister Oosthuizen
* My Cabinet Colleagues
* Chairpersons of the Portfolio committee and of the Standing Committee for Sport and Education
* MECs and premiers
* Managers and staff of SRSA
* Managers from other Departments who helped with the restructuring process
* The media and the people of South Africa.

We must also wish our national teams well in their coming commitments.

I thank you.

Issued by: Sport and Recreation South Africa
22 May 2007