SCENE SETTING AND OVERVIEW BY THE MINISTER OF SPORT AND RECREATION SOUTH AFRICA, MR FIKILE, MP, ON THE OCCASION OF THE MULTILATERAL ENGAGEMENT WITH ATHLETICS SOUTH AFRICA, NETBALL SOUTH AFRICA, CRICKET SOUTH AFRICA, SOUTH AFRICAN FOOTBALL ASSOCIATION AND SOUTH AFRICAN RUGBY UNION. 14 APRIL 2014. JOHANNESBURG
The Deputy Minister of Sport and Recreation SA; Mr Gert Oosthuizen
The Director-General of the Department of Sport and Recreation SA; Mr Alec Moemi
The President of SASCOC; Mr Gideon Sam
The SASCOC Board;
The CEO of SASCOC; Mr Tubby Reddy
The Presidents of Federations and representatives of Federations
Ladies and Gentleman of the Media,
‘The only thing that is constant is change'. This altruistic dialectical observation was made by a famous Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, as he developed his narrative about the centrality of change in the universe. The act or an instance of transforming the South African sporting landscape is neither merely a matter of conjecture nor is it an exercise in intellectual fantasy. It is a historical reality born of the material conditions that gave rise to the existence of the erstwhile colonial and apartheid sports environment. It evolved at every epoch of our social transformation with all its attendant internal and external contradictions.
As we convene this meeting of the 5 Federations forming part the Eminent Persons Group (EPG) on Transformation in Sport Pilot Study, we must always understand and internalize the reality that transformation processes are in their very nature exceedingly complex. These processes do not proceed in a logical, neat, step-by-step and chronological fashion.
Transformation is a dynamic interactive process in which plans can be carried out simultaneously and fundamental issues opened and re-opened as conditions change and setbacks occurs. This is so because, to paraphrase Professor Chris Landsberg; the local and international environment is in constant state of flux. Being here is part of the journey to live and hope. The youth of our country look up to us to lift them from hopelessness by providing equal opportunities to participate and take their rightful place in sport.
There can be no denying that at some point in our history it was ‘the South African way of life to reject racial meritocracy by evoking an elaborate mythology. Whites claimed that blacks had neither the ability nor the interest to play modern sport. What kind of morality could be derived from the appalling apartheid sport system that denigrated women in sport, suppressed the participation of persons with disability in sport and drove rural and townships sports to the doll-drums.
"If we accept the historical truth that nations everywhere have to be made through both conflict and compromise, then contemporary South Africa is not very different from other single, sovereign states, whether in Africa, Europe, or elsewhere. In Africa, South Africa is a particularly powerful and advanced state, but in some aspects of its historical past, its achievement of a unified nationhood resembles that of many other peoples in the world".
The words are borrowed from the book entitled every step of the Way, the journey to freedom in South Africa. We cannot continue defending 90 minutes of reconciliation when Bafana Bafana are playing, or 80 minutes unity when the springboks are playing. When we talk transformation, we are not talking of a weekend's celebration, a dop and party in Soweto when the Blue Bulls play at Orlando stadium. We must be able to demonstrate developmental work before the party and long after the party is over. We are not talking handshakes and photo opportunity, we talking meaningful change that contributes to human capital and skills for all administrators and players, athletes and so on.
The EPG observations and outcomes revealed and confirmed the hard cold fact that we are not constructing a new narrative by inviting sports bodies to account for the failure of transformation in our country. The current generation inherited a sporting landscape and machinery characterized by deeply embedded inequalities, inequity, inaccessible system, racial cleavages and sexist culture entrenched on the back of the monstrous Group Areas Act and of the despised Separate Amenities Act.
Lest we forget, we are not re-inventing the wheel. A quick review of the South African historical and empirical contours reminds us that social change movements rooted in transformation in the 1940s going forward, waged titanic battles and embarked on full-scale campaigns against apartheid. The African National Congress and Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) were at the forefront of the struggles against an abnormal sports philosophy and praxis of subjugating the majority and elevating the white elite.
The struggles for political freedom and all-inclusive-and-non-racial sport have at all material times been intertwined. The sport boycotts, economic sanctions and disinvestments, the declaration of apartheid as a crime against humanity by the United Nations and the degeneration of South Africa into a pariah state were as a result of these combined national and international struggles. It is for this reason that we must draw lessons from these heroic deeds as we drive politics of international co-operation, solidarity and partnership through sport at home and abroad.
As the apartheid oligarchy crisis deepened, progressive formations structures such as the National Sport Councils (NSC) in solidarity with a plethora of change agents, motive forces organized under the banner of the mass democratic movement finally broke the back of the apartheid junta. Who can forget SACOS's clarion call of no normal sport in an abnormal society that found resonance in the hearts and minds of peace loving people of South Africa, Africa and the world over. It is no accident of history that the NSC slogan of Unity, Transformation, and Development struck a deeper chord in the hearts of many generations who followed on their gigantic foot-steps.
There can be no denying of the role sports activists played in breaking the back of apartheid and in the reconstruction of the current sport architecture with all its promises and perils. We must always remember, especially now that our 20 years of democracy celebrations are looming on the horizon, the struggle for non-racial sport contributed immensely to the national interest and the transformation of the global order.
At this juncture and as the country celebrates 20 years of democracy, the question that beacons is: to what extent have we progressed or regressed in achieving a state of being transformed? Will history and future generations absolve us for claiming that we have reached a phase of marked change, as in appearance or character, form or content for better in sport?
Though it was resolved at the National Sport and Recreation Indaba in November 2011, that the quotas system will remain in place until a long-term and sustainable solution that organically produces representative teams and codes, are we not trapped in a mechanical way of reasoning or a mathematical replacement of the variables in an algebraic expression by their values in terms of another set of variables? In our approach and quest for unity are we not moving too quickly and unintentionally skipping developmental key phases? Is our pre-occupation about changing form at the expense of content? What have we done to deal with the dualistic sporting landscape? One that provides for the poor and one that provides for the affluent?
These questions are posed with a view to generate a constructive national debate and set an exemplary dialogue about the state of sport in South Africa and modalities employed in the delivery of the same as we grapple with the post apartheid sport identity. As the Isizulu adage goes: Indlu yegag iyanetha: the house of a person who talks too much lets in the rain. At this stage focus is on listening to the nation and the silent voices for the enhancement of this discourse.
I implore all of you, present here today and at home, let us have forward looking approaches and constructive debates on transformation. Let us for once be brutally frank about our fears, misgivings and hopes for transformation. We owe this to the majority of young people in South Africa whose dreams of becoming Bafana Bafana, whose hopes of becoming a Springbok, whose aspirations to be a Protea are sacrificed on alter personal interests and selfish ambitions of sports leaders and administrators.
I again take this opportunity to remind all of us here and at home of the sequences of events that brought us to this point. I know some among us believe this exercise is done for expedience purposes. I know it is election time and the period has been dubbed the silly season. All I know I am not silly and I mean business.
Remember, the National Sport and Recreation Indaba produced the first-ever National Sport and Recreation Plan. Embedded in the National Sport and Recreation Plan (which has been incorporated into the National Development Plan NDP) is the Transformation Charter with its attendant score-card. As part of the consequentials and resolutions of the National Sport and Recreation Indaba is the establishment of a Transformation Commission.
The Ministry of Sport and Recreation had given effect to this resolution by establishing the Eminent Persons Group (EPG) on Sport Transformation with clear terms of references. On Tuesday, 25th March 2014, the EPG released its first major report on the performance evaluation of the score-card using accepted accounting and assessment practices. The EPG report is the first of its kind and through it the country is able to present a report based on a scientific survey and hard cold facts backed by empirical evidence.
The Report (which we are sharing with internal and external structure for continuity purposes) throws up shocking statistics about the state of South African sport since 1994 to be shared with you during the technical presentation. Some of the observations of the report relate to, to highlight but just a few:
Lack of facilities and poorly maintained facilities.
Lack of skills and resources for African sport bodies.
The lack of implementation of the 50:50 quotas system.
The sliding back of clubs and league systems more so in the rural areas and townships.
School sport struggling in townships due to no properly trained teachers and co-ordinators at school level
No transformation funding set aside to deal with rural and township communities, women and persons with disabilities.
Lack of parental involvement in the sporting activities of the children and youth.
Racially divided sport structures and hindrance to transformation.
The report further confirmed we are dealing with an unco-ordinated and poorly integrated sport system.
After 20 years of our democracy, we should be ashamed of ourselves that there are still fundamental fault lines in society. The rate of black African representation in sport has fallen behind the rate of improving generic Black representation. Basic sport infrastructure is still not available to citizens living in conditions of abject poverty. We seek to understand why sport transformation remains challenging in post-apartheid South Africa and analyze the ways sport has and could be used to create post-apartheid national identity.
It is our primary task to make a case for sport within Government and within sport itself as it is a lucrative industry worth 3 billion rands. Of necessity part of this revenue should find its way back into sports development. These are issues that I expect the sport fraternity to address of their own free will without being policed or supervised. I am not a Mantshingilaan, armed and dangerous with a knop-kierie to assault you. I am your partner in the just and fair delivery of sport in our country.
This exercise is an expression about the possibility and necessity of transformation of the self (and for us; of society). Poignantly and eloquently propounded by our martyr and international icon, Nelson Rholihlahla Mandela as he observed that "one of the most difficult things is not to change society but to change yourself". From the self the possibility exist for civic duty and collective identity. We have made numerous calls to all previous sportsmen and women to come on board and actively participate in the revision of sports in the townships. I repeat, none but ourselves can change our world.
This calls among other for white South African sports compatriots to discard the vestiges of ivory tower mentality; they must be robust players together with government and civil society in engaging broader societal dynamics and building democratic sports structures and vibrant institutional culture.
Our purpose today is to receive responses from the five federations and also plans to deal with the observations, findings and recommendations of the EPG. We have got to give birth to this non-racial sport system, we have had our labour pains for far too long. We must live Martin Luther's dream through the participation of black and white kids sharing a football pitch and a Basketball Arena.
I have instructed my office to convene a meeting with Solidarity, the Freedom Front and AfriForum to discuss their concerns with regards to the decisions taken by the meeting of the Minister's and MECs' on the implementation of the report. I repeat what I said over the weekend that it is my sincere belief that if we all embrace transformation and take ownership for both black and white challenges and opportunities, we shall overcome.
Thank you
Issued by the Ministry of Sport and Recreation, April 14 2014
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