Open Letter to Minister of Sport and Recreation, Mr Fikile Mbalula;
Firstly, I would like to make clear from the onset that I acknowledge the improvements and diversity in sports in terms of national support and participation that has happened ever since our icon, Nelson Mandela, left the stadium of supporters and players mesmerised at Rugby World Cup in 1995.
However, I strongly believe that not enough emphasis has been placed on sport development, particularly amongst poor communities and schools. This will partly explain why to date we still have not produced a large enough pool of black athletes in swimming, diving, cycling, tennis, rugby and cricket, to name but a few.
Yes, we have introduced sports quotas but despite this we are not making much progress. Minister Mbalula, in my understanding the idea of a “quota system” in sports is peculiar as sports team are built out of a pool of hard working, dedicated players and talent. No team in its right mind will deny opportunities to players of high calibre, black or white.
There is a saying from our neighbours in Nigeria that you can’t stop a shooting star; if a star is going to shoot it will shoot. The focus of your department should be to bring sports closer to black and “coloured” communities so that not only kids from middle and upper class families in our communities (who can afford to attend schools such as St Stithians College and St John’s) end up being the only pool that will produce quality sports players of colour.
Let’s bring these opportunities to our communities. Let sport development happen in our backyards where we can see it. So that tomorrow when we accuse clubs of not representative teams we know that there is a large pool of players of colour in our backyards for them to choose from. Sport development should happen within schools and communities as this type of development has to be part of our young peoples’ daily lives, not just a once-off side thing.