Minister Fikile Mbalula: Sport and Recreation South Africa Dept Budget Vote Debate 2016/17

6 May 2016

Theme: Consolidating the base: advancing sport development and transformation!

Chairperson

Deputy Minister of Sport and Recreation in South Africa, Mr. Gert Oosthuizen

The Chairperson of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Sport and Recreation, Ms Beauty Dlulane

The MECs for Sport and Recreation from various provinces

Honourable Members

The Director-General of Sport and Recreation in South Africa, Mr Alec Moemi

President of the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC), Mr. Gideon Sam and SASCOC Board Members

Distinguished guests

Ladies and Gentlemen

This occasion serves as a constant reminder of our historic mission and pledge to the people of South Africa never to dishonour cause of freedom. This morning we are taking liberty and advantage of the 20th anniversary since the momentous adoption of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa as we present to this august house the Budget Statement for the 2016/17 financial year, Vote Number 40.

We reached this junction enthused by the clarion call of our Government to together join hands as we move South Africa forward. We are ever-advancing in our collective efforts to implement the National Development Plan Vision 2030. We are unremitting in the ossification of key priority areas laid bare in our Medium-Term Strategic Framework over the 2014 to 2019 period.

We are firm in our resolve of leveraging sport as a catalyst to execute on the Nine-Point Plan critical to growing and transforming the economy, creating jobs and attracting investment, outlined by the President during the State of the Nation Address. We will on this platform elaborate on our initiatives and cross-cutting programmes geared towards accelerating implementation of Government programmes of action. This is not athletic verbosity but real action.

Honourable Members join me in welcoming and congratulating the MECs for Sport and Recreation and Arts and Culture from the Free State, Gauteng and North West Provinces. The MECs have already hit the road running and have been an integral part of our MINMECs and roll-out plans in the provinces.

Sports delivery landscape

Honourable members we are delivering sport under conditions not chosen by ourselves. Our sport delivery system is impacted by budget constraints and the absence of adequate equitable share to implement the National Sport and Recreation Plan (NSRP) as adopted by the sports movement and approved by the Cabinet.

Our Department is indefatigably soldiering on by designing innovative mechanisms and conceptualising funding models to ensure that the strategic goals of optimising citizens’ access to sport and recreation; transformation of the sector; and supporting athletes to achieve international success are not compromised.

Key to these implementation mechanisms are partnerships with provincial and local spheres of government and other national government departments, particularly the signatories to Outcome 14 Delivery Agreement. Sport is a site for intense struggles.

The total budget allocation for the national Department of Sport and Recreation in South Africa for the 2016/2017 financial year stands at One Billion and Twenty Eight Million having gone up only by R48, 1m from the previous year’s allocation of R979.4 million.

2015/2016 Highlights

We are proud to inform you that the Boxing is Back Project was rolled out in 7 of our 9 Provinces. As indicated last year that I will resuscitate boxing from the doll-drums and return it to its former glory. I return to this house to announce that I have accomplished that mission. Boxing has returned live on Television. The Giant has been awakened. Siyaqhuba!

Boxing blackout on television is a thing of the past. To date Boxing enjoys the highest women viewership than any other sporting code. Since the first broadcast in June to date, the programme has been viewed by over 1,3 million households.

Some of the key successes include the opportunity for revenue generation for Boxing South Africa, and opportunities for upcoming promoters, boxers and dedicated slots for women boxers. In order for boxing to maintain the momentum gained last year, I have allocated an additional R11 million to Boxing South Africa (BSA) budgeted for 2016/17 financial year.

Building on the inaugural Recognition of Women in Sport Programme hosted during government’s Women’s month programme in 2014 to honour the role of women in sport, we hosted a similar event in August 2015. In keeping with Government’s 2015 theme “Women United in moving South Africa Forward”, the overarching objective of this prestigious programme is to encourage women participation and to highlight and celebrate the role which women play across the entire value chain of sport.

Our intention is to place women in sport on the same pedestal as women in other sectors and strata of society as the entire nation celebrate their achievements during the month of August. The 2015 awards ceremony recognised and celebrated women’s excellence in sport, as well as their achievement and their contribution to nation building and social cohesion. The Minister’s Awards went to Zanele Situ, Faith Sibeko, Zola (Budd) Pieterse, Hestrie (Cloete) Els, and Geraldine Pillay.

In pursuit of excellence and quality

The time has come to pull all stops and ensure that our sporting codes live up to our mantle of a winning nation. Among many achievements that we are proud of, as a country, we celebrated the success of Team South Africa that participated on the continent in 2015 in the 11th African Games in Brazzaville. Team SA finished in 3rd place with 122 medals, after Egypt with 217 medals and Nigeria with 144 medals.

As we strive for access and demographic representation we are equally unflinching in our drive for excellence and quality in all dimensions of our transformation agenda. Those who seek to dichotomise high standards and access are hypocrites who want to maintain their privileged status quo. They must come out of the apartheid and capitalist enclave and smell the coffee.

South Africa is changing for better! Walala wasala. There is neither contradiction nor Chinese wall between access or quality of opportunity and excellence. Instead the two are mutually re-enforcing each other and dialectically interconnected.

The achievement of two consecutive two clean audit reports by the Department Sport and Recreation is testimony to this progressive thinking and never-die-attitude to debunk the stereotyping of African Governments. This is quality of opportunity, excellence epitomised. Asante Sana!

Keep up the good work Department of Sport and Recreation. Lets us continue making meaningful changes in the lives of our people beyond counting cents and rands.

Government support to the sport sector

It is our mission to safeguard sport as it is equally our preoccupation to place the interests of athletes at the centre of our development and excellence programmes. To this end we continue funding the qualifying National Federations according to the Recognised Sport Bodies Grant Framework. Funding is provided across two tiers: guaranteed funding, fundamentally for administration, and conditional funding, which constitutes the bulk of the funding that addresses governance, transformation, and performance. We have allocated an amount of R113.3 million for transfers to National Federations in this financial year.

We are putting our money where our mouth is! The total allocation for athletes support programme and the promotion of elite athletes is R91, 1 million, having gone up by R15, 1 million from the previous year’s allocation of R76 million.

Inspite of budget cuts we are allocating a total of R137, 6 million, having gone down by R10, 9 million from the previous year’s allocation of R148, 5 million. This allocation is earmarked for the development of an integrated support system to enhance the delivery of sport.

In keeping with our commitment to support the sector, enhancing provisioning of strategic leadership, management and support services, we are making an allocation of R134, 9 million, having gone up by R15 million from the previous year’s allocation of R119, 9 million. This will see the heightened political work and support being provided to National Federations and the Sport Sector as a whole by the Ministry and senior leadership of the Department.

We will to provide support to 40 athletes to enable them break the barrier to access the SASCOC’s High Performance Programme, aptly entitled Operation Excellence (OPEX for short). SASCOC will prepare Team South Africa in collaboration with our National Federations to participate in the 2016 Rio Olympic and Paralympic Games beginning in August.

In this regard SASCOC will receive its allocation of R8 million, as well as an additional allocation for advanced preparations for targeted athletes who have good medal potential in Brazil based on the assessments of the training and preparatory needs over and above the support provided through the various sporting federations for final preparations.

As Government, we are doing everything in our power to ensure that our athletes fly the South African flag high and collect medals that will put smiles on the faces of this sport–loving nation. In this regard, we have set a target of 8 medals for SASCOC in the 2016 edition of the Olympic Games, up from the medal tally achieved in London.

I am delighted to announce Hockey as the National Federation of the Year in 2016. As result of the Federation’s new status, Hockey will receive a substantial additional allocation of R10 million as well as further support to assist it improve and professionalize its operations.

A New Hockey Premier League will be launched as a result of this work, consistent with our commitment to professionalise sport in our country beyond only the major codes.

This record of sport delivery is unprecedented. It is contrary to the propaganda of detractors who project us as a stick wielding government, hell-bent on punishing the federations without any incentives. Nothing can be farther from the truth.

Facilities and grassroot sport development

Honourable Members during our Budget Vote Debate in the preceding year we signalled our intention to undertake broader Sport Facilities Audit Project. I am proud to announce that we have completed the first phase of the Facilities Count. This count provides us with a baseline of facilities’ information that enables us in decision-making regarding facilities provision.

The project will be expanded in 2016/17 to ensure that more detailed information about the facilities is sourced. The Sport Facilities Audit project is aimed at assisting government to provide sport facilities where they are needed the most. The Sport Infrastructure Support programme has a budget allocation of R16.3 million in 2016/17. Therefore, for the first time, the total allocation for Programme 5 stands at R16, 3 million.

I am overjoyed to announce that after a long protracted struggle, we succeeded in convincing both the National Treasury and the Department of Cooperative Governance to allocate and set aside an amount of three hundred million rands from the Municipal Infrastructure Grant (MIG) funds, outside of the formula, in the 2016/17 financial year for refurbishment and building of facilities. This will be a pilot project will demonstrate to the National treasury that pulling together of resources was the best methodology to address the following:

1. Facilities backlogs,

2. Ensure benefits derived from economies of scale,

3. Resolve imbalances posed by the equitable share formula,

4. Ensure compliance with the national Norms and Standards as set out in the National Facilities Plan, and

5. Lastly resolve the maintenance curse facing smaller municipalities.

The implementation of this pilot project is already underway with our Department working in collaboration with the National Treasury, the Department of Cooperative Governance, provincial governments and the relevant local authorities. The roll-out of facilities and refurbishment work apart from contributing to increased access and active lifestyles, have a positive impact on employment at a local spheres of government and communities. Chairperson Siyasebenza asidlali!

National School Sport Programme

40% of our Conditional Grant is allocated to the National School Sport Programme as a demonstration of our seriousness to bolster the National School Sport Programme because it is the bedrock of sport development trajectory. This programme will can only succeed with close cooperation between provincial and national governments.

School sport remains a core deliverable for SRSA in 2016/17. The Department remains committed to maximizing access to sport, recreation and physical activity in every school in South Africa. We are looking at immediate interventions to ensure functionality of the programme in all schools. This programme will remain the flagship programme in the Department with the focus being devoted to the school leagues which will culminate in the National School Sport Championships.

As of the beginning of 2016, we now have three championship seasons, namely Autumn, Winter, and Summer. The autumn season has seen the hosting of Athletics for primary and for secondary schools in March this year. Support is provided to Sports Coaches Outreach (SCORE) to sustain coaching programmes for the sport and recreation sector, and during 2016/17 resources will be provided to train 5 000 thousand coaches. This will boost the capacity of the sector to deliver quality programmes, especially needed to strengthen school sport.

Sport transformation and development

Chairperson, since I made the announcement of the Eminent Persons Group (EPG) on the Transformation in Sport in South Africa and the announcement of the Transformation Barometer on the 25 April 2016, I have been denigrated, insulted and called with the K word by some white supremist. Without wasting yours and my valuable time, I am eagerly awaiting the Human Rights Commission ruling on this nauseating and blatant racism.

For us there is no turning back on transformation and I am forging ahead with the penalties imposed on athletics, cricket netball and rugby netball based on their failure to meet their own set targets.

I have signed a Memoranda of Agreement with each of the aforementioned federations and I expect them to act on their commitments. I will be signing memoranda of agreements with the 14 federations that were part of the 2015/2016 transformation audit report. I also expect them to set their own targets against which we will measure their performance on an annual basis. In sport today you must either shape up or shape out.

I welcome SASCOC’s intended intervention to assist the various codes to meet their transformation targets. Much as we accept and welcome the strides made within the sports movement towards unity and democratization, we stand here to reject and rise in protest against the existing dual sports system.

One characterized by a handful of sporting codes that play and thrive in the first economy, on the one hand, and another of sporting codes perpetually playing in the second economy and struggling to break the apartheid iron grip. This is the historical injustice we must fight tooth and nail and destroy brick by brick as we lay the ghost of Verwoerd to rest.

Chairperson, transformation is a non-negotiable! As we emerge from the celebrations of freedom month, we must acknowledge that our journey to freedom in South Africa has seen us navigating countless contours and climbing many mountains.

There are still many rivers to cross and numerous mountains to climb in our task to address the historical imbalances and levelling the playing field. As I have indicated that we ourselves are seized with the implementation of the EPG Report on grassroots development, challenges within our school sport and club delivery system. We have mobilized the whole government machinery to work in unison so that we deliver on our part. That is the integral thread that runs through my speech this morning.

Towards an active nation and grass roots sport development

R648, 7 million of this budget has been allocated towards the provision of mass participation opportunities and recreation under the banner of our ACTIVE NATION programme. In practical terms, this means that 66% of our entire budget is channelled towards our development. This prioritization is not by coincidence or some miracle of nature. It is a deliberate and principled stance informed by our commitment that it is only through optimal investment towards development that we will truly achieve transformation in sport.

Honourable members, Cabinet declared an annual National Recreation Day for the first Friday of October each year. The 2016 National Recreation Day campaign will be expanded to corporate South Africa; tertiary institutions and communities at large, in order for a broader scope of South African citizens to embrace and participate in physical activities for fun and leisure. Provincial Departments of Sport and Recreation across the nine provinces will also put together programmes and awareness campaigns targeting all stakeholders in the nine provinces. We will further build on the Annual Big Walk as we this year target to break the barrier of 30 000 participants across all the provincial capitals of our country.

The Golden Games will continue in October 2016, in partnership with the Department of Social Development, although against a revised implementation plan and delivery methodology to accommodate budget cuts.

Approximately 3 000 youth, representing diverse cultural groupings, attend the National Youth Camps each year and the profile of the National Youth Camp will be elevated with targeted marketing campaigns.

As part of women empowerment and creating hope for young women all over the country and our quest to expand on the basket of Recreation programmes we offer, we will facilitate an expedition to Mount Everest, where the intention is to have the first black South African woman to summit. The Department is also facilitating an expedition to Mount Kilimanjaro. In partnership with the Mountain Club of South Africa, we will seek to encourage black South Africans to take interest in the recreational activity of Mountain Climbing. In pursuit of this objective, we will launch the 9 Summits Challenge for university students to participate through their university based Hiking Clubs for a Prize. This will entail, students having to climb all the highest peaks in all of our nine provinces.

Universities that manage to get more black students to summit all the 9 peaks within a period of 12 months will be rewarded with a prize. As part of reintroducing excitement and encouraging participation in sport and recreation, and also provide local entrepreneurs opportunities that can boost local economies, the Department will introduce a programme aptly named the Sports Buzz in the 2016/17 financial year. The programme entails 12 retro fitted kombis that will have a presence in all provinces with the intention of promoting sport, active and healthy lifestyles.

This bus that will also be accompanied by a sport mascot, intended to be a powerful tool to distribute information and promote sport and recreation in communities and mobilize such communities to take part. The bus will also assist in reaching the disadvantaged areas and rural communities of our country and support their participation through the distribution of sport equipment.

Chairperson, three days ago, we launched our Rural Sport Development Programme in Umtata in the Eastern Cape. The Programme is an off-shoot of a collaborative effort between relevant national government departments; South African Local Government Association, National House of Traditional Leaders, the sport federations, Sport Academies, academic institutions in close proximity to the targeted areas, as well as corporate institutions.

We are building a solid pipeline by growing and nurturing athletes who demonstrate potential and talent in the deep rural areas. We are doing it for ourselves. Siyaqhuba.

Scientific support

The Scientific Support Programme expenditure focuses onsupport to athletes and coaches through a sport science programme in partnership with selected schools and high performance centres. Our Team is also responsible for managing the Ministerial Sport Bursary Scheme. In this financial year, the potential new recruits who were identified during the 2015 national school sport championships will be immediately placed onto the Ministerial Sports Bursary programme. This is to ensure that the recruits, who finally enter the programme, are those who have the necessary endurance and talent to see them through to the elite level of participation.

The potential recruits will undergo various tests at the National Training Centre (NTC) as a last phase of qualification for placement into the programme. The sub-programme, together with the relevant province and sports focus schools will work collaboratively to develop talented athletes, who are placed in the Sport Focus Schools. As part of our job creation programme, we will this year, launch the Sport Outreach Programme (for unemployed graduates who are qualified in Sports Science or Sports Management) to run sports programmes in schools, in addition to supporting community clubs. This programme is aligned to the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) (Social Sector) coordinated by the Department of Social Development.

Through this programme we will recruit unemployed graduates that are based in the rural communities of the Free State, Eastern Cape, Limpopo, Northern Cape and the North West province. One hundred unemployed graduates will be recruited, trained and placed within selected districts during the first part of the 2016/17 financial year. At a national level SRSA will lobby to have the current EPWP initiatives of the provincial departments of sport and recreation more closely aligned to the objectives of the National Sport and Recreation Plan, as well as the National Development Plan.

Honourable Members I would like to thank the Deputy Minister of Sport Recreation Mr. Gert Oosthuizen for his support over the years. A word of profound appreciation goes the Director- General of Sport and Recreation, Mr. Alec Moemi and his Team for their sterling work and placing our Department in the frontline of service delivery.

Thank you very much for your attention.

Issued by Sport and Recreation South Africa, 6 May 2016