Minister of Sport and Recreation South Africa Budget Speech

Minister of Sport and Recreation South Africa, Mr Fikile Mbalula, gave his Budget Vote Speech on the 17 July 2014

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Accelerating sport development: our non negotiable mandate

Chairperson
Deputy Minister of Sport and Recreation, South Africa, Mr. G. Oosthuizen
The Chairperson of the Parliamentary Committee on Sport and Recreation
MECs of sport from various provinces
The Director General, Mr. Alec Moemi
Honourable Members
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen

Chairperson, it is now exactly a month since the President,  his Excellency J.G Zuma delivered the State of the Nation Address to this August house, setting forth a clear programme of action that this government will be pursuing and executing in the next five years. The President’s address is indeed a clarion call to action to all of us, more so the sporting sector, on the direction that this nation will be taking over the next five years.

Honourable members,   we return to this house this afternoon re-enforced and emboldened by the appointment of eight new Members of the Provincial Executive Councils for sport (MECs) with one having been retained. Honourable members, please join me in congratulating the incoming  MECs and the returning MEC and ofcourse I wish the colleagues successful run in the current term of office. 

We congratulate the incoming Chairperson of the Sport and Recreation Portfolio Committee and we are looking forward to closer, dynamic and enhanced working relationships with the Portfolio Committee and the MECs. The appointment of a woman Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee alongside seven women MECs is indicative of the African National Congress’s commitment to gender parity and is a good omen for the development of women is sport and augurs well for transformation in the sport and recreation sector. Wathinta abafazi wathinta imbokotho Malibongwe! Igama lamakhosikazi!

As the Deputy Minister and myself also have returned to our respective responsibilities, we wish to use our return for continuity as all plans that were put in place during the last term of governance are ready for implementation.

The past financial year at a glance

Chairperson, over the last financial year we have taken deliberate and direct action towards ensuring that as many as possible South Africans participate in sport and recreation activities and indeed this is beginning to bear fruits as we saw that over three past financial years,  61 694 people were given access to participate in sport and recreation through direct SRSA initiatives/projects.

Honourable members, over the past 2 financial years, 2011/2012 and 2012/2013, support was provided to 1 461 athletes and 77 coaches. In 2012/2013 alone, 90 athletes were supported and as at the end of the year under review, 58 athletes & coaches were being assisted by means of scientific support programmes. The support provided to these sports men and women, contributed towards their achievements nationally, continentally and consequently, internationally.

Our non negotiable mandate, sports development

Chairperson, development remains the critical foundation for progress at grassroots level through to elite sport and high performance. 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, in particular the 17 priority sports that we have identified.

Chairperson, 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.” International experiences have shown that indeed successful sporting nations do not just derive their success from the air. Meaningful investments are required from early age for enhanced effective participation in sport. As we have further argued in our NSRP, “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.

Programme of action for the realisation of our development trajectory

In his response to the State of the Nation Address, the President reflected “One of the success areas of every nation must be its ability to compete with other nations on the sports field. We have to improve our sports performance.” In this regard, the President has given us a commanding instruction to work with various stakeholders in investing in school sport; provision and maintenance of adequate sport facilities in our residential areas. The business of sport and recreation in our country is guided by the NDP-aligned National Sport & Recreation Plan (NSRP) – a sector-specific plan that is a result of the whole country having put their heads together at both the provincial sport & recreation izindaba and the national indaba that were held in 2011. At this izindaba, we convened all MEC’s for sport and various other stakeholders in sport development and emerging from this interaction we agreed that the following programme of action should guide our work in the coming term:

School sport

Chairperson, school sport provides a platform for all learners, skilled or unskilled with an opportunity to develop their potential at a very early age. Our philosophy, approach and believe is that School Sport is the bedrock of our entire sport development continuum. It sets a foundation from which some of the great sports persons can develop their potential.  Abigail Phakisi (on facebook) has made a plea that we should help improve school sport as it is central to development. Abigail, you will be pleased to note that we take the issues of schools sport very seriously as we concur with you that there cannot be any meaningful development without grass root development, which is mainly provided at the level of schools. 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 5137 participants at the national School Sport Championships in Tshwane across 8 codes last year at the 2013 National School Sport Championships in Mangaung there we a total of 11780 participants across 11 codes. This programme is growing exponentially on an annual basis. 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. It is from this programme that we seek to identify talent, to harness, incubate, nurture and develop it to the elite performance level. 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.

The cooperation between SRSA and the Department of Basic Education (DBE) lays the foundation for the delivery of the integrated school sports programme. One of the biggest challenges facing the school sport programme is teacher involvement and capacity of educators in the delivery of sport. It is imperative for the two Departments to put focused emphasis on empowering educators in code specific coaching, technical officiating, team management and sports administration through the federations and in line with the SA Coaching Framework.

A further challenge in delivering sport in schools is the shortage of suitable sporting equipment and apparel. In some cases when schools do get equipment it is of inferior quality, despite the exorbitant prices being charged by service providers. To address this, the Department is implementing norms and standards regarding the specifications of what can be purchased and distributed regarding sports equipment and consumables. 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. We cannot overemphasise the need to incorporate sport facilities in the plans drawn ahead of the construction of new schools.  If we fail on this, we will forever have a backlog of facilities in our country and thus, reduced participation levels. We dare not fail the children of our country on this critical matter.

We are also going ahead with an initiative to register at least two schools per sporting code per province as a specialist sports school. This work will ultimately see the accreditation and operations of 890 schools across the breath of our country representing the 16 priority codes for school sport. We have already accredited 12 such Sport Focus Schools and are exponentially increasing this number to reach the desired target by 2032. The 2nd phase of this initiative, which is underway, will see schools from KwaZulu-Natal and Northern Cape, included.

Chairperson, as I stand before this August house today, learners have already been identified at the national school sport championships held in 2012 and 2013, for placement in the specialist schools. These learners’ are fully funded to ensure that they receive quality education while developing as athletes in various codes. The final outcome of this initiative is to see such schools having an amended curriculum to fully be a sport specialist schools.

Despite the signed agreement between the Department of Basic Education and the Department of Sport and Recreation South Africa, there are still structural challenges that need to be addressed. Our consistent call to have Physical Education de-linked from Life Orientation subject and made a stand alone subject has been ignored and disregarded. We strongly and firmly believe that physical education is key to ensuring that sport at schools becomes an integral part of the curriculum. We believe that there should be dedicated teachers for physical education. It remains our call that the Department of Basic Education should ensure that there is adequate availability of skilled Physical Education educators in all schools and a dedicated period for Physical Education, outside of Life Orientation, on which learners must be assessed, with particular focus being on schools in rural areas.

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 importance of school sport to the development and growth of sport in our country is reflected in the growth in expenditure over the MTEF period. 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 mobilizing 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. Key to this funding model is the financing mechanisms for school sport. This model emphasises on the leveraging of the available limited public funds and the creation of new revenue streams for sport and recreation with greater emphasis on school sport and sport facilities. The funding model provides for the ring-fencing of the conditional grant for school sport and for provinces to budget for school sport from their own equitable share budgets. The model further calls upon government through the National Treasury to allocate dedicated resources towards funding of school sport. It advocates for the establishment of a 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 funding model also advocates for the alignment of funding with various stakeholders including the alignment of the funding available at the National Lotteries to align with the key priorities of funding sport. The model is anticipated at peak to raise just above R1.5billion per annum by the 5th year of implementation for school sport.

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 e Thekwini Metropolitan Municipality (Urban) in KwaZulu-Natal Province, where we are piloting a franchise system of club development.  The outcomes of the pilot study will determine the extent of a further roll-out of the system. We will also be conducting a comprehensive audit of clubs linked to 16 of the 64 recognised national federations supported.

Community sport

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 groundBREAKERS 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 loveLife YCentres.

These young people will be recruited annually into the one-year internship programme and will be trained on loveLife programmes and SASCOC approved coaching framework programmes in order to increase the capacity of trained young coaches, referees and administrators at a community level. We are doing this in order to contribute towards grooming a new generation of responsible, conscientious and dedicated sports people for South Africa.

This financial year we will continue to assist the national federations to modify their codes to meet the development needs of young children. In this way, young children will get used to playing modified sport in various codes and only be introduced to actual dimensions of the playing field, equipment, rules and conditions of play as they grow older. One of the major initiatives will be on community based tournaments and leagues. These focused tournaments organized over school holidays and weekends will be the supported across the major townships of our country.

Lwazi Zama wrote on Twitter and I quote “ emakhaya minister, local government needs to play a major role in sport, all type of sports, not only soccer.” I can assure You Lwazi that through the Ministerial Outreach programme, and under the guidance of the National House of Traditional Leaders we will support the Rural Sport Improvement Programme by distributing sports equipment and prioritizing the roll-out of sport and recreation facilities in response to identified needs in rural areas.

Facilities

This financial year, we will continue to lobby for facilities and coordinate the provision of sport and recreation facilities by municipalities and other relevant institutions. We will conduct a count of all existing facilities as a first step towards establishing in line with the Sports Plan. 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 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 centralized 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. Our research and experiences indicate that this is the best solution under the current challenges we are facing.

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. The monitoring of the use and maintenance of the 2010 FIFA World Cup stadia is continuing and a status report documenting these findings will be produced and published in the current financial year.

Happy Mbongwa on twitter wrote “ Ngqonqoshe, ungasikhohlwa nath amakhaya”. As part of rural development Happy Mbongwa, 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.

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 work with NGOs

Chairperson a Study undertaken by Ben Sanders in 2010 reflected that NGOs “face a variety of conceptual, technical, logistical and organisational challenges using sport in schools.”  More specifically the study identified the lack of support in particular from government for NGOs working with schools sports. Nevertheless, despite these challenges it is clear NGOs can support schools in South Africa to optimise their physical activity programmes in the backdrop of a stagnating education system and a lack of sporting support from the government. The observations in this study suggest that, particularly in the context of education, a partnership policy model of NGO work is preferred. To this extent 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 recognized as recreation bodies and will enable them to receive funding for their programmes of supporting sport from the Department.

The new national sport leagues

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. Our success in these leagues tells us that we can, if we pull together, increase access to sport and recreation activities even more. 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. The scoping exercises will be concluded in the current medium-term period. We believe these leagues will contribute immensely to the professionalisation of sport in South Africa and contribute towards the transformation process in sport.

Transformation

Engagements we have had with different stakeholders are indicative of how narrowly some of us view transformation. 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 years, our country’s transformation initiatives in sport have proven to be mostly ineffectual over the past 20 years. 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 EPG 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.

Our flagship programmes

Chairperson, we have identified several flagship programmes, which we hope will also increase our footprint in various localities in South Africa. We shall continue to implement the flagship programmes.

Andrew Mlangeni Golf Development Day, which will be held again in October 2014 to expose 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 channeled 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 recognized 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 recognized as results become known. The department uses the platform of celebrating these individuals and teams’ excellence in the spirit of human triumph. 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.

In conclusion

Chairperson, the road to meaningful sport development in this country remains a muddy and distant one. We are continuing to meet resistance to change and development in South Africa, but this is a challenge that we shall overcome. One such critical challenge is funding. You would have noted the ambitious plans we have set ourselves in achieving our development targets in sport. With the limited resources that we are having, some of these targets may just be a pipe dream. We therefore call on all those with potential to finance some of our projects to come forth and contribute to the noble goals that we have set ourselves.

Honourable members, the 20th Commonwealth Games are scheduled to take place from 23 July to 03 August 2014 in Glasgow. The delegation and Team SA will be departing tonight for Glasgow in Scotland. A total contingent of 187 of the country’s finest athletes are part of the team, spread over 17 codes, from aquatics to wrestling.  This includes women, men and athletes with disabilities. We want to wish these athletes good luck in this very important mission and we are saying indeed the target of 43 medals and beyond is achievable.

Honourable members, I also want to thank people at the Department of Sport and Recreation South Africa, led by the DG, Mr. Alec Moemi for their continued effort and support towards meeting the departmental objectives.

Now is the time, I thank you