A LETTER TO THE NEWLY APPOINTED MINISTER OF SPORT, ARTS AND CULTURE

Image credit: Anton Geyser/South African Sports Images

I write this letter to the newly appointed Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture out of my humble belief to make suggestions rather than to criticise. I am not dwelling on whether the Honourable Minister is qualified for the job or not as it is immaterial because there is supposed to be a team of capable individuals around him. Sport in South Africa cannot revolve around the ideas of just one person – this is something that we need to acknowledge and ensure that those who are professionals in the field get to have their input recognised through their involvement.

This piece of writing is a positive reflection of what ought to happen under the leadership of the 7th Administration within the sporting arena. If our approach is a negative one, where we simply criticise, we would fall into the trap called “self-fulling prophecy.” The concept can be defined as “the more doom we visualise, the more likely things are going to get worse.” Self-fulling prophecies are a known and proven psychological phenomenon. The phenomenon is a process through which an originally false expectation leads to its own confirmation such as when an individual’s expectations about another person or entity eventually result in the other person or entity acting in ways that confirm the expectations. Our time on this beautiful, and dynamic earth is too short for prophesising doom. Thirty years have come and gone, and it has been a disaster in many ways.

From my own experience in sport, a career spanning forty years, I have seen how the black child in particular has not been prepared properly for the highly competitive world of sport due to lack of critical resources needed for them to participate in competitive sporting programmes such as those offered at universities. For now, I do not want to focus on why I pick university sporting programmes being superior to others in the community, but the principles of developing effective sporting programmes are the same for universities, schools and communities. I will focus on why university sporting programmes work in another article.

One fact to acknowledge is that participation in sport is expensive, and therefore lead most sport programmes towards being exclusivist. If parents are capable of supporting their child participate in sport and to get competitive coaching, the likelihood of that child doing well is a given. My experience over the years has taught me that the reason white children excel in sporting disciplines such as swimming, cycling, gymnastics, hockey, and so on, is because they are backed by parents’ ability to pay the cost of participation in the sport under excellent coaches who demand being paid well in order to take a child from being a beginner to becoming an elite athlete. The fact that the black child struggles to pursue sport into elite levels effectively is that their parents simply do not have the resources to support their children’s sporting aspirations. With the growth of the black middle class, this is changing for the better. However, there are still many parents who wake up very early in the morning to take a bus to work, and returning very late in the evening long after their children has come home from school – schools that do not have good sport programmes if they have any.

So, Minister, do not feel like you are a miracle worker! You cannot do this job alone. However, you can do miracles if you were to utilise the expertise lying dormant within the South African sporting fraternity. I will refer you to a little booklet published by your predecessor entitled 100 Most Influential Persons in Sport in South Africa. In that booklet, one hundred people where identified as the most influential in sport due to what they have contributed in their various capacities. It is more than ten years since the booklet was published and I can inform you that most of those 100 persons have never been engaged as consultants (nothing is for mahala) in building a robust sport programme in the country.

Honourable Minister, sport in successful countries relies on ordinary people, the so-called volunteer, who are well supported through systems and processes to deliver effective programmes for the local communities, districts, regions, provinces, and the whole nation. Yes, there is a need for systems and processes that lead to effective sporting organisations.

Let me share an example of the impact of systems, processes and proper planning. At the end of the 1994 Atlanta Olympics, South Africa returned with more Gold medals than the Great Britain. South Africa won 3 Gold medals ahead of Great Britain’s 1 Gold medal (although the Great Britain had a bigger total number of medals won). Now, come 2012 at the London Olympics, Great Britain won 29 Gold medals compared to South Africa’s 4 Gold medals. In total, Great Britain won 65 medals, and South Africa, won only 6.

The question to ask is what happened between the Atlanta Olympics of 1996 and the London Olympics of 2012 such that the Great Britain became a powerful sporting nation. The answer is a simple one to identify – it is what is called the Game Plan that opened up opportunities for what is called now well known as sport development in conjunction with a serious pursuit of elitism/high-performance in sport, spearheaded by sport clubs, school sport and physical education programmes, university sport programmes, and entities such as Sport England and UKSport.

Unfortunately, South Africa does not have a Master Plan for Sport right now. There was a National Sport and Recreation Plan which I understand came to an end in December 2022. A brief excursion onto the website of the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture did not produce any reference to a new Sport and Recreation Plan for South Africa. Neither does it seem that the Department of Basic Education has a plan for school sport and Physical Education. This lack of vision is a serious indictment on all those involved in sport in the country for ignoring the obvious. Honourable Minister, this must be fixed as a matter of urgency. South African needs an integrated Sport Plan for both development and high-performance. There is no time to waste because it takes time to develop and nurture talent to represent South Africa at elite championships on the world stage.

The challenges facing South Africa, are in my opinion, a result of a lack of good leadership that can provide systems and processes to develop and inform best practices. The challenges are self-inflicted. This is where you as the new Minister, together with your national Sport department, provincial sport departments, and local municipalities sport departments, need to demonstrate effective leadership.

As I have mentioned earlier, you are not alone. There are individuals and organisations such as universities that can share effective ideas of what needs to happen to develop a sustainable and effective South African sport programme. You also have officials in your department who should be able to provide a vision and guidance for sport and recreation in South Africa to rise. Please, allow them to guide you on what needs to be done. If they do not have the answers sought, there are many other capable South Africans out there who can step in to share their experience and expertise on how to make South Africa a true “playing and winning nation” in sport.

My recommendations, in no specific order of importance are as follows:

1.    TVET colleges appear not to have the capacity of providing their students with good sporting programmes. With the majority of black children studying in TVET colleges, excluding them from sport and recreation cannot bode well for South Africa as a nation. TVET colleges need to get organised to provide effective sporting programmes for the learners/students.

2.    Individuals who are sport professionals should be allowed to do their jobs effectively. They are professionals in sport, and they know what needs to be done and done urgently. They need to be supported in various ways through the provision of good basic sport facilities, financial support, and the development and implementations of systems and processes that promote sport participation, performance and excellence. There are a host of key priorities that lead to effective sporting organisations that these experts understand and have put into practice over many years. Please, use them.

3.    Drive the process to develop a 10-year strategy of Sport and Recreation for South Africa. The Game Plan – we need one if we are going to utilise resources effectively and efficiently, and getting children, youth, adults and the elderly to play. It takes years to develop and nurture an athlete/player from beginner to high-performance, and eventually life-long participation in sport. Please, we need to start now.

4.    Engage and hold municipalities accountable in providing basic and well-maintained sport facilities which already exist. This is key to meaningful and mass participation especially if supplemented by knowledgeable sport administrators and coaches.

5.    Engage municipalities in opening job opportunities for young people with Sport Management diplomas and degrees. There should be a lot of jobs for young people at local government level because we all live at the municipal level. It should not be so difficult to ensure jobs for the many young people I know have sport related qualifications at local government level. It is at local government level that the masses of South Africa live and get exposed to a positive sport experience. It is at local level that Proteas, Springboks, Banyana Banyana, Bafana Bafana and other national programmes are developed. Please, remember the parable about the mustard seed, the smallest of all the seeds, which grows into the largest of garden plans. It takes time, hard work, and vision to produce a nation that plays sport for fun, recreation, or high-performance.

6.    The Minister of Basic Education and Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture do not need to have a Memorandum of Understanding on School Sport. Basic Education must budget to have Physical Education and School Sport as part of schooling so that they can appoint the right personnel to engage all learners in a sustainable sport programme from Grade 1 and all the way to matric. This is the only way to nurture talent that will eventually transform sport in a meaningful way. There is school sport and community sport. These are not counter to one another but simply occur in different environment. The fact is schools have a more structured system and environment, whereas community sport is more open to the majority of the community. They complement each other but each needs to develop their influence according to their core mandates. Each must be supported to develop fully and to run for the duration of the academic years for schools, and throughout the year for local municipalities. Key to having successful programmes for both schools and community clubs is the provision of basic and well-maintained facilities and making sport administrators and coaches available at each facility. There are ways to pay these individuals – ways that we have yet to explore.

7.    The development of Women and Sport Policy and Regulations - South Africa is lagging behind other countries with regard to Women and Sport. This does not bode well for our women sport programmes.

8.    Those of us in sport must stop unnecessary contestation for control. There are those who can serve well, and there are those who simply do not have it in them. Among us there are those who do excellent work behind the scenes. They do not want to serve on sport governing bodies – they simply want to share their professionalism and expertise in sport where they are, through that which they have trained for many years at universities and have learned through experience. These individuals are not hidden out of sight – they are persistently producing great results for the country. Let us embrace them and not regard them as privileged, entitled or enemies.

Let me pause here for now by wishing you a successful tenure with the hope that you know that as Minister you do not have all the answers. Your officials have expertise and also do not have all the answers. Answers lie when all South Africans investing their time and resources in sport work together from all levels of society.

R.I. Mulaudzi, Ph.D.

15 July 2024