KEYNOTE ADDRESS OF THE MINISTER OF SPORT AND RECREATION,
HON. FA MBALULA, TO THE OCCASION OF THE LAUNCH OF THE
COMMUNITY (MASS PARTICIPATION) SPORT AND OFFICIAL HANDOVER OF SPORT AND RECREATION EQUIPMENT TO THE COMMUNITY.
MQANDULI
EASTERN CAPE PROVINCE
REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA
Programme Director;
The Premier of the Eastern Cape,
MEC’s present here;
ANC Leadership;
Our Kings present here;
Chiefs and Paramount Chiefs,
Councilors;
Distinguished Guests;
Comrades and patriots;
Fellow South Africans;
Aaa DILIZINTABA; thole lika Nkosi Mathathisa-Aaa JONGISIZWE; nyana
wooBAZINDLOVU; ooHOLOMISA; ooMdunyelwa; ooNGWITYI; ooNGALEKA;
ooMKHASELA; ooPHANGWENI; ooMBELU; ooNGOBE; ooNDALA; ama HEBE;
ooMBASANA.
Silapha namhlanje singuRhulumente wesininzi sizokusabela ikhwelo lakho
owalitsho kwakrweza iindlebe zethu sisebuRhulumenteni. Hayi Nkosi yam,
ikhweli eli lalingekho krakra, ntonje yayilikhwelo elibiza uphuhliso apha kule-lali
yakho.
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Silivile ikhwelo lenu bantu bakuthi singuRhulumente we ANC, sithi masisabele.
Indlebe lityala Dilizintaba, Nkosi yam! Sisivile neSandi sakho.
Kwewu, xakutsho wena kaloku, kuthetha lelali yakho yonke. Nditsho
nabalelukufa, Nkosi yam, izinyanya.
Ladies and Gentlemen, it is a great honour and privilege for me to come here
and be with you today on the occasion of the launch of the community mass
participation programme in Mqanduli
We are also assembled here today to pay homage to the great, great sport
woman, Thabisa Mnyobiso, who was 22 years old at the time when she tragically
died on the 3rd April 2008; few days after succumbing from fatal injuries whilst
defending her women rugby team, Walter Sisulu University Vultures Women’s
Rugby in a rugby match here in the Eastern Cape.
We want to put on record that this Ministry will not tolerate unnecessary deaths
in the field of play. We need to protect all our players from unwanted and
unnecessary injuries in both indoor and outdoor games.
We will also investigate the state of womens’ rugby in South Africa. Whether the
treatment and status, even priviledges enjoyed by men’s rugby is afforded to
womens’ rugby players?
We will do this because we recognize that the injuries and trauma that women
go through is not different from what men go under. Why there must be
different treatment for the same injuries and sport between men and women?
By the same token, we wish to congratulate Zanele Situ from eMthatha who won
the Gold Medal in Javelin in the Paralympic games that took place in Sydney few
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years ago. We pay tribute for her courage to participate as a person living with
disability in a wheelchair to poses such strength and courage. Siyakuhalalisela!
Ladies and gentlemen, we are also gathered here only four days before the
majority of South Africans, led by the African National Congress, will be
celebrating 17 years of the democratic rule in the country of their birth. They
will converge in different villages and townships to mark the 27 April democratic
victory, the Freedom Day.
At the same time, our people in different styles will take the opportunity provided
by the Freedom Day to celebrate together with their movement, the ANC, the
achievements of our democratic government since the 1994 democratic
breakthrough. They will do this, full of confidence, showing to the world that on
the 18th May 2011, they will renew the mandate of the African National
Congress, their party to:
“Build a better life for All”.
This time around, our people and their social movements will say to the ANC:
“Let’s build better communities together”
And we can!
In the same vein, ladies and gentlemen, April is a month where the majority of
our communities, especially the Christian community, are celebrating Easter
holidays with both their families and friends whether in church or in their
neighborhood. They will share food and gifts, including sharing the word of God
and Wisdom.
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However, to some around the country and among us, April do not only
symbolizes Freedom and Easter festivities, but to their conviction it symbolizes
death; it symbolizes bloodshed; it symbolizes the sound of post; and it
symbolizes dust to dust!
Bantu bakuthi, it was in this month that shortly after his arrival to the land of his
birth, after so many years in exile, and few months before the 1994 historic
national day of elections and voting rights for all the people of South Africa that,
OR TAMBO the father of our movement died after a vicious stroke attack.
Also in this month, CHRIS HANI, the son of the soil was brutally killed by two
cowards, Wallus Yanus and Derbie Lewis, just in front of his home; coming from
the shop unarmed, by heavily armed right wing sycophants.
It is on this month, on 6 April at the tender age, that our nation and people were
robbed of its future leader, SOLOMON “KALUSHI” MAHLANGU, who was
thrown to the apartheid gallows and mercilessly hanged by a white man’s killer
machine.
Thus in this month we also celebrate and commemorate the immense sacrifices
that these combatants made for our freedom. “Their blood watered the tree that
carried the fruits of freedom we are all enjoying today”.
In the same token we are assembled here to pay homage and fitting tribute to
these martyrs to say their blood did not spill in vain and that what they fought
for is not a lost war.
We say to these gallant fighters, it is not a lost war because, their movement,
the ANC is today charged with a responsibility to “build more united, non-racial,
integrated communities and sustainable rural communities. The government
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they jealously fought for is “improving services for all our people and seized with
a task to broaden access for all”. The democratic state they fought for is
working with all spheres of government and people to build more effective,
accountable and clean local government. We say to them together with the
developmental state; that we will continue to strengthen community participation
in all levels of our government.
The Peoples’ Movement, however, is convinced that more needs to be done and
that there is more that we need to do.
Thus we are gathered here today to deliver this token of appreciation in the form
of the sport and recreation equipment and hand-over izixhobo zemidlalo novuyo
kubantu balapha eMqanduli.
We are here to donate different sport and recreation equipments including rugby
equipment, soccer equipment, boxing equipment, cricket equipment, netball
equipment, and many more, even recreation equipment for indigenous sport.
This government wants you to participate freely in all sporting codes in this
country without hindrances.
Bantu bakuthi, singuRhulumente sifuna namhlanje niqhubekele phambili
ukubadlala oopuca, iindolotyi, amacetywa, imidlalo yentonga njalo njalo.
Ladies and gentlemen, the obvious absence of sport and recreation facilities in
our schools and our communities can no longer be over-emphasised, seventeen
years after the 1994 elections, we have to push back the frontiers of
infrastructure backlog, especially in rural communities and in townships.
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To deal with this huge challenge, our Department is engaged with the
Departments for Human Settlement and of Co-operative Governance and
Traditional Affairs respectively to redirect the Municipal Infrastructure Grant
(MIG) to Sport and Recreation to ensure seamless roll-out of schools and
community sport and recreation facilities.
Recreation is still an epicenter to cultural identity, community development,
social integration, and is a self-esteem generator. We are lifting and escalating
recreation to higher levels, and raising the focus on this functional area.
Ladies and gentlemen, the historical reality of South Africa is that sport and
recreation have been racialized and politicized, defined through racial,
demographic and class through utilizing apartheid laws of separate development.
Africans, coloureds, Indians and Whites as different national groups played sport
separately and enjoyed different amenities.
The South African political economy and laws perpetuated and created racial,
class and gender imbalances in all levels of participation in sport and recreation
in this country. It was not non-racial in character, and not non-sexist in form
and not classless in content and especially was not a medium of cross-racial,
cross-cultural and cross-geographical contact whatsoever.
It is therefore the responsibility of all of us to change this. We will succeed to
change this by changing the outlook of our schools sport and community. We
must make sport and recreation fashionable in our villages and townships. We
must integrate physical education in all schools in South Africa and we must
make every Wednesday and Saturday a sport day. With that spirit, we will make
life very dull and miserable for those who chose not to participate in sport and
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recreation. We must make healthy life style and exercise a norm and culture
among our young and old.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is true that the narrative of playing sport under the
atrocious stare of the apartheid colonial government mirrored pain, hurt and
immeasurable shattered talents.
However our people and sport loving individuals showed resilience under poor
playing conditions in the name of the love of the game. This was the symbol of
unmitigated love for sport and recreation, the absolute ecstasy of playing even
under systematic humiliation.
This is the similar spirit we should emulate, however, in the context of the nonracial, non-sexist, democratic, prosperous and united sport and recreation
landscape in South Africa today in order to impart a spirit of Olympism and
comradeship amongst our people.
The flame of that spirit of Olympism and Comradeship should be kept alive
through vigorous building of new facilities in areas where our people live and
where the need is. We will only win this battle through a clear partnership with
solid commitment between and amongst all spheres of government and across
government departments, private sector, religious community, traditional leaders
including communities at large.
Dilizintaba, Nkosi yam, kwincwadi yakho ethi “Ikrele Elintlandlo Mbini”; ngolwimi
looNdlebe zikhanyilanga: “A Double Edge Sword”; you correctly remind us that:
“The well-known Nine Wars of Resistance or Xhosa Wars, were all fought
in defence of the land against the pillaging mobs of colonial armies and
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our forces were under the command of the great traditional leaders of this
part of South Africa”.
In the same book you go on and say:
“When the time came for our people to realize and accept that spears and
sticks and shields could be no match to the sophisticated guns and deadly
canons of the colonialists, the people of South Africa, under the leadership
of the educated elite of the African community … gathered together in
Bloemfontein on January 8, 1912 to form the ANC”.
It is therefore befitting to say it is also well-known that when our people resisted
and fought with resilience against apartheid system, this part of South Africa
equally produced and lend the nation great and formidable leaders like Oliver
Reginald Tambo, Walter Sisulu, Nelson Mandela – Aaaa Dalibhunga, Govan
Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba and many more.
Equally, when the people put the ANC in power in 1994 and officially established
their democratic government, they without hesitation put their political faith to
Steve Tshwete, Ngconde Balfour and Rev. Makhenkesi Stofile respectively who
also hails from this part of South Africa to deliver sport and recreation to all our
communities without fear or favour.
Without fear of contradiction, Eastern Cape province epitomizes the cradle of
sport and recreation in South Africa from cricket, rugby, boxing and etc. What
we need to do now is to revive these sporting codes from where they were
grounded before, that is communities and grassroots level and put them in high
performance levels.
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SRSA and SASCOC together with the private sector is to build a “boxing complex”
in Mdantsane, the Mecca of Boxing in South Africa. And at the same time
establish a Rugby Academy in this province in order to encourage young people
to participate in sport activities relying on the unique strengths of their
provinces.
We will do this with the conviction to partner with all stakeholders, especially
private sector, SASCOC, Sport Councils, labour and traditional leaders; and etc
across the country.
Aaa DILIZINTABA; thole lika Nkosi Mathathisa-Aaa JONGISIZWE; nyana
wooBAZINDLOVU; ooHOLOMISA; ooMdunyelwa; ooNGWITYI; ooNGALEKA;
ooMKHASELA; ooPHANGWENI; ooMBELU; ooNGOBE; ooNDALA; ooGEBE;
ooMBASANA.
Maz’eneThole!
Makubechosi; kubehele!
Ukwanda Kwaaliwa Ngumthakathi!
ENKOSI
END
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