When Canadian teacher James Naismith sat down to invent a game in the 1860s, he had no idea of the impact it would have, nearly 150 years later, on a fellow educator at the bottom end of Africa.
Naismith’s game, of course, was basketball, created to to instil order and discipline — and engender enthusiasm — among a group of ”troublesome” boys at a school in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Enthusiasm is something Mimi Mthethwa, newly elected president of Netball South Africa (NSA), has in plentiful supply. The Empangeni-based deputy chief education specialist (that’s school inspector, to those who completed their formal education in the past century) is still working on getting things in order.
Looking after the needs of 33 schools in the Empangeni district, northern KwaZulu-Natal, is a challenge in itself. Now Mthethwa is also head of South Africa’s biggest women’s sport.
Netball became a separate sport from basketball in the 1890s when the English deemed it improper for women to sweat in public and insisted on new rules to slow the game, including taking only one step with the ball and defined areas into which only certain players may move.
Although basketball is starting to make inroads in South Africa, it is netball that makes our women jump. NSA has a membership of 15 000 — and that’s before you start counting players from schools and tertiary institutions. Naismith’s criteria — a no-contact sport requiring the minimum of equipment — makes it ideal for schools and clubs without the money for lavish facilities.
But the current NSA set-up takes this Spartan ideal to extremes. The organisation has only two full-time employees, based at its head office in Pretoria. This could just about suffice under previous NSA president Ntambi Ravele, now head of marketing and communications at the Premier Soccer League, as she was at least in the same province.
For Mthethwa, whose Department of Education job necessitates almost constant travel, this arrangement is impractical and she sees getting a office nearby for NSA use as one of her first administrative tasks.
”I hope we can get some lottery funding [to set up an NSA office], or I will see if I can get some space at the department of sport’s offices in Empangeni or Richard’s Bay,” she said.
Combining several jobs doesn’t faze her — it’s something she’s been doing since she was both captain and coach of the University of Zululand team while she was studying to be a teacher in the mid-1980s.
The former goal attack and goal defence (her multi-skilling extended to the court) moved into administration when she joined the Zululand Netball Association as a PRO. Mthethwa was president of KwaZulu-Natal Netball and director of selections at NSA until late last month, when she was elected to the sport’s top position.
”My main task as director of selections was to oversee transformation. Netball is now probably the most integrated sport in the country,” she said.
The start of her term of office coincides with one of the most exciting developments in the sport in recent years.
England arrive for a three-Test series on November 18 as both countries prepare for next year’s Commonwealth Games in Australia. Although South Africa is ranked fifth in the world, national teams have been reluctant to visit our shores because of the lack of courts with sprung wooden floors. Modern players fear injuring themselves on concrete.
The United States, however, has donated two courts used during the World Under-21 Championships held in Florida in July.
”One court will be erected at the Velodrome in Cape Town for the second Test on November 26 and remain there permanently. The other court will be used for the first Test in Gauteng on November 23 and then moved to Port Elizabeth for the final one on November 30,” Mthethwa said. ”Until we get more such courts, we will probably have to keep moving that one.”
It’s a situation Mthethwa herself can relate to.