Health for all is one of the central goals of South Africa’s reconstruction and development, says South African President Thabo Mbeki, who on Friday indicated that South Africa is putting too few resources into the development of sport, which is currently in the doldrums on the international stage.
In his regular internet column, ANC Today, the president said sport played an important role in the development of South Africa’s youth in particular.
“It provides an appropriate outlet for the energies of young people, helping to keep them away from unhealthy and anti-social activities, such as gangsterism, alcohol and drug abuse.
“Sport plays yet another important role in terms of uniting our people, helping us to accelerate the process of building a non-racial society and improving the social cohesion that our country needs.
“All of us have seen how much the victories of our national teams inspire pride and joy among all of us, teaching all of us that we are one nation. I believe that it is also true that our successes in international competitions helps to strengthen the level of confidence in ourselves as a nation, inspiring all of us to work even harder to achieve the goal of creating a better life for all our people.”
The statistics relating to the South African national soccer and cricket sides — poor recent performances on the world Stage — communicates a “very clear message that there is something radically wrong with our sports”, said the president.
Quoting his Deputy Minister of Sport and Recreation Gert Oosthuizen, Mbeki suggested that what was needed was infrastructure organisation, programmes, facilities, equipment and kit; human resources in sufficient quantity and of good quality and with an appropriate disposition; and finance that underpinned both infrastructure and human resources.
Mbeki noted that Oosthuizen emphasised that the sports department had one of the smallest budgets of government departments.
He quoted Oosthuizen as saying: “We are committing some R10 per person per year to the participation of our people in sport and recreation activities presently. Ten rand can never make a substantial contribution to participation rates in sport and recreation.”
The president said that perhaps the most important lesson South Africa should draw from the fact that Bafana Bafana — the soccer side — “will not step into any of the magnificent German stadiums during the 2006 Fifa Soccer World Cup tournament is that we should, at last, stop trivialising sport, very wrongly treating it as frivolous and unimportant. Lilliputian efforts cannot produce Olympians!” — I-Net Bridge