Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula wants to spend next year putting the government’s ambitious sport plan into practice.
Speaking at the Beyond Sport Summit in Cape Town on Tuesday, he said that the past year had been about “sharpening tools and planning”.
Next year, those involved in sport were going to have to “walk the talk”.
“We have a plan that will assist us to align ourselves, corporate South Africa, the public sector and athletics federations,” Mbalula said.
“It is exciting, but the challenge of implementation is what is going to be with us next year. We will be implementing and implementing the whole year.”
The national sports and recreation draft plan, which was distributed at the sports indaba in November, is expected to be endorsed by the government in March.
Development plans
Sport federations are expected to provide the ministry and the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) with a detailed development plan of how talent in their codes will be identified and nurtured.
Sascoc and the sports and recreation department are to develop a clear monitoring and evaluation mechanism that will hold all federations accountable.
Mbalula has invited federations to inform the ministry about the number of players that will be included in the codes from March 2012 until March 2020 on an incremental basis.
One of the aspects of the plan is the reintroduction of physical education as a subject in the school syllabus.
Mbalula wants the R200-million funding for the school sports programme to come from the National Lotteries Board.
“We have worked hard to sharpen our tools and to bring content into sport,” he said.
“Without a plan you can never achieve anything.” — Sapa