Chairperson, allow me to add my voice to those of the hon members who wished the hon Lee well in his retirement. I want to say that we will really miss you, Donald.
I want to convince him, hon Minister, to reconsider retiring. He must stay here, and I will tell you why. After listening to his colleague hon Rabotapi, I am convinced that he has lost the plot.
I have a calculator which I will give to him for free. It is not a fake from China; it is the real McCoy, a Casio. Do your recalculations, and then talk sense. You know, hon member, whatever you say in this august House is recorded by Hansard for generations to come.
People out there take out their calculators. They do the calculations, and you look like a fool. I don't object if you want to be a fool, but I object if the hon member projects all of us as being fools. [Applause.] So, please, hon Lee, don't retire. Stay and guide your colleague. [Laughter.]
To the hon MacKenzie, I agree with you.
Bokkie Week is uit soos apartheid. Dis 'n klompie bedompige mense wat hulle met Bokkie Week ophou, en van ons kant af sal ons moet optree. Wat ons moet doen, sal ons doen om daardie Bokkie Week op die regte pad te kry of uit die pad te kry, maar dit is so uit soos apartheid, vir ewig. Klaar. (Translation of Afrikaans paragraph follows.)
[Like apartheid, Bokkie Week is something of the past. It is a bunch of fusty people who are keeping themselves occupied with Bokkie Week, and from our side we will have to intervene. We will do what we have to do in order to either steer Bokkie Week in the right direction or get rid of it, because it is something of the past, gone forever, like apartheid. Finished.]
Chairperson, as the Department of Sport and Recreation we can report that we have aligned all our strategic documents 100% with the National Development Plan, NDP. Every reference to sport in the National Development Plan is covered both in the National Sport and Recreation Plan and our operational plan for the 2013-14 financial year.
We have done this because we fully support the National Development Plan in that it recognises that sport plays an important role in promoting health, wellness, nation-building and social cohesion. As indicated by our Minister, we have identified projects in support of the priorities of the National Development Plan.
I want to elaborate on one of the areas, that of international relations. The NDP acknowledges that in the area of sport there is a need to showcase South Africa and promote its presence and leadership with regard to strategic issues as part of its soft power in international relations.
As a middle-income African country, we need to have a comfortable fit between critical domestic socioeconomic demands on the one hand, and on the other, regional and continental obligations and international co-operation through Brics and the world.
Our foreign policies, hon members, cannot be disassociated from these demands and obligations. These policies should be shaped by engaging with all relevant players, which ultimately constitutes the relations between countries.
We are therefore taking a direction which dictates that international funding of our programmes should be in line with our priorities, as stipulated in the National Sport and Recreation Plan. To this end, we will continue to use international sporting events and exhibitions to showcase and market South Africa as a sports tourism destination of choice.
In fact, the sport scene this year opened with the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations. We wish once again to thank fellow South Africans and Africans, in general, for their support of this great tournament. Despite the limited time and resources, the collective support of our Cabinet and the sport and recreation sector contributed to its success. In fact, the success of the 2013 Afcon solidified our position as a country of choice for hosting major events.
Following the Afcon success, we look forward to hosting the 2014 African Nations Championships. I have no doubt that our people will once again show their pride in being African during this tournament.
During the 2012-13 financial year, we continued to participate in international organisations such as the Commonwealth Sports Ministers Meeting. At a continental level, we have played a leading role in the various forums of the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa.
Hon members, during the 2012 London Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games, we hosted the Ekhaya Hospitality Centre, which created a home from home for our athletes and all South Africans who were in London.
The success of our Olympic and Paralympic teams is well documented, and we wish to thank everybody who participated for being good ambassadors of this great country, South Africa. We are very proud of all the athletes who won medals. There is no doubt that with more support they will perform even better come Rio de Janeiro 2016.
We will also host the World Anti-Doping Agency conference in Johannesburg in November this year. The spin-offs from this conference need to be capitalised upon and integrated into sustainable programmes.
We will also host the 19th World Transplant Games scheduled for July and August in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal. The 2nd World Gym for Life Challenge international gymnastics extravaganza will be held from 10 to 14 July here in Cape Town. Worldwide there is an increasing acknowledgement that sport and recreation has the potential to promote social cohesion, to prevent conflict and to enhance peace within and among nations. In this regard, the United Nations, UN, General Assembly has adopted a series of resolutions on Sport for Development and Peace.
In South Africa we have also experienced how national sports teams can be an inspiring force for peaceful change. It is not only our national teams that have this potential - the use of sport to promote peace is extremely effective in programmes at the community level, since they directly involve those affected by conflict and social tension.
South Africa is playing a leading role in the work of the United Nations' Sport for Development and Peace International Working Group. In fact, at its meeting in Geneva last year, South Africa was nominated as the chair of the Thematic Working Group on sport and peace. [Applause.]
At the third session of the Sport for Development and Peace International Working Group last year, South Africa also gave a presentation on the role of sport in peace-building and development since democracy.
Minister, we can proudly report that it was well received by the delegates. In fact, all the inputs from South Africa on the Action Plan on Sport for Development and Peace were approved by the member states. South Africa was also elected as chair of the executive committee of the Sport for Development and Peace International Working Group, with Britain as our vice chair.
The developments within the United Nations regarding sport for peace and development confirm that our department is on the right track by including specific outputs related to the sport for development and peace initiatives in our updated White Paper, the National Sport and Recreation Plan and the 2012 to 2016 strategic plan of our department.
In 2012 we declared Netball South Africa as the federation of the financial year. This meant that we have refocused some of our resources on this federation with a view to assisting them in achieving most of the developmental initiatives that they have been shelving because of a lack of resources.
It was through this elevated support and the need to broaden the pool of netball players in our country that we hosted, in August 2012, the Netball Diamond Challenge in co-operation with our federation. The tournament included South Africa, Botswana, Zambia and Malawi. Yes, South Africa emerged as the champion of this tournament.
Despite the financial and other challenges that we are experiencing with launching a professional netball league - which will ensure that Netball South Africa will have approximately 220 full-time professional and elite players to select onto the national team - we are committed to this initiative, because it is the right thing to do. [Applause.]
In 2013 the focus federation is Tennis SA. Among the benefits to this federation is our financial support for the Soweto Tennis Open, which has proven to enhance the successful development of tennis in our country.
Hon members, the ever-expanding complexities of doping in sport - such as combating organised crime; the classification of health foods; and controlling the manufacturing, importation and distribution of doping products - requires both new capacities in and commitment from both governments and national antidoping agencies.
The department will continue to financially support the South African Institute for Drug-Free Sport, Saids, and the laboratory in Bloemfontein with a view to ensuring that South Africa complies with the code of the World Anti-Doping Agency, Wada. Particular attention is being given to ensuring that Saids delivers on its international obligations and to co- ordinating its responsibility to the Central Drug Authority. At a ministerial level, we have been appointed onto the Unesco anti-doping subdivision and the Wada executive committee, respectively. Our department is also represented on the Central Drug Authority and on the Intergovernmental Committee on Substance Abuse. So, hon Rabotapi, that is why we travel, my brother. That is why we move around, the Minister and I.
Hon members, boxing remains a sport in progress. With the new direction that is provided by the sport plan, we deem it important to call key boxing stakeholders to a meeting to thrash out all challenges that we are still experiencing in boxing. To do this, we will host a boxing indaba later this year to be attended by people who can add value to the success of the sport of boxing.
The Sport for Social Change and Development programme will be repackaged and expanded. Sport will be used as a vehicle to catalyse change in sport in the environment, HIV/Aids programmes and the Sport against Crime campaign, just to mention a few. These programmes will be grouped under the banner of Sport for Social Change and Development.
Our department, as the hon Tseke alluded to, will continue to fund loveLife, but the funding will be aligned with the objectives of the National Sport and Recreation Plan. The loveLife message, which is focused on building young sport leaders for a HIV-free future, will be spread by using sport and recreation as the medium.
This will form the initial semblance of a genuine sport-for-change initiative. Specific youth leadership and healthy lifestyle programmes targeting young participants will be delivered at school sports events nationally, junior sport federation championships, community recreation activities and our youth camps.
One of the projects we will be engaging in again this year is the National Youth Camp. The department will assist the provincial departments to ensure that the delivery of this project is a great success. It will be held in all nine provinces and is scheduled for September this year.
Its purpose is to teach young people leadership and life skills, national pride and practical lessons on social cohesion in a rural, outdoor environment through adventure and other fun activities. We envisage that approximately 3 000 youths, representing diverse cultural groupings, will attend the National Youth Camp. Perhaps, Minister, we should consider also inviting Bokkie Week.
The National Sport Volunteer Corps programme was successfully launched in 2012. At the end of the 2012-13 financial year, we had 864 sports legends registered on the National Sport Volunteer Corps programme.
The focus of the volunteer programme is to register and to keep a record of sporting greats in the form of sports legends and former players, athletes, coaches and administrators. This is done to utilise their experience in developing sport in our schools.
Hon members, we all know that most public and rural schools do not have specialist coaches to train their teams and to run their leagues. This initiative will assist to overcome this particular shortcoming.
A further novel idea to attract the youth to participate in sport will be the introduction of our sports bus. The sports bus will have a retro-bus look, working on a similar basis to the old-fashioned ice-cream van that attracts people with an easily identifiable tune. I am trying to influence the director-general to use the Waka Waka song, but he doesn't listen to me, by the way!
We will take delivery of 12 sports buses in 2013. These buses will transport sport stars who conduct training at our schools and around the country. We trust that it will encourage the youth to come out and see what is happening in the community and be absolutely keen to participate.
In conclusion, I wish to emphasise that an increased and focused commitment at all levels of sport would be advantageous, since this could reap great health, economic, social and international benefits.
In short, expenditure on sport and recreation must be considered as a worthwhile and, indeed, a necessary investment in the future of our country and its people.
Comrade Minister, I would like to thank you, the director-general and all the senior officials in our department for working together very well as a team. We do what our ruling party says: Working together, we do more, eradicating the barriers of poverty and increasing the quality of life of all our people. Amandla! [Applause.]