Hayi, bendisalinde ukuba bakubulise mama, nawe uhlale phantsi kakuhle. [Kwahlekwa.] [No, I was waiting for them to greet you, Madam, and please take your seat nicely. [Laughter.]]
Hon members, I just wanted to make one remark. I would like to plead with the provincial Whips that when special delegates come to the House, and I am insisting on this, they should be given an opportunity to say something about their provinces.
We must not lose sight of the fact that we are here to represent our provinces. Therefore, we would like to hear what the provinces are saying about some of the issues taking place there. I was very disappointed that an MEC from the Free State was not on the speakers' list. There is another MEC from the Northern Cape over there, who is also not on the speakers' list. I don't know why.
I would like to ask the provincial Whips to notify the Chief Whip of the NCOP when our special delegates are coming, so that they can be allotted some time to speak to us. We are dying to listen to them and hear what is happening in their provinces. They cannot just talk to the Minister at the Minmec. They should talk to us too. That is very important to us.
Hon premiers, I am sorry that maybe you did not notify them that you were coming. But I am not sure. They were supposed to know that you were coming. They were supposed to get it directly from the Constitution House that monitors everybody who comes to the NCOP, so that you can be allocated the space to talk.
I am sorry that you were not on the list. I don't know why it happened in that manner, but I would have loved to listen to both of you. Having said that, I am going to allow the Minister to come and respond to the debate. [Applause.]
Chairperson, I would like to reiterate what you have just said about the MECs. I have no doubt in my mind that listening to the provinces giving blow-by-blow reports of what is happening where they come from was very edifying for the hon members.
From our side, I can only indicate that we agree with them. We have been there and we saw what happened. We were part of those activities and they were not exaggerating. They were relating the realities of what was happening where they come from. I really congratulate them on the way in which they have done that.
Hon Thusi from KwaZulu-Natal has already warned the hon Kgothule from the Free State that she is about to depose him from the gold medal position; and I can believe that. That is one of the largest and most rustic provinces in this country. It doesn't matter if you go to Mgababa or Mhlabuyalingana or Port Shepstone and Harding in the south, there is always a high level of sporting activity abuzz in those areas.
Hon MEC, I am just warning you. They just don't have the requisite structures, and it was all Sumaya's fault, but now we have relieved them of Sumaya. Thank you very much indeed.
I am going to explain three things that were raised during the debate. The first one, which was raised twice, was the audit queries on the Department of Sport and Recreation. Hon members must desist from the syndrome of "gogga maak bang" [the boogyman] rhetoric. We are not supposed to scare people with our words. The truth of that matter has been explained over and over again.
In 1996, the then National Sports Council, NSC, entered into an agreement with the then SA Rugby Football Union, Sarfu - and cricket - and it was agreed that they would pay dividends for using the logo that was owned by the NSC.
I accept that in our overenthusiasm, perhaps to get things done, we went around trying to collect the revenue. Since last year, I have raised it with the DG and now we have a report from Deloitte and Touche. And I am pleased that the DG agreed with me, that we can't have two NGOs, the NSC and Saru entering into a contractual agreement and it becomes the issue of the department. What do we have to do with the NGOs' agreements? And this is what we are being questioned about.
Now I'm asking: How are we going to report on those revenue streams when we do not even know how many jerseys, socks or whatever were sold? How do you quantify what you don't know - a percentage of what?
I am pleased that the DG, in his overenthusiasm, again defied my instructions to cut this bushy tail off, and managed to get our money back from the service provider who was supposed to deliver it. But it is not as if there are some missing funds or that sort of thing; and this is the "gogga maak bang" [the boogyman] politics that I was talking about.
The second thing I want to explain is the matter of the loveLife money. That money is not from Sport and Recreation. There is a long history of a contractual agreement between the Department of Health, the custodian of the contract; the Treasury, the manager of the revenue flows; and a certain foundation in America, on a 50/50, dollar-for-pound basis, to subsidise certain programmes, specially HIV and Aids-related programmes.
We have nothing to do with that. It is an agreement between the government and America; and a number of departments, including ours, were compelled to contribute a certain percentage from their budget for that agreement to be fulfilled.
We cannot be accused of giving more money to loveLife than to sports programmes. We are simply complying with the contractual agreement. We are debating with the Minister of Health and the new Minister of Finance on how to get rid of that bushy tail, because we think that it is bushy and it is not delivering according to our national strategic plans.
Thirdly, I would like to explain that we agree, and we have said so many times, that there are no sports fields at some schools, and that will remain the case until the donkeys come home. Let's use Lusikisiki as an example, seeing that hon Rantho mentioned something about Lusikisiki.
If you were to go there, you would find that the schools are built on top of the hills. Where are you going to build a sports field there? The same situation applies in Northern KwaZulu-Natal and in a number of areas. Our strategy, therefore, is to build district facilities where the children can go down and participate where the services are available; and we have stated this before. We did not build those schools on top of the mountains - and I do not want to go into that history.
We fully agree with the issue on the role of sport; that of keeping people out of mischief, and so on. As a matter of fact, it is an old thing that was already articulated by Augustus Caesar 20 years before Christ was born. It is not something new. It is a given fact. That is why we have all those different, huge facilities that were were created in Rome and Greece. We are saying we should also make this accessible to our children. As I have already indicated, we have strategies and tactics for how we are going to do it.
Lastly, I would like to talk about the indigenous games. By the way, all sports are indigenous games. Soccer is indigenous to England, kung fu to China, taekwondo to Korea, and so on. The problem here is the dominance of colonial powers over others. That's why we are now pretending that soccer is indigenous to us; it is not.
Soccer only came here in the nineteenth century, just four years after it was introduced to Brazil. It was not indigenous to us, but to the English. We are promoting soccer as our own too, and at our peril - we should be promoting gqaphu [rope skipping], morabaraba and so on.
At first, the Afrikaners came here with their jukskei and we included it. Funny enough, the champion of the jukskei is not an Afrikaner, but an African lady from Mpumalanga. She beat all the boer boys and everybody else, and that's a good thing! The Khoi and the Malay also want their own indigenous games. That is fine, but it cannot be managed now; it is getting bigger and bigger.
The countries south of the Sahara also want to participate in our indigenous games because they discovered that most of them were the same as theirs. North Korea invited us to Pyongyang to participate in their indigenous games because they were impressed by some of our activities. The things hon members have mentioned here are very important, and we are going to move that forward.
I want to end by saying that the role of mass participation is to mobilise the African communities, who were demobilised after 1976, back to sport. We have succeeded in doing that. We cannot just retain them at the mass mobilisation level, but we should move them up to the competitive, organised level. The route there should be through schools, communities and sports academies. That is exactly the route that we are now following and, indeed, we are succeeding. We don't have enough money, but we are absolutely succeeding.
The last report was about Boxing South Africa. The much-awaited convention took place last month. It was a very good and well-attended convention and the debate was very good. One thing that came out of that was the fact that the boxing Act should be changed in order to allow us to do what Chancellor Merkel said we should; we should regulate even what is happening in sport, because sport is not a sacred cow in these matters.
We are looking at the possibility of regulating all the combat sports under one set of regulations. Boxing, karate, judo, taekwondo and kick-boxing fall under one family and we think they should be under one set of regulations.
I want to thank the members for their inputs. I also want to thank our staff. Cabinet has extended the DG's term by another five years precisely because he did better than his predecessors. [Applause.] To assist him, we have stolen Ms Sumayya Khan from KwaZulu-Natal, so that they can be a successful team. We have a strong team and can assure South Africa that things are going to be different henceforth. Ke Nako. [Now is the time.] [Applause.]
The member is insisting that he would like to ask a question.
I am prepared to answer the question.
The CHAIRPERSON OF THE NCOP Thank you very much. I ruled him out at the beginning, but being in my position I have to try and be as democratic as I should.
Hon Minister, my question is very short. Four years ago both the NCOP and NA passed a budget, in particular dealing with the building of stadia and road infrastructure.
The principle then from the Ministry of Sport and was that there was going to be one member, two tickets. Unfortunately, now it seems as if that principle has been revised to one member, one vuvuzela. [Laughter.] Therefore, I would like to know from the Minister if he would be able to revert to the former principle that the Ministry wanted to implement - of two tickets, one member. I thank you. [Laughter.]
Chairperson, that was a nice question. It was not dissimilar from the questions our children ask during Christmas when you are going shopping. There was no such decision. It might be a principle in some heads, but there was certainly no such agreement.
As the department, with respect to all three spheres of government, we would like to see how best we can facilitate accessing the seating arrangements in the stadiums.
We are also encouraging members not just to focus on the opening and closing events, but to identify in their area, which games they would like to watch. In KwaZulu-Natal all tickets are sold out. We don't even have to look in that direction. In Rustenburg tickets are almost sold out. Through the Chief Whips, it will be helpful if members can indicate which games they are more interested in.
Tickets for the opening and the closing games were sold out long ago I am struggling to get former President Mandela and his wife a seat. Of course they will get one, but I just wanted to show you the extent of the problem. We are doing all we can because it is our money. The 2010 World Cup is different from the 2006 World Cup. The 2006 World Cup was funded by the Deutscher Fussball-Bund, the association of football in that country. With this one, the major funder is government. Therefore, we think we have a stake to share with them. Debate concluded.