SUBMISSION OF THE YOUNG COMMUNIST LEAGUE OF
SOUTH AFRICA TO THE
PORTFOLIO COMMITTEE ON SPORTS AND
RECREATION ON
National
Sports and Recreation Amendment Bill
________________
(as introduced in the National Assembly as a section 75
Bill: Government Gazette no 27787 of 22 July 2005)
_______________
Introduction
The Young
Communist League of South Africa is a youth organisation with membership of
more than 35 000 countrywide, a presence in all the provinces and with more
than 400 branches in rural, township, universities and schools. The YCL is the
youth wing of the SACP with voluntary membership of youth between 14-35. We are
located at 1-5 Leyds Street, COSATU House, Braamfontein, Johannesburg 2000.
Our contacts are:
Tel: 011
339 3621
Fax: 011
339 4244
Email: [email protected]
Cell: 082
567 3557
POSTAL
P. O. Box
10952
JOHANNESBURG
2000
Contact
Person: Castro Ngobese (National Spokesperson)
BACKGROUND
The YCL
convened a consultative conference of youth formations, attended by 10
organisations and thirty individuals, and also engaged in a process of
consultation with various students and youth formation active in sports,
journalists and activists in order to solicit their views and opinions so as to
consolidate our input.
Most of
our members, and young people in general, stand to benefit from the various
amendments suggested in the Amendment Bill, and thus we take the process quite
seriously. We would like to extend our appreciation to the Portfolio Committee
for the invitation for us to make this submission.
Overall thrust and focus of our Submission
Our
overall focus will be on ensuring that new body, SASCOC, is able to allow
access, equity and redress of sports facilities to historically disadvantaged
individuals. We will also seek to ensure that there are clear objectives that
National Federations represented in SASCOC commits to, and that SASCOC becomes
the overall body that supervises the achievement of such. We will also seek to,
throughout our submission, ensure that we locate sports development at a local
level and that SASCOC through provincial, district and member national
federations develop sports at that level.
General Comments on the Bill
We are
aware that SASCOC has been in place for more than two years now, and has
performed various tasks in accordance to the provision of the Act as required
by the Sports Commission. We are further aware that the existing structure has
been as a result of the participation of the existing national federations, and
that this structure is reflective of the will of those structures. We will
however be making various points relating to composition and representativity.
We need to
indicate from the onset that if our intention is to create a toothless
structure that will not have powers, we will be basically coming back to the
current situation where certain national federations are a power unto
themselves without any teeth to ensure that there is development in sports.
SASCOC should not be reduced into some Olympic Organising committee, and
although this is important, it is also important that is is accorded the power
to intervene in the instance of crises and problems in the various federations.
The dispute process is significant in this regard.
We are
also aware that the intention of the Bill is also to insist on the current
national focus and national correlation in terms of SASCOC and the Ministry of
Sports together with the national federations, we want to submit that sports
development should start taking place at the District and Municipality level.
This is in line with the dearth of sports development at this level, and the
need for such focus by these government structures. We see the role of SASCOC
as important in this regard.
We further
want to reiterate that the question of accountability of SASCOC towards its
constituent national federations, the National Ministry of Sports and the
various stakeholders in Sports. This factor around accountability is not very
clear in the Bill. Anf thus we see the need for it to be registered.
The last
general point relates to the usage of the words may, will, shall, policy
guidelines and mandatory tasks of either SASCOC or those of the Ministry of
Sports in relation to SASCOC. There are instances where we firmly believe that
these words needs to be utilized in one or another different form, however,
either in the Act or in the Amendment Bill, the proposal is that the either the
Ministry may instead of will, or that policy guidelines will be developed
instead of mandatory regulations will be developed. We may reflect on this
points when we speak to specific points.
Sports as a part of the Developmental Role Government should
be playing.
We want to
indicate that we see Sports and Recreation as a part of the developmental role
that the state should be playing. Although Sports does not or cannot be
directly be equated to Housing, Health or Hunger, we believe that it still
remains government responsibility to set the developmental goals in terms of
performance, access, equity, mobilisation of the nation and involvement.
There has
always been a limitation around the lack of government interventions in
instances where national federations have not met the expectations of the
national developmental goals. There has been one crises after another in Rugby
(mainly relating to administration), Soccer (mainly relating to power struggles
on who should lead and further impacting on the performance) Cricket (relating
mainly to equity, access and the mobilisation of the entire nation behind the
sport). International Standards have always been used to ensure that the
National Ministry does not intervene to ensure that South African Sports
development is in line with the current dispensation.
Due to the
Apartheid past, the racial division and separate development, sports
reservation and racial exclusion through sports are still visible, for
instance, in some of the high performance sports that SASCOC will be
responsible for. The Ministry should through this Bill ensure that powers are
given to SASCOC to ensure that it intervenes on behalf of the Ministry to
ensure that national federations meet the national goals set by the government
and the people.
Collectively,
SASCOC, the Ministry, national federations and various Sports stakeholder
including performers should collectively determine the goals or targets in each
of the sporting codes. For instance, the Ministry, without contravening with
the FIFA regulations, may agree with all the other structures that a long terms
(say 8 year goal) of the South African Football Federation) should be the
winning of the 2014 World Cup, and that all SAFA should do is work towards the
attainment of such a goal. Some of the goals should include the attainment of
various racial quotas to ensure inclusivity in administration, performance and
technical skills. We cannot have a situation wherein 12 years after our
democracy, we have still not attained acceptable levels of equitable inclusion
of black youth in Rugby, Cricket and other sports historically reserved for whites.
The
setting of a National Sports Development Agenda/Goals will allow the Ministry
and SASCOC to be able to intervene in the form of temporary administration, or
the insistence that new leadership should be ended. This further in our view
will bring to an end the monopolization of sports to some bosses or managers
and further ensure the total mobilisation of the people behind specific sports.
We cannot afford to have a lame duck Ministry of Sports and SASCOC when it
comes to Sports Development.
The role
of the Government in sports affairs to be raised together with South African
Sport Unions and clear picture on allocation of resources must be provided
for.
EBSURING THAT SASCOC BECOMES A REPRESENTATIVE STRUCTURE
We are of
the view that poor performance by the players occur as a result of poor
administration in some of the national federations. In soccer for instance,
there has been reports of soccer players performing poorly due to management
not taking into consideration the needs and demands of players. We are not
justifying some of the unreasonable demands that may have been made, but we are
of the view that there is a need for better ways to anticipate players needs
and demands. This includes having some form of representations not only in national
federations, but also in SASCOC of players unions from the various sports.
There is a
further need of SASCOC taking up some of the responsibilities of improving the
‘employment relationship some of the federations have with the players. There
are serious inequalities in terms of payments, exploitation of players and
abuse of lack of understanding of basic relationships between players and
management.
We note
that there are various players unions in Rugby, Soccer and other sporting
codes. The relationship between these unions and SASCOC may be regulated in the
form of guideline or policies, mandated by the Act.
We further
need to emphasis the need for gender representation in structures such as
SASCOC, with an insistence of equitable gender representation.
We are of
the view that avoiding the whole issue of representation will be detrimental to
sports development. In order to ensure that this happens, we need to ensure
that various sports are as representative as they may claim, and that a certain
number of members and participants should be determined in terms of the
specific sports to qualify for a structure to be deemed as a national
federation and thus having a say in SASCOC.
TECHNICAL TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT OF ADMINISTRATORS,
COACHES AND TECHINICAL SUPPORT
We note
that although there is some level of training in terms of the administrators,
technical support and coaching, we need to ensure that there is massive
availability of trained people to prepare youngsters for the sport of their
choice. In most of the rural areas, schools in particular, most of the sports
trainers are not necessarily well trained in sports science, and the sports
they are preparing the learners for. Some of these trainers are using
traditional, suicidal and scientifically disproved methods of training, and
thus, youngsters careers in sports are killed at that stage. There is a need to
ensure that if South Africa is to perform well in high performance sports,
youngsters are prepared well from an early age. Every school must have a
trained technical person in each of the high performance sports. SASCOC and
national federations have an important role to play.
We further
note that in some of the sports, the period of training for coaches is very
short and we not certain about the skill they have obtained, we feel that this
is a quick fix arrangement, and believe that SASCOC should play interface with
the relevant bodies mandated to accredit coaches, administrators and technical
staff. We should also note that there is mushrooming of sports training
institutions which reap vulnerable South Africans of their resources.
The whole
issue of importing skills is particularly relevant as it comes to high
performance sports. How many PSL teams are for instance using foreign coaches when
there are former professional players who could have been trained and performed
well. We believe that skills development in general should also consider the
available skills in Sports. We must emphasize on developing local skills in
coaching.
Although
neglected in the responsibilities of SASCOC, we think the training of players
in basic life skills is very important. WE have had players destroying their
future, sacrificing their education and basically joining the unemployment que
after completing their professional careers.
THE ISSUE OF NATIONAL COLOURS AND SYMBOLS
We need to
indicate our appreciation of the role that Sports plays in the process of
reconciliation. Immediately after a violent and confrontational, divided past,
Rugby, Cricket and Soccer played an important role not only in South Africa but
also in various other countries. However, we need to note that we cannot
continue to have more than one national symbol in terms of Sports. Currently,
we have different colours and symbols in the form of the Protea and the
Springbok. We believe that the time has come now that SASCOC, the National
Ministry of Sports and national federations scraps the continued use of the
Springbok and retain the Protea as the only symbol in sports. We believe that we
have attained national reconciliation, and thus, need to move towards national
unity in terms of the symbols in sports.
We further
need to emphasize that the national colours in sports should be consistent in
line with national colours instead of the national colours of the various
federations. SASCOC should deal with this immediately.
CAPACITY OF SASCOC AND THE EXPECTATIONS OF THE BILL
We are of
the view that we need to be careful on what we expect SASCOC to perform and
what it may be able to achieve. For instance, the whole issue of the
construction of facilities such as stadiums is significant, however, should
that not be the responsibility of central government and local municipalities.
Our view
is that SASCOC should mainly focus on the following:
n
Ensuring access at a community level, including in
centres of learning and sports community centres;
n
Management of and disbursing of resources to national
federation;
n
Promotion of traditional sports;
n
Ensuring that there are common developmental goals
determined; and
n
The co-ordination of national federations, provincial
work, district work and community sports.
It should
therefore not be given a mandate or task it may not be able to attain, or a
responsibility which should be exercised by some other layer of government.
There also needs to be a clear performance assessment of the incumbent of
SASCOC Executive structures.