Hon Chairperson, hon Minister and hon members, the role of sport in any society cannot be overemphasised. Here in our own country we have seen sport being used in the past as a divisive tool, meant to segregate racial groupings from each other. Now we must ensure that, going forward, sport is used as a tool to unite and build our country. It is from this premise that we believe that the roles of sport and recreation are grossly underestimated, given the challenges we face as a country, especially in terms of youth welfare.
I am not convinced that we as a country have come remotely close to harnessing the development and healing potential that sport and recreation can offer our country. It is our belief that the many problems that our youth face can be reduced through a vigorous sports policy initiated in the community, encouraged in schools, and, where appropriate, promoted as a career choice.
The IFP therefore wishes to encourage the hon Minister to go further with the department's school sport programme to achieve the objective of eradicating the high levels of juvenile crime in our country. We all know the saying: "Idle hands are the devil's playground." As the IFP we recognise that sport infrastructural development is paramount to the development of sporting codes. We are saying that as long as government is not paying attention to the need for providing the requisite sport infrastructure in schools and rural communities, with the objective of bringing more disadvantaged youths to sport, transformation will remain a mere pipe dream.
However, the IFP strongly believes that government's role in sport should be limited to a supportive and regulatory one. Government's support should, however, not be limited to sports codes that are already well developed in our previously disadvantaged areas, but has to be extended to those codes that have been considered for decades to be elite sports, such as golf, cricket and rugby.
Classifying golf as a nonpriority code is a perpetuation of the status quo. This sporting code has an industry that generates not millions but billions of rands, in which our previously disadvantaged communities share little or no benefit at all. A sports code with this kind of revenue-generating capacity should be utilised to benefit a greater part of our society. The starting point, Minister, would be to break the perpetuation of the status quo of golf being a sport for whites and a handful of blacks and transform it into a sport that, like soccer and netball, truly develops on a grand scale, to the benefit of all South Africans.
The place to start is in the schools. The benefits of this for our disadvantaged pupils are underestimated, and I can assure you that you will be pleasantly surprised. Sport as a catalyst and direct contributor to job creation and the gross domestic product, GDP, is equally underestimated and subsequently underexploited. It thus stands to reason that greater efforts are needed to equip especially our youth with sports skills and sports administration skills, ultimately equipping them holistically for careers in the broader sports fraternity. This, again, would be given massive impetus if sport or physical training was taught at our schools.
Reviving sports in our schools would help both parents and their children to keep a sensible perspective on the benefits of organised sports. Moreover, hon Chairperson, children who participate in organised sports do better in school, have better interpersonal skills and are more team- oriented. The IFP therefore supports all efforts to reintroduce school sport, because the abovementioned benefits justify this decision, a decision that will not only benefit the children, but our society and our country at large.
The IFP supports this Budget Vote. I thank you. [Applause.]