Hon Chairperson, let me first apologise to the hon Dudley and the new member, I think it is the hon Alberts. I couldn't quite get what they were saying. They are very tall for these things and we would have preferred them to sit down. But we will find time to engage with them on a one-to-one basis.
Let me first indulge this House by giving a snippet of the issues surrounding Miss Mokgadi Semenya. The story is now known all over the world. But what is not known yet is the fact that that debacle will remain one of the milestones of South Africa's achievements on the sports front. The golden girl has assisted the sports fraternity and sports world in looking afresh at a whole number of issues, especially the issues of intersex athletes and intersex participants in sports. It also taught us that anatomical, physiological and chromosomal characteristics are not supreme in the determination of who the person is. What defines a person is the decision that the person makes at birth of whether he or she is male or female. That is what is very important here.
Of course, laboratory tests and all those other scientific issues are very important, but only important where equity of competition is concerned, not where the definition of a person is concerned. The whole world has taken this as a very good lesson and the scientists are taking it forward.
We appreciate South Africa's support for this young athlete. We appreciate and respect her choice to shut up if she doesn't want to talk about her disorder and pronounce on those issues only when she is ready to do so.
On the issues raised, I fully agree with the Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Sport and Recreation, who also seems to be supported by the hon Van der Linde, as well as by the hon Mmusi. I will not dwell on this but I will summarise.
We cannot divorce the development of sports from the deracialisation of the economy and society. These are sine qua non; you cannot separate one from the other.
Most of the facilities that we talk about in the urban areas today were not created or built by the state, but by what was regarded in those times as the patriotic private sector. That is the importance of ownership of the means of production. We were once taught about those concepts. They are as valid now as they were when articulated by those philosophers. We are missing the boat unless we relate poverty and economy to the inaccessibility and availability of sports facilities. We are missing the boat. We are going to come here crying year after year. This is what we can talk about when we are called by the chairperson to workshops. We will need more time to discuss these things.
Let me also quickly deal with the issue of Boxing SA. The Deputy Minister already referred to that and we are going to deal with it tomorrow - to deal with it within the law. The DA always reminds us of the rule of law. I don't know why they are chastising us now for being slow because we have to follow the prescripts of the law. We will await the law; it does not exist until it is in the office of the Chief Whip and the Speaker. On the issue regarding the Auditor-General's qualification, this one qualification by the Auditor-General has been used in the hyperbolic hullaballoo about continued audits. There are two issues in this one audit that are being queried. The first one is common sense. How do you calculate a percentage when you do not know the whole? What is a quarter of something? [Laughter.] There is no such thing and there's nobody who can solve that issue because the federations that are supposed to give us royalties are supposed to give us a percentage of their sales - and nobody knows the sum total of those sales.
The last thing related to that we are discussing with the Auditor-General. We can't understand why an agreement made in 1996 between two nongovernmental organisations, NGOs - the South African Rugby Union and the National Sports Council - becomes binding on the state. There is no such thing and we've raised with the Auditor-General that they are asking us to do the impossible. We think it is an illegal query which they are persistently raising with us.
Last but not least, loveLife is a function of the Department of Health and of Treasury, not our department. We can talk about that also.
We want to bow our heads to the late Dennis Brutus and the late Samaranch. We welcome our new Deputy Director-General, DDG, Ms Sumayya Khan from KwaZulu-Natal. I have no doubt in my mind that with all this weaponry and all of you, we will be able to achieve our targets now, in 2010, and in the following years. Wasala walala, wanyotha wasala! [You snooze, you lose!] [Applause.]