Hon Chairperson, hon Minister and Deputy Minister, hon chair of the committee, hon members of this august House, ladies and gentlemen, 1955 was the watershed year in our struggle for liberation as multitudes of ordinary people converged on Kliptown to craft the Freedom Charter, which signified the vision of a democratic society. As we journey into the 17th year of our democracy, we are reminded of one of the tenets of the Charter, and I quote: "The doors of learning and culture shall be opened."
The democratic dispensation has seen monumental strides being taken to make South Africa a sporting nation. We have seen how sport can be a catalyst of social cohesion and a nation-builder par excellence, especially during the 2010 Fifa World Cup. It was during that period that we recognised sport as a primary machine for the realisation of a national democratic revolution and a tool for igniting African nationalism.
Sport is our vehicle to heal the scars of a society torn apart by decades of the apartheid regime. All of us have been witness to the contribution of sport to this nation-building, as South Africans from all races rejoiced, grieved together and gave full support to our sports stars.
I would like to bring this House a quotation by the executive board of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, Unesco, which recognised that sport occupied such a large space in our society that it alone may constitute a powerful gauge of success or failure, in both material and political terms.
Now fully recognised as a social phenomenon, sport is one of the major social and individual expressions of our time. It is a factor in social cohesion, integration and in identification for groups and nations. This is why, as the Eastern Cape province, we have identified our strategic focus areas as follows: funding for sport; institutional development and support; education, training and development; and infrastructure and facility development.
We recognised, as the Minister was always harping on this, that school sport is very important. In fact it is the bedrock for sports development. The foundational level of sport is where we have to break many entrance barriers if we are to succeed, and we need to succeed on a sustained basis. As a province, we need to produce champions. This, the foundational level, is where talent must be identified and nurtured at a very early stage. Having done this, we have to take these young people through development programmes to make professional athletes out of them. It is at these two levels of sport participation that many of our young people from disadvantaged backgrounds stand better chances of breaking out of the poverty mode, provided that government levels the playing field to ensure equality of opportunity and access.
Without neglecting elite sport, it is the foundational and developmental level of sport that we really want to focus on in the Eastern Cape. We believe that if we focus at that level, the benefits are going to be wider.
In order to address funding-related barriers we are going to do the following. We want to establish a sport development fund, because everybody is looking for funds, and our budget is minimal. We want to establish a fund that is going to include the private sector and other corporate institutions, because as government we cannot go it alone.
We also want to set norms and standards for sport funding because, as I have already indicated, everybody is looking for funding for whatever they are doing in the province. We want to lobby for a percentage threshold for sports facilities in the municipal infrastructure grant. This is something that we have been trying to do for some time now. We have been trying to ensure that municipalities build at least one sports facility per financial year. Whenever people are in need of sports facilities, they do not go to municipalities, but they come to the department, because that is our mandate. I think that it is important for us to ensure that, as the Minister said earlier, "mazibuye iinkomo zethu" [bring back our cattle].
When looking at institutional development and support, we focus on how we could make our academies work well. As the Eastern Cape, I think we are at the initial stages of ensuring that we take a decision on how the academies should operate. However, we are cognisant of the fact that such academies should not only be at a provincial level, but at district level as well. This is one of the areas we are going to look at this year.
We want to urge the federation to finalise the issue of demarcation because it is causing problems for us. If the demarcations are not harmonised with the way the government is operating, then it is a problem for us as the department.
We want to set up a provincial non-statutory sport advisory board to bring together government, private sector and sports federations, so that we can look at all our activities with an eye from other people as well, not evaluating ourselves. As the Deputy Minister said, we also want to develop a provincial transformation charter, based on the federations' specific charters, in alignment with the national charter.
When we look at education, training and development, we as the department want to ensure that training is taking place. We would like to see training of the provincial sport councils, district sport councils, up to the local sport council level. We believe that if the administration is not good, then sport will suffer. This is our belief. When we talk about education and training, we mean that we need to have training sessions for all the federations and the councils in our province.
We would like to also upscale existing programmes that we have in our province, such as the Chris Hani Football Tournament, the Peter Mkhatha Rugby Tournament and the Zimkhitha Lesoro Netball Tournament. All these are presently focusing on the previously disadvantaged schools. We want to include previously advantaged schools now, so that we can create the social cohesion that government is talking about, where all our children of every race will play together.
We want to continue with current programmes such as annual athletics competitions and all school winter games. I am saddened to inform this House that there was a bus accident between Lusikisiki and Port St Johns. In conclusion ... [Time expired.] [Applause.]