NEWS & MEDIA LETTERS FROM THE PRESIDENT

"Sport development is part of human development"

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A day before the publication of this edition of ANC TODAY, The Presidents Cup, 2003, started at The Links golf course at Fancourt in George. We take this opportunity to wish all the players well as they compete for the Cup with all the necessary energy, even as they maintain a friendly sporting spirit among themselves.

Of the twenty-four players, three are South African. These are Ernie Els, Retief Goosen and Tim Clark, playing in the International Team with other golfers from Australia, Canada, Fiji, South Korea and Zimbabwe. Quite appropriately, the inimitable Gary Player is the Captain of this team and has the Australian, Ian Baker-Finch, as his Assistant.

The legendary Jack Nicklaus is the Captain of the USA Team and has his fellow-American, Jeff Sluman, as his Assistant. The US team includes such famous golfing names as Tiger Woods, Jim Furyk, Phil Mickelson and Davis Love III.

The majority of the players, among whom are other well-known golfers such as Nick Price and Vijay Singh, are visitors to our country. All of us must welcome them to our country with our customary spontaneous warmth and hospitality. They have done us great honour by agreeing to participate in The Presidents Cup played in our country.

Their presence among us communicates an important message about our full integration within the world community of nations as a home of peace, stability, hope and friendship among the peoples. It also gives the many golfers in our country an opportunity directly to watch the contemporary golfing greats do what they do so well - that is, play excellent golf and demonstrate the true meaning of sportspersonship.

The Presidents Cup is a relatively new tournament, having started in 1994, as we became a democratic country. Of the four tournaments held before the one this week in George, three were in the US and one in Australia. We are therefore the second country to host the Cup outside the United States. The next tournament will return to the US.

We extend our sincere thanks to Tim Finchem from the US, PGA Tour Commissioner, for everything he has done to enable us to host what must surely be the biggest golf event ever held not only in our country, but also in Africa as a whole. We must also express our deep appreciation of the role played by our own compatriot, Johann Rupert, Chairperson of the Sunshine Tour and his colleagues who promote this important Tour, for their support for The Presidents Cup.

In the period since our liberation in 1994, our country has successfully hosted a number of important international sports events. These include the Rugby World Cup, the Cricket World Cup, the International Amateur Athletics Federation tournament, the Africa Cup of Nations and the African Games. We are now bidding to host the 2010 Soccer World Cup with a proven record that our country is perfectly capable of handling big international sporting events.

When the FIFA technical assessment team assessed our capacity to host the 2006 Soccer World Cup, it said that we were as well placed to host the Cup as was the other strongest competitor, Germany. We congratulated Germany when it was awarded the 2006 Cup and continue to uphold this position.

We mention this particular matter only to make the point that even though we did not win the bid to host the 2006 Soccer World Cup, nevertheless an international team of assessors had independently come to the conclusion confirmed by actual experience, that we have the capacity to host the world. The Presidents Cup has now confirmed this.

This was also confirmed by the successful convening of other international gatherings in our country during the last nine-and-a-half years of our liberation. These include the 9th United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the Summit Meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement, the UN Conference against Racism, the World Summit for Sustainable Development, the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, and the 1st Summit Meeting of the African Union.

But I would also like to believe that the international community has honoured us by holding all these sporting and other gatherings in our country not only because we have the technical, logistic and organisational capacity to host them.

I would like to believe that the peoples of the world have voluntarily come to our country because they wanted to communicate the message that they wanted us to succeed in our efforts to rebuild South Africa as a successful non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous democracy. This was a further expression of the solidarity they had shown when they joined us in the struggle to end the apartheid system.

But in addition to this, I am also convinced that the peoples of the world came to our country to deliberate on various matters important to all humanity because they were convinced that we had something to contribute to meet the challenges they were confronting. This would hold true of the issues addressed at all the social, political and economic conferences held in our country.

With regard to all of these, from the 9th UNCTAD to the 1st AU Summit, we can be proud of the fact that as a country, we have indeed done everything we can to contribute whatever little we can to the making and construction of a better world. This relates both to what we have done within our country and in our interaction with the rest of the world.

We are approaching the celebration of our First Decade of Liberation. During the whole short period of our liberation, we have emphasised the message of a better life for all. This was not accidental. This is a central objective that we will continue to pursue during the years ahead.

We have gone further to call for the building of a people's contract to advance this goal, to ensure that all our people act in unity to achieve the reconstruction and development of our country so that it becomes the people-centred society we all want it to be. We have to persist in the struggle to ensure that all our people live decent and dignified lives within a humane and caring society.

Obviously, it is easy to write and utter words such as these. The challenge is to do all the things that are necessary and possible to give them practical meaning. Among other things, this means that we must together defeat poverty and underdevelopment in our country.

It means that we must together ensure that all our people lead lives characterised by human dignity. We have to end the scourges of racism and sexism that continue to afflict millions of our people, whether as perpetrators or victims. We must give practical meaning to the vision of a people-centred society.

What we have done and will do must give us sufficient cause to stand proud among the community of nations as a contributor to the common global struggle to build a better life for the ordinary people of our country and the rest of the world who constitute the majority of humanity. This must also say to the international community that it was not wrong to choose our country as the venue for the various conferences that met here to deliberate on the improvement of the human condition.

The Presidents Cup takes place not long after we did not do as well in recent international sports meetings as we thought we would and should. These include the Cricket World Cup, the Rugby World Cup and the African Games. When we do not perform as well as we think we should have, this affects the national morale in ways that many of us can neither hide nor deny.

Whatever else we may say, we must, as South Africans, admit that, like everybody else in the world, we are passionate about sport. It is also clear that sport serves as an important factor in terms of building social cohesion in our country and reinforcing the process towards the consolidation of a shared patriotism.

It would seem clear that in the period since our liberation we have not paid as much attention to the development of sport in our country as we should have. It is true that because of the many urgent tasks we have faced, to address the legacy of colonialism and apartheid, we did not have time properly to focus on the challenge of the development of sport in our country. This surely has to be one of the tasks to which we must dedicate our Second Decade of Liberation.

Youth empowerment and development constitute an important element of the process of the reconstruction and development of our country. The problems afflicting our youth are a critical part of the legacy of the past that we are working to eradicate. These include youth unemployment and the inadequate preparation of our youth to engage in productive economic activity once they attain a working age. Our government has taken new steps to respond to this problem.

But we must also deal with the reality that youth development consists in more than its direct preparation for productive work. It also involves the development of our youth as well-rounded human beings enjoying the necessary spiritual and physical development. Sport can and must play an important part in this regard.

We have, in the past, spoken about the need for us to do everything we can to encourage the reactivation of traditional sport. Fortunately, the national and provincial governments have responded to this and do hold traditional sports tournaments. But it is also true that we have not yet succeeded to build a national movement for the popularisation of our traditional sports.

We raised this matter in the context of rebuilding the sense of national identity among the black people which three and half centuries of colonialism and apartheid had sought to destroy, to turn these masses into pliant instruments in the hands of the dominant minority. Engagement in traditional sports would be but one intervention with regard to effort to destroy the negative stereotype of black people that white minority domination had sought to cultivate to deny these black people their history, culture, identity and self-worth.

We are raising the issue of sport again, once more in the context of nation building. We have to do a great deal more to ensure the involvement of greater numbers of our youth in sport. This is obviously going to require that we devote the necessary resources to this task.

Among other things, this must mean that we pay greater attention to schools sports. We will also have to expand both the sports infrastructure among our historically disadvantaged communities, as well as the numbers of coaches and trainers.

We must involve the largest numbers of our young people in sport to help their development as human beings. It is also in this way that we will be able to meet the challenge of building truly South African national teams. This is also the only option available to us to field the winning teams that contribute so much to the cultivation of a new patriotism.

The international sportsmen and women who have visited our country during the last nine years have done much directly and indirectly to inspire the love of sport among our youth. The outstanding sportsmen participating in The Presidents Cup will do the same. To demonstrate that we truly value the fact that they came among us, as others involved in other fields of human activity have done, we must respond in a serious and a sustained manner to the important challenge of sports development.