Sports minister: Just a stop-gap post for politicians

When you’re lying in the dirt, trailing your opponents at the bottom of the ninth, you turn to your best player. If you rely on a rookie under pressure, you’d better enjoy a diet consisting of dust.

Over the years, the government has treated the sports minister’s post as a stop-gap for politicians, and it seems the last question they ask someone before filling the spot in a cabinet reshuffle is the most important of all: “Do you know anything about sport?”

They do put on a show, occasionally donating equipment or erecting football and netball posts in disadvantaged areas.

And they launch all sorts of threats aimed at federations who don’t tick the boxes in their attempts to transform their codes.

But most of what we see from the sports ministry is a thinly veiled illusion surrounded by smoke and mirrors, and none of it really helps.

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They haven’t been completely useless. Government’s intervention has helped resolve various conflicts and issues related to corporate governance in national federations in recent years, with some sports ministers (including incumbent Nathi Mthethwa) doing well to stay just this side of the line of unwanted interference.

What they haven’t done is fixed the foundations of those codes in order to drive transformation, opting instead to point fingers at non-profit federations which haven’t got the resources to support youth and school development.

And when it comes to their understanding of sport, it’s fair to say they have generally lacked the basic knowledge required to show they actually care about the Department of Sport and Recreation and the hundreds of thousands of South Africans who are affected by their decisions.

This week, while the world was focussed on the decision to ban fans from next year’s Winter Olympics, our government remembered there was recently an edition of the Summer Games in Tokyo.

Two months after the nation’s medal winners returned home from the Olympics, and more than three weeks after the Paralympics came to a close, the sports ministry held a parade for the athletes, as well as a handover ceremony in which they finally received their financial bonuses.

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Granted, Covid restrictions make welcome parades a challenge, but if you’re gonna do it, then get it done.

The way government has dragged its feet in officially recognising our country’s elite stars is another indication that the sports minister doesn’t have to care much at all. It’s just a stop-gap post until they find a position elsewhere.

South African sport is struggling, with Sascoc and most of its members scratching for financial support and battling to stay afloat.

We need someone who can hit a home run and drag us out the dirt, and our government steps up to bat with a tennis racket tucked under its swimming trunks, ready to bowl on the netball court.

We have tremendous potential as a sporting nation, but we can’t win when our leaders don’t even know what sport we’re playing.