Programme Director,
The MEC for Sport, Recreation, Arts and Culture: Ms Xoliswa Tom,
The Acting Executive Mayor of Joe Gqabi District Municipality,
Honourable Councillors,
Managers and officials from respective sector departments,
Oosingaye bonke abalapha abazakwamkela izithsaba zabo,
Distinguished guests,
Members of the media,
Ladies and gentlemen,

On behalf of council and the entire people of Maletswai I am delighted to stand here tonight and accept your invitation in this grand event. In my welcoming remarks l just want to reflect briefly on the efforts made by the organisers of this event for ensuring that we honour those who have put in an effort to advance their talent in the various sporting categories.

Let me also take this opportunity to congratulate in advance all the recipients of these prestigious awards. May these awards enhance your unflinching spirit and resilient efforts to do better in your future sporting endeavours. I am confident that the little efforts you have ploughed in your respective fields of play have made your families and friends proud. Well done.

Programme Director, we have converged here this afternoon at the backdrop when the African nations clash in the Africa Cup of Nations. Sadly enough l dislike to remind you that South Africa did not qualify for obvious known reasons. Various reasons citing probable factors that impeded the national team from qualifying have been given, and when you scrutinise them you will discover that there is lack of cooperation and willingness to work together by all the parties involved. By and large history has taught us that this is a remedy for disaster.

This gloomy situation is even cascaded down to all levels within the sporting fraternity. Maybe l need to be more emphatic on the conviction that sport has the ability to unite a nation. And such tendencies are definitely not encouraging to the sport loving South Africans. Something must be done to arrest the impasse.

I believe you will concur with me that for any nation to have a winning mentality in any of its national team it must start setting up a good infrastructure at grass root level. When you have the best plans you are bound to have optimistic results and poor planning is often a recipe for disaster.

I am delighted to announce that the engagements we had as mayors of respective municipalities in the province with the Department of Sport compelled us to have lasting solutions to the challenges we faced in the past. We agreed that the mayoral cup games should be somehow fused into the plans of the department of sport. We now have to work together to bring about these services to our people.

When participants within our local municipalities have finished competing, it would be proper that the winners can proceed to compete at district level and in the same fashion the winners at our districts must proceed to play in the Premier games at provincial level.

This scenario is clearly indicative of the fact that we are now slowly capturing the requisites of cooperative governance which, if successfully implemented, could be useful to the betterment of our people’s needs.

The existence of the department here should mean more continued support to the aspiring young men and women of our community to make it in the world of sport. The programmes you have must talk to the challenges facing  our diverse sporting formations in the community of Maletswai. It cannot be correct that today we can have outcries of neglect and apparent needs from the community when the department is having plans every year.

Your planning should be integrative in nature so as to allow common identification of challenges and be able to provide adequate antidote to such challenges. We cannot allow a situation where there is not integration of our sport.

Through the mayoral cup games and other existing sport engagements we will need to upscale our various programmes and introduce league competitions through a range of sporting codes at our schools to ensure that more of our people have a chance to partake in sporting activities.

Indeed the contribution of the department to the upliftment and promotion of active engagements in sport by all sectors in our community so far cannot just be downsized to naught. The diligent efforts of our officials to keep the elderly people active in sport have harvested huge benefits in their adult years.

It is common knowledge that they are not prone to succumb easily on the known diseases easily as the case might be in their counterparts who do not participate at all at these games.

These are lessons we must take into our hearts as we build a caring society. The officials involved in these programmes deserve much applause. Keep up the good work. Ensure that our elderly people are busy to shape their frail bodies.

But l would advise that we also need to have an element of inclusion in this regard. It cannot be correct that it is only a certain section in the community that has caught our attention whereas others, like in the white and coloured communities, there is no mention of such marvellous programmes.

Whilst doing that we need also reflect on the glorious truth that this country embraces its unity in diversity. As a people who have thrown of the yoke of apartheid and established a non-racial and non sexist democracy we come from an effort of all those who have stood together to be counted as part of a united nation of many languages, religions and cultural expressions.

This is what separates us from the rest of the world, in fact, it is a feature that defines us as a people of Mzansi. We need to build on these gains and add the touch of sport to add value to the recipe.

In closing, l want us to up our attitude and eagerness in the various existing sporting formations by increasing our efforts so that we are able to produce more quality players (in the like of Drogba Ndulula, Mabhuti Letlabika and many more which l cannot now mention) for the PSL teams and rugby franchise sides. It is delighting to see our own players who played in our dusty grounds competing with the best athletes at national and international level.

Council is in the process of revamping its sporting fields including Sauer Park Stadium next door and Sarah Morosi Stadium in Jamestown. The Sauer Park is currently closed as it undergoes major renovation and its resources will be made available soon. This is our small way of contributing towards unearthing young talent.

Through these projects we want to demonstrate that our ground work is securely levelled. What is still missing is for us to build on these gains, and we can attain this by working together in earnest.

Once more I take this opportunity to congratulate all those who will be receiving the respective awards. May you be encouraged to do better in your future endeavours. With these few words, I welcome everyone present here and wish them a happy stay in Maletswai.

I thank you