Minister of Sports and Recreation, Makhosini Hlongwane has lamented the death of community sport.
Sports Reporter
He said community sport should be revived by establishing structures to identify, develop, track and retain talent in the country.
He said this while presenting the ministry’s flagship project — the Community Sport and Recreation programme — to Bulawayo provincial sport associations and stakeholders held at Rainbow Hotel in Bulawayo on Friday.
“There are yawning structural deficits and crevices in the sport and recreation sector which have continued to isolate grassroots communities, denying the sector the much-needed mass participation. It has perpetuated a continued trajectory of failure in terms of performance, injuring our national pride in the process and harming our interest in sport and recreation,” he said.
“Going forward, we are orgainising sport and recreation on the basis of a tripartite panorama of community sport, schools sport and college sport. It is government’s intention to help the establishment of community sport structures that are viable and productive,” he added.
Hlongwane also outlined the critical success factors for the Community Sports and Recreation programme. The factors included operating environment, structure of delivery agents, infrastructure, competitions, human capital, resource for support, research, as well as monitoring and evaluation,” he said
