BREAKING FREE FROM MEDIOCRITY – THE CHALLENGE FOR SOUTH AFRICAN SPORT – PART I

The more I reflect on the state of sport and physical education in South Africa, the more concerned I become about the direction we’re headed. For most of our children—especially those in rural areas, high-density settlements, and impoverished communities where basic needs take priority—the opportunity to participate in quality sport and physical education remains out of reach.

While the poor get poorer, many children residing in suburban communities benefit from relatively good sport facilities and programmes located in primary and secondary schools. To some extent, this is also true for facilities maintained by certain municipalities, though this is the exception rather than the norm—many municipalities are failing to maintain existing facilities, jeopardising their sustainability in the future. Sport programmes in the country continue to experience a trickle down of talent from the suburbs, where schools play a prominent role in promoting sport development in children from an early age.

Many in government, sport clubs, and sport governing bodies are doing their best to address the challenges facing under-resourced communities and improve access to sport. But more needs to be done. My cousin once told the principal of my high school, after we had complained about how the teacher taught: “The English teacher’s best is not good enough.” By the same token, the best that our key sports role players are doing for the South African sport programme is simply not good enough.

As a country that claims to be leading economically in Africa, that has hosted a FIFA World Cup, has won three Rugby World Cups and even a few Olympic medals, we continue to rely on too few sports and clubs—particularly those at universities—for our successes. The base for high performance is simply too small for South Africa to rise and be counted among the best sporting countries. Without widespread participation at grassroots level—where the masses of our citizens live—we cannot build the large talent pool needed to identify the few individuals with the potential to become elite athletes.

We have the ingredients for this country to succeed in elite level sport, including the Olympics, the Commonwealth Games, and other world championships. Our rugby, athletics (which once thrived), swimming, hockey (now showing promising performances), netball, and football are good examples of our strengths. But—and this is a very big ‘but’—we also have massive challenges. We must first identify and acknowledge those challenges before we can attempt to fix them. After all, we cannot heal what we refuse to acknowledge as broken. To do this, I believe we need to draw on our own experiences—what we’ve seen and lived through in sport at local, provincial, and national levels.

I’d like to share my own thoughts on some of the key reasons why our sport is likely to remain mediocre for the foreseeable future... unless we make some radical shifts in our mindset, priorities, and practice.

Reason 1: Inability to Introspect

We attend world championships, the Olympics, and Commonwealth Games where we witness best practices firsthand. Yet, we return home and fail to integrate what we’ve observed into South African sport. I’m reminded of something Socrates said about people’s inability to introspect: “An unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.” This wisdom emphasises that meaningful change begins with personal reflection. Everything in the world starts with “I” or “me”; it does not start with a group of people or teams. Groups can either enhance or detract from what needs to be done. For example, instead of taking personal responsibility for our individual and collective failures, we often blame something or someone else.

I recently experienced this myself when an important part of an event I hosted went horribly wrong. This wasn’t through any fault of my own—my team and I had done all the preparatory work assigned to us—and I could have blamed dozens of people. Instead, I sent an email to my principal, apologising for the mishap without pointing fingers and promising to investigate the issue and report back with my findings. I also undertook to make sure that my team and I would thoroughly check and recheck everything to minimise the risk of anything going wrong in future. This is what introspection is about—taking responsibility and taking measures to correct and learn.

As a nation and people with diverse experiences of other nations’ sport programmes, we have acquired much knowledge. But we must give careful consideration to what lies deep in our hearts, for this can determine our individual, group, and national success—or failure.

Reason 2: Inability to Face the Truth

Plato once said, “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men [or women] are afraid of the light”. I often think of these words when I reflect on our reluctance to face the truth. As adults, we should be open to truth and knowledge, which represent light. Many of us in sport have seen the light, attending the most prestigious sporting events in the world—yet back home we too often fail to turn insight into action for the common good. When we fail to acknowledge and act on the truths we’ve discovered, we limit our potential for personal growth and hamper community progress.

Take, for instance, our universities—the most successful and sustainable multi-sport clubs, consistently bringing home medals from the Olympics and Commonwealth Games. Yet despite this proven track record, we refuse to face the truth that these institutions are left to fend for themselves, scraping together resources to support the very elite athletes who go on to represent South African National teams. Our influence wanes, and leadership slams into an invisible wall. Perhaps most troubling is that experts in the field of sport stay silent at governing body meetings, afraid they’ll be branded overzealous, radical, or politically naïve.

Reason 3: Inability to Learn, Remember and Apply

Years ago, when I was a university student, one of our lecturers told us about two teachers who had both been teaching for 10 years. One had one year experience repeated ten times, while the other had ten years’ worth of experience. You might ask what the difference was between the two. The first teacher stuck to the same material and methods used as a newcomer—never consulting the latest books, updated material, or new teaching methodologies. In contrast, the second teacher brought imagination to the role, adapting the subject matter to a changing world. This teacher read the latest books and continuously explored new teaching methodologies. As a result, the second teacher had more experience, a better command of the subject, and achieved better outcomes. All because of a willingness to learn, evolve, and apply new insights.

Thousands of South Africans involved in sport have attended the most elite of competitions in the world. But rather than applying the vast knowledge they’ve gained from better performing countries, coaches, and athletes, many have simply reverted to the status quo. This is most unfortunate—having seen how the best prepare and perform should give us pointers on what we need to do to be counted among them.

Reason 4: Resistance to Change

Recently I led a debriefing meeting in which I asked those actively and directly involved in a project a few key questions—questions I had shared with them the day before so all could come prepared and engage meaningfully: What are we doing well that we should sustain? What needs improvement, and how can we fix it? What should be changed or avoided next time? And what could we do differently? As the meeting progressed, it became clear to me that some participants struggled to ask themselves deeper questions about what they do and why they do things a certain way.

Going forward, the real challenge lies not just in the ability to self-improve and self-develop, but also in recognising that the world is constantly changing. Sport, like any other aspect of life, is changing rapidly. For example, coaching in sport has become an exact science, with technology and data analysis now playing a central role in how athletes train, perform, and recover. The old methods may work for a time, but without adapting to change, athletes and teams fall behind. Resistance to change continues to bedevil even the most knowledgeable and experienced individuals, whose best efforts are often neither acknowledged nor given room to take root.

Reason 5: Lack of Integrity

In a country where sporting success depends on cohesive collaboration between individuals, clubs, and federations, how is it that these entities so often end up operating in isolation or even in opposition to one another? This question came to mind during a recent experience involving the sporting ecosystem: the individual, the club, and the federation. The club had recruited the individual (player/athlete) and invested thousands of rands on their development over many years. Then the sport federation went behind the club’s back and dangled a tempting carrot—an attractive salary package—to lure the player away from participating in the sponsoring club’s programmes. The federation even fabricated a story about having rights over the player, despite not having contributed a cent to their development.

At the end of the day, the player was caught between a rock and a hard place and because they needed the money, they dumped their sponsor club for the sport federation. Just to be clear: there’s nothing wrong with a sport federation “calling-up” a player to their more senior teams. The problem is when the federation fails to follow proper procedures—like discussing their interest in the player and paying fair compensation to the club that played a key role and spent thousands of rands on their development. This type of behaviour cannot become the norm if South Africa is to allow each role player to do their part and be fairly compensated for their efforts at the right time.

So where do we go from here?

My desire is to gather the thoughts of like-minded South Africans who are passionate about sport—to sit down and write out what they see as the main impediments to this country becoming a true sporting powerhouse in Africa and the world. I invite you to share your perspectives on Facebook, X, and LinkedIn. I look forward to hearing your views.

I’ll pick up this conversation in Part 2, where I’ll explore more reasons that continue to hold South Africa back from reaching its full potential—starting with genuine mass participation and culminating in a truly elite sport programme. The issues are many: some are soft, others hard. As the year rolls on, I’ll begin to explore the strategies needed to make sport in South Africa excellent, exceptional, extraordinary—and world-class in every sense.