The Department of Sports, Arts and Culture will partner with celebrated Al Ahly coach Pitso Mosimane in the schools’ sport project he launched recently.
Kagiso-born Mosimane, who is a product of schools’ sport, said at the launch that he wants to give back to the game that has given him so much.
The director-general for sports, arts and culture, Vusumuzi Mkhize, said the department is coming on board fully for Mosimane’s initiative.
“There is vision with everything and when coach Pitso speaks about development, that’s the investment that we have been lacking,” said Mkhize. “We must develop and make sure that when kids are as young as seven years, they must have the basic skills.
“If we do not have that, by the time our players are matured [25 or 26 years], we cannot export them anywhere because development is lacking. So, I agree with the concept that Pitso and the team have come up with and I think it’s a model that we should use to train our young people from a tender age about the basics for sport.
“Then we will be able to compete at international level. Success is not an incident of luck.”
Mkhize explained further: “It’s a deliberate investment and I think what coach Pitso is doing is exactly that, to correct that our young people must succeed by accident.
“As a government, we have a role to play and I assure you that as we will definitely partner with him, we will look at the modalities as to how we can support this programme.
“Everybody has been talking about schools’ sport and we all know what school sport has achieved. As the minister [Nathi Mthethwa] has said, let’s invest in infrastructure, invest in development coaches, and invest in training these young people so that we are on the right path.”
Mkhize added that it is a disgrace that Bafana Bafana are not participating in the 2022 Fifa World Cup in Qatar when there is so much talent in the country.
“But I can tell you that we have a commitment to work with this initiative. The minister has started with a project called the Football Ambassadors to try and get them [children] in schools’ sports so that the legends can invest in sport development, particularly football, which is our religion.”
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