Dear Minister McKenzie, you can put South Africa on the track to Olympic glory

As we congratulate our medal winners on their nation-building achievements and with the excitement of the spectacle of the Olympic Games fading, it’s an opportune moment to reflect on our sporting prowess as a country.

The table below makes for interesting comparisons. Of the 205 participating nations, 89 won medals. South Africa ranked 42nd overall, in the top 50% of medal winners, and in the top 25% of participating countries.

We might deem that a satisfactory result. We might even be proud of it.

However, if we look at our performance as a ratio of medals per capita, we rank 71st out of those 89 countries, which is not so good. By comparison, Australia is fifth in terms of medals won, third per capita for countries with populations above five million, and ninth per capita overall.

We don’t come anywhere near that.

Why?

Olympics – interesting comparisons

My understanding is that back in the 1950s, Australia had a poor showing in the Olympics. In response, the government embarked on an aggressive programme of developing sports in schools, setting up sporting academies, identifying talent, improving coaching expertise, identifying those sporting disciplines in which they wished to excel, establishing high-performance training facilities and putting aside a decent budget to enable all of this.

I did some research on sports in South African schools, examining the availability of eight popular sporting disciplines in our 22,587 public schools.

Number of schools per province offering athletics, tennis, hockey, netball, swimming, soccer, cricket and rugby

Source: Department of Basic Education through its Education Facility Management System (2023), in the SAIRR Annual Survey 2024.

Don’t these figures, at least for one reason, explain why our Olympic results per capita are so poor?

A total of 9,735 out of 22,587 public schools (43%) have no sporting facilities whatsoever. Put differently, only 57% of our public schools have sporting facilities. (I have not incorporated the roughly 2,500 independent schools in this analysis, as no data are available.)

But, Minister McKenzie, the same DBE report reveals our schoolgoing population is 12,684,886 learners, which means that 5,454,500 children in our schools have no access to sporting facilities.

I don’t have data available on the establishment of sports academies, talent-hunting, coaching, or high-performance centres, but I imagine the picture is not much different.

I know you won’t do this — your track record speaks for itself — but some will blame our apartheid legacy for these woeful numbers. However, as you have said, “We have had 30 years of a new dispensation — there is no room for continued blame.”

Australia turned their numbers around in less than 30 years and now they are the most successful sporting nation competing in the Olympics on just about any measure.

So, while we warmly welcome our Olympic sports team back, I trust you intend as minister of sport, arts and culture to put an end to these woeful stats and ensure that our people embark on a new trajectory of sporting prowess, with proper government support.

Please start in our schools, not just in the interests of global medal success, but also in the interests of a decent, holistic education.

Yours in anticipation,

Steuart Pennington DM