The festive season has simply flown by, way too quickly in fact, but now it’s down to facing up to the challenges that lie ahead in 2011.
The year has already kicked off with me attending the SRSA three day workshop called by the Sports Minister to review running programmes in sport and to look forward to 2011/12.  It was useful to sit down with the SRSA leadership team and leaders from the various provinces and the sometimes robust debates will help SASCOC shape its own position on the subjects of: Transformation, Sports Councils, Funding, Academies and Coaching.
The Minister has said that he wants to see progress on these and other matters. The White Paper policy directives are now in the final stages and will be tabled at a sports indaba in the coming months. The most exciting part of all this is that roles are now being clarified in South African sport, which can only be a good thing.
SASCOC will at its first media conference this year give an indication on the road that we have travelled on our goal of achieving 12 medals in 2012.
Our programme of action for 2011 will clearly spell out how we are going to assist the athletes and the coaches achieve their goals for 2012. The support services that we will bring on board will be made known and responsibilities will be given to relevant structures to help us achieve that goal.
We will also launch the TopTV SASCOC sports channel and this will allow us to showcase the activities of not just SASCOC but also that of all our federations.┬á A number of federations have already submitted their programmes of activities and these will all be filmed and given airtime to provide exposure to both the big and smaller codes of sport in the SASCOC family. This will be the culmination of a year’s planning and strategising behind the scenes.
This year is also the year of the All Africa Games in Maputo, Mozambique and our project management team will soon be calling on federations to nominate athletes for the team. We have made it clear that participation in the All Africa Games is critical to our long-term planning for our athletes and we will be calling on all our athletes to prepare most thoroughly for these Games.
Off the sports fields, the big event will be the hosting of the IOC session in Durban and we will be going out of our way to show the world that we are able to host both conferences and major sporting events. We are confident that the Minister will give us guidance on this matter soon. What will follow if the go-ahead is given is the choosing of which South African city to put forward as the bidding city for the possible hosting of the 2020 Olympic Games.