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Why sport is in a mess

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I wake up feeling inspired to find solutions to problems which many people choose to ignore as they continue to lambast sports administrators, myself included.

Allow me to make a reference to this song by the late Ray ‘Chikapa’ Phiri and his band, “Stimela”. The song is “Where did we go wrong”. I further wish to refer to another musical legend, the late Tsepo Mobu Tshola in his song, “Mabelebele”.

To understand the current challenges affecting sport, we need to go back to the time when the Lesotho government through its Cabinet resolved to effect a restructuring of government ministries which yielded the current state of inertia in sports.

1. Dismantling of the Ministry of Education, Youth, Culture and Sport

Prior to the advent of coalition governments, I am told that the Education Ministry was combined with the Sports Ministry before Sports was combined with Tourism, Arts and Culture and then with Gender and Youth.

This led to a malalignment of the guiding instruments to aid the growth of children. Sport and education when put together works well given the adage that “all work and no play makes Johnny a dull boy.” This simply means that if the Education Ministry is all about academics and no sport, the process of learning cannot be properly achieved.

Play is an integral part of growth in a child’s life. It comes naturally and gives the child’s brain an active break from a rigid learning environment. Removing play from the child’s growth process changes the child into something else. From time immemorial ,play has been harnessed to develop a perfect human being by channelling it into something constructive. Play as it mutates into sport becomes a perfect additive to academic pursuit.

2. Removal of Physical Education from the curriculum

I have come to understand why it seems that the Ministry of Education is not supportive of sport initiatives at all. I am inclined to postulate this analogy. Say you had a lover and you break up with the lover and marry a different person.

Should your ex-lover’s brother have a problem at the same time when your incumbent partner’s brother has a problem and you are limited in terms of resources, you will be obligated to help your current partner’s brother.

The same applies at the Education Ministry. It finds itself having to only focus on academic excellence and has nothing to do with sport as that falls within the jurisdiction of a different ministry.

Likewise, the Sports Ministry has no obligation to programme academic matters.

This is clearly antagonistic to the bond between education and play as part of the growth of children. If this is a construct of government, it says very much about the political will of the Government of Lesotho as well a dismal failure to understand the correlation between education and sport.

3. Relegation of the Sports Ministry to be a “Thank You” Ministry

It has become a normal occurrence of late when the allocation of ministerial portfolios is done. With all due respect, let’s all go back in memory and take stock of the Sports Ministries. At times it served as a reserved ministry for Political Party Youth League Leaders or Women’s League Leaders with no consideration for sport acumen.

Yet every minister who gets an opportunity to address the media always promises to professionalise sport, this in spite of the fact that the same ministers before becoming sports ministers spent most of their time dancing to the melodies of political songs and were never really active in sport.

And I say this with utmost respect for people who voluntarily choose to do whatever activities they enjoy.

4. Change of CISR focus to support political relevance against social matters

As the sporting fraternity in Lesotho, we have been fooled for ages about the Sports Rebate Bill.

I have had the opportunity to read the same Bill or Act. That document from its construct has always contradicted itself. It does not consider sport sponsorship as some act that should enjoy tax holidays in the same manner that other investors do.

But then again what would one expect if such a document is written by the taxman?

Oooh yes! It was written by the tax authority, an entity whose sole task is to collect as much tax as possible using whatever means. For them to open opportunities for companies not to pay tax isn’t their brief at all.

Without stroking egos here, me and you know that many companies in the country do not pay taxes accordingly, and are able to get away with this by associating themselves with ministers, PSs and other people of influence by supporting dubious activities purported to be social investment activities which end up enriching the top dogs as a means of protection against the taxman.

Sport has been abused in this regard because many a times on the eve of national elections, flimsy sport tournaments are held where prizes are shabby, non-compliant footballs or netballs, some cheap plastic medals and or unbranded kits where prospective candidates pocket the bulk of the donated money. We know all too well how it goes.

The truth is that Lesotho does not have a CSIR policy and companies do as they wish and craft reports which state CSIR activities at ballooned outlays which would have most probably never happened.

You tell me whether these companies you see in the country do anything in the communities they exist in. The oriental ones are worse. And the government seems to be very happy with this.

And we should believe that the government can really professionalise sport if it doesn’t care whether there is investment coming from these companies in the form of CSIR?

At the beginning I made references to some musical greats hei.Ha a bina BraT o re, ho bala ho leshome ke bothata athe senyesemane lebala, mabelebele he he mabelebele ke likhunoane….

And Ray sings, “tell me tell me where did we go wrong?”

Keo taba Mosotho oeso. Shalom!

Mokhosi Mohapi

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