DAVID ISAACSON | It won’t be difficult for new sport minister Zizi to top his predecessors

Rock ’n Roll boasts ZZ Top, South African sport has Zizi Kodwa. 

Please excuse me if I don’t fall over in a state of delirious excitement over the new sport minister announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa in his long-overdue cabinet reshuffle on Monday night, but we’ve seen this movie before.

Self-important suit gets paid close to R2.5m to surround himself with an entourage of hangers-on who do little to nothing to improve sport, the one South African endeavour that has the power to inject this country with some feel-good tonic.

What can uplift mood better than sport?

Think of Siya Kolisi hoisting the Rugby World Cup trophy in 2019, or Tatjana Schoenmaker winning the 200m breaststroke gold at the Tokyo Olympics in a world record, or even the valiant performances of the Proteas Women at the recent T20 World Cup.

I can carry on mentioning special moments all day long, but here is a brief selection ... Hashim Amla’s triple century, Chad le Clos beating Michael Phelps, Corrie Sanders knocking out Wladimir Klitschko, Shaun Pollock’s young Proteas beating a near full-strength Australia in the 1998 Commonwealth Games final, Bafana Bafana winning the 1996 African Nations’ Cup, Sugar Boy Malinga dethroning Nigel Benn, and, of course, the Springboks winning the 2007 and 1995 World Cups.

Siphiwe Tshabalala’s opening goal of the 2010 World Cup against Mexico was a highlight, even if the national football team ended up making history by failing to advance to the knockout stages.

Sport possesses a magic like nothing else.

Should the crooks and idiots running this country ever stop stealing money, breaking institutions and even get the lights to stay on, such monumental achievements wouldn’t register as highly as a sporting triumph — mainly because they’ll simply have done their bloody jobs for a change.

Perhaps we should give Kodwa a chance. He’s actually got to make an effort to screw this job up — after all, the sport budget for 2023/24, which kicks in on April 1, has already been decided.

As one third of the department of sport, arts and culture sport will actually get only 23% of the total R6.3bn budget.

An attempt to appease the ad hoc financing policy of national sports federations by increasing funding cycles to three years has already been initiated, though the 75-odd sports bodies are unlikely to see huge improvements in the R117.5m annual allotment going forward.

If Kodwa wants to make an impact, he should get the National Lotteries Commission, which falls under trade and industry, to play ball. That Lotto’s sports funding policy is determined by trade and industry and not sport makes as much sense as pretty much everything else this government does. 

There is so much else Kodwa could do, including listening to the voices of reason.

South African sports fans love thinking we are great at soccer and boxing, but in truth we’re below average. These codes haven’t won a single Olympic medal since readmission in 1992.

If only someone in government had listened to someone like Ezekiel “Ziggy” Mtshali, the former promoter, trainer, manager and matchmaker who died this weekend.

He made his name in the 1960s, working alongside star Soweto fighter Anthony “Qash” Sithole, a fine amateur who was selected for the provisional SA Olympic team for Tokyo 1964.

Sithole was among a handful of black competitors — athletics, boxing and weightlifting — chosen in a vain attempt to convince the International Olympic Committee that sport was more unified than the rest of apartheid SA.

Of course it was not.

Sithole never faced a white opponent until he went to Australia for two series of fights in the early 1970s. Having missed an opportunity to challenge for an Olympic medal, apartheid and fate conspired to deny him a world title shot as a professional.

Mr Mtshali remained a presence in the local fight game well into the new millennium, and in 2004 he told me that the only way to get local amateur boxing up again would be to take the sport back into the schools.

The last time I saw Mr Mtshali, in 2018, he was still concerned at the decline of the sport in Soweto, once the hotbed of SA boxing. I had picked him up at his house and we’d driven past Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a popular fight venue once upon a time, to his old friend, Sithole.

Mr Mtshali, the best man at Sithole’s wedding in 1968, recalled the celebration like it had happened a few days before. The number of guests had exceeded the number of invitations sent out. “You know what weddings are like in the locations,” Mr Mtshali had chuckled. 

His suggestion from nearly two decades ago remains the only truly viable solution for boxing in this country, and it would help the professional game as much as the amateurs.

I doubt that schools would want to be saddled with more extra curricular activities, and I know most teachers aren’t mad about their classrooms being used for sports that tend to soil the chalkboards.

The way around this would be to resurrect or start boxing clubs and align them to schools. Hire decent coaches to train the pupils, and pay taxis to transport the children from school to the gym and back home.

Bring in guests, from former boxing greats like Dingaan “Rose of Soweto” Thobela to top trainers to help inspire the children.

Run this project in Soweto and Mdantsane and watch the sport grow.

And it doesn’t have to cost a fortune.

Given that the outgoing sport minister, Nathi Mthethwa, found a few million rand to reward Banyana Banyana for winning the continental championships last year, perhaps Kodwa can find enough money, with help from his provincial MECs, to get something like this going.

If he ever did this, I’d suggest he call it the Mtshali Project.

Rest in peace, Mr Mtshali. 

As for you, Mr Kodwa, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and work up a sweat.