Minister Gayton McKenzie: Sport, Arts and Culture Dept Budget Vote 2025/26

It has been a year since I first stood as a Minister to table a budget to this House, having been given a chance by His Excellency, Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa, to make me part of his Cabinet. In that action he showed that second chances matter, not by word but by deed.

Summary
House Chairperson

Deputy Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture, Hon Peace Mabe

Ministers and other Deputy Ministers here present

Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee of Sport, Arts and Culture Hon Joseph McGluwa

Honourable Members

Chairpersons and Chief Executives of Public Entities

The DSAC team led by acting Director-General Dr Khumalo

Distinguished Guests

Members of the Media

Ladies and Gentlemen

It has been a year since I first stood as a Minister to table a budget to this House, having been given a chance by His Excellency, Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa, to make me part of his Cabinet. In that action he showed that second chances matter, not by word but by deed.

It was a great risk he took by appointing me as a Minister and I hope his act will inspire people who have been in conflict with the law to reach for second chances and that we will give them those second chances as a society.

Few things are as important as second chances and believing in people.

Today we are here to talk about making budget available for people to get something even more important – and that is any chance at all.

Over the past year, we have seen so many stars in both sports and the arts, both young and experienced, realise their God-granted potential and make us proud to say that we are South Africans.

We must be honest, though, that what our home-grown talents are achieving is often despite the circumstances they are facing, and not because of the platforms we are giving them.

Our amazing success on the field is too often balanced by the dysfunction we continue to face off the field. Ours is a system that too often still excludes the majority of people in our country, from school age on through their adult lives.

We are realising perhaps just 5% of our potential as a country, and still we are winning at just about everything we turn our hands and hearts to.

Sipho in Khayelitsha can’t play hockey because the price of a hockey stick comes at the cost of a week’s food for his family. There are many Siphos in South Africa and we face similar challenges in the music industry. We have many successful people who’ve received training in acting, music and singing – but many more who’ve had to make it by relying on raw talent alone. They are the exceptions. Imagine if more of us had the chance to hone these great talents, and be guided in expressing them.

We have heard from many people over this past year who have been resistant to the changes being brought in this Department. They want to see familiar decisions and behaviour. But how can we rely on the old ways of doing things if the old ways have not solved the problems of the past three decades? Change is difficult, but it’s necessary – otherwise Sipho and the other Siphos and Sashas will never play hockey one day for a gold medal at the Olympics.

That’s why this budget signifies us trying to start doing things differently. These changes will keep coming as we continue to adapt and change how we spend and support our plans to make sport, the arts and culture accessible to all our Siphos, Celines, Salmans and Siyamthandas.

Today, I want to bring honour to our cricket players, netball heroines, the Springboks, our Olympic squad, our sprinters and runners, our boxing champions, our swimmers, and so many more.

Of all the people I met over the past year, I’d like to tell the story of a group of young bulky Afrikaners coming to see me to help popularise their sport, a sport I knew very little or nothing about: strongman.

I approached many sponsors on their behalf. I worked the phones. Most people were not interested except for SuperSport and Betway.

A year after the majority of companies did not give a positive response, most of them were calling me asking to be introduced to the world’s strongest man, Rayno Nel.

If you had told me that this rookie would be crowned the strongest man in the world not even a year after that knock on my door, you could have knocked me over with a feather.

This is a simple example of how, with support, we can defeat the world’s best, at just about anything.

Nothing illustrates that South Africa has unmined gold waiting in our townships, Cape Flats and klein dorpies like this story. I see my term as a minister as a continuation of my previous job of being a miner, looking for human gold.

Access and opportunity matter, and even the greatest of talents need that opportunity.

That is why, to invest in all our talent, both in sport and arts and culture, as well as preserving our heritage, the Department has a budget of R6.3 billion for the 2025/26 financial year.

Under Programme 2, Recreation Development and Sport Promotion, we are allocating R1,281 billion.

To keep supporting sport in our country, we will be allocating R98.5 million towards federation support. One of the biggest changes coming for our federations will be the provision of an office building for them to share – as many have been running their sports out of the boots of their cars. They have been trying to save sports under the most trying of circumstances. We will be professionalising the approach and allowing different sports to benefit from the concept of shared services.

We are also finalising the process of funding Video Assistant Refereeing (VAR), to ensure that football matches, from the Premier Soccer League through to the international fixtures we host, are fairer and meet global standards. It is a necessity. We see stadiums vandalised when bad refereeing happens and the success of teams like Mamelodi Sundowns make global teams want to play here, but they get second thoughts because we don’t have VAR.

Since we last stood here and shared our vision for Team South Africa at the LA Games in 2028, the draft document on Project 350 has been developed. The Department and SASCOC are working on the finalisation of our Concept and Implementation Plans, while the roles of Provinces and Federations are also being determined, so that we can send as many athletes as possible to the next Olympics in Los Angeles.

Late last year, we travelled to Olympic House in Switzerland to register our interest in hosting a Summer Olympic Games in South Africa in 2036. We have already engaged the Cabinet Clusters and South Africa is well positioned to become the first African country to host an Olympics in nearly a century and a half.  We count on the support of all South Africans to make this dream a reality.

Many laughed when I uttered the words “Formula One must come back to South Africa.” One man in particular who didn’t laugh was Toby Venter, the owner of the Kyalami racetrack. When I told him that government doesn’t have the money to host Formula One because of other more urgent priorities and we would not be in a position to help him pay for the track to reach F1 standards, he looked me in the eye and said he would see it would be his patriotic duty to do just that.

That was a year ago. I stand here today to tell you that the FIA, the FIFA of motorsport, has given the green light for the upgrading of the track.

We have had multiple meetings with the management of F1, with a crucial one happening in the next two weeks.

To those who say the country can’t afford to host the F1, I’m saying the country can’t afford not to. When you set the bar high for a country, as we have in the past, you can’t afford to take the bar back down. We hosted the best FIFA World Cup. We put our country on the map for big events and should not turn back now.

What will be different this time, though, is that government will not be expected to pay.  

Companies like MTN, MultiChoice, Heineken and many more have raised their hands and said “here we are, Thuma Rona”.

They will be present with us in the meeting with Formula One at the end of the month.

We’ve even had patriots like Johann Rupert who’ve told us, “Scream for help if all else fails.” So we know we will succeed.

Those who are saying Formula One is not important should consider all the countries who are holding on to their F1 spots on the calendar. They see the value in it, and it can’t be called a world championship if it misses an entire continent, sub-Saharan Africa in particular.

While on the topic of motorsport, I want to thank everyone who has joined us in our mission to grow the sport of spinning. I want to thank Red Bull and Cell C in particular. People were laughing when we said we’re going to make spinning big, but already this sport has left the townships and now Sam Sam is wowing the likes of Max Verstappen with his skills in Austria.

We are also keenly exploring the potential of bringing a LIV Golf event to South Africa as early as next year, especially given the platform that this exciting new tournament format also gives to performing artists on world-class stages after the golf clubs have been put back in their bags at the end of every day’s play.

We’ve had no massive golf tournament except for the very good Nedbank Golf Challenge. Golf has not broken through to the masses, though, and we hope to achieve that with LIV Golf. It’s not only golf, it’s culture. We hope to eclipse Australia’s attendance of more than 100,000 at a single event over the three days.

As part of investing in and cultivating our domestic talent, during the 2025/26 financial year, the department has allocated a total of more than R627 million through the conditional grant to support, among many things, equipment and attire for schools, clubs and hubs, the training of people through coaching, technical officiating and administration courses and employment.

Thousands of schools participate in the School Sport programme and the National School Sport Championships, while hundreds of community leagues are supported through grant funding.

You cannot be competitive at the Olympics and elsewhere if school sport is not working. I want to thank FNB, who are about to put major investment into school sport for boosting league competition.

Under Programme 4, Heritage Promotion and Preservation, we have allocated R2,787 billion, which includes an amount of R1.6 billion for the building, maintenance, upgrading and operationalisation of our much-valued libraries.

Following the success of our inaugural programme to return the remains of South African fallen heroes from Zimbabwe and Zambia last year, we shall continue to repatriate the human remains of freedom fighters who fell outside the country during the Struggle.

Our heroes who fought for us are back. Duma Nokwe, Basil February, Todd Matshikiza and Florence Mophosho have been brought home.

I am told that there could still be 5,000 bodies that need to be returned, and we should not rest until they are home.

Heading into the current financial year, our technical team is expanding its focus to Angola and Lesotho, while continuing our work in Zambia and Zimbabwe.

We are also leading negotiations with Scottish authorities to repatriate the remains of our Khoi and San forebears from the University of Glascow’s Hunterian Museum by September 2025. We want to thank the Hunterian board for agreeing to the repatriation and not making the matter a conflict.

We shall also soon conclude the reburial of 58 ancestral remains from the Northern Cape, guided by the Northern Cape Reburial Task Team, which represents the Nama, Griqua, Korana, and San communities.

Last month, under the theme: “Reimagining South African Heritage for a New Era”, we started the important process of seeing our museums entering the digital age, becoming relevant to a new, curious generation and increasing visitor numbers.

One of the first projects we are focusing on is Robben Island, which is undergoing a major revamp and facelift. We are fixing the transport challenges, we will recognise every former prisoner, there will be heritage statues and a wall of names, along with a wealth of new facilities and activities.

Under Programme 3, Arts and Culture Promotion and Development, we are allocating R1,725 billion.

In  our commitment to upskill and transform the Cultural and Creative Industries, we will continue with the Young Creatives Programme, which is part of the National Youth Service programme, involving the recruitment and placement of 300 young people to improve their chances of employability and self-employability in creative fields.

Through the Debut Fund programme, which we are implementing in partnership with Business and Arts South Africa, we will assist 50 young people to launch their own CCI enterprises.

We are proud to have established 17 CCI Sector Cluster organisations whose  formation was necessitated by persistent structural and systemic challenges facing the creative sector. This was extensively discussed during engagements with sector stakeholders, starting at a Bosberaad we held in 2024.

Among the key challenges being addressed are the fragmentation and lack of coordination among sector organisations; the absence of unified, legitimate representative voices to engage with government and external stakeholders on policy, funding, and sector development; the exploitation of creatives; their limited access to funding; uneven development across provinces and sub-sectors; and policy disconnects and silos between the different levels of government and between government and the creative sector.

The Interim Boards for the 17 Sector Clusters are now up and operating and we will continue to look at more ways to achieve growth and sustainability through a working Sector Coordination Model and better regulation in the creative sectors.

They will be supported with a total budget for operationalisation of R34 million.

We understand the frustration of our creatives. For the past 30 years and the years before that, they have not seen their lives change for the better. I’m therefore not going to do the same thing that’s been done for all these years. We are working on getting the foundation right.

Getting our creative clusters basic things like shared office space, people representing them and agitating on their behalf, websites and other shared services represents a stronger foundation for them.

Those who want us to do things the same way we did in the past are the same ones who want us to get the same results we got in the past. Those are the ones whose deep wish is to keep the status quo that has benefited them alive.

But it’s a new time.

The adjudication for the MGE Open Call has been completed, and all 152 successful applicants have received their grant letters and now need to move quickly to submit their compliance documents. The total approved projects are valued at R109.4 million. This includes CCI Projects across domains and Touring Ventures. A list will be published in just three days’ time.

Our Touring Ventures MGE Open Call has also created opportunities for 19 organisations and practitioners to be our cultural ambassadors to travel to nine countries and locally. We plan to support more projects during the course of this financial year.

The Department has received R350 million from the Presidential Employment Stimulus Programme, and two entities have been earmarked to implement this, the National Arts Council and National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF). Both these Entities have been instructed to make sure that provinces that have benefited less in previous years are prioritised.

The NFVF, in particular, will be expected to create jobs through the funding of powerful feature films. Through the NFVF government has spent billions over the years on film productions, but we have no blockbusters to show for it. We cannot be trying to tell American stories better than Americans while having stories here that are screaming out to be told.

We do not lack the filmmaking skills, creativity, acting, or storytelling flair. But we must explore our deep mines of stories that are screaming loudly to be told.

This is part of the change that I am talking about.

CCI INFRASTRUCTURE

We will continue to create infrastructure and access to creatives and communities alike, while local people will get job opportunities during the construction of these facilities. In partnership with provincial departments we are bringing to life the Bakwena Arts Centre in North West, the Darling Intercultural Hub in the Western Cape and the Port St John Arts Centre and Peddie Arts Centre in the Eastern Cape, among other places.

Construction on the new Polokwane Theatre is also progressing well, having now reached the midway point.

In support of the preservation and development of the Khoi and San languages, the N|uu language in particular, the Department is setting aside R2 million for a targeted call for proposals to preserve these languages.

In closing, the Department is honoured to host the G20 Culture Working Group under South Africa’s Presidency of the G20, themed “Solidarity, Equality and Sustainability.” This historic occasion offers a significant platform for South Africa to shape the global cultural agenda while showcasing our leadership, cultural richness, and commitment to inclusive and sustainable development.

As part of its leadership of the G20 Culture Track, the Department has identified four key priorities that reflect pressing cultural challenges and opportunities, both globally and within the South African context. These priorities aim not only to strengthen global cooperation, but to bring tangible benefits to South Africa’s cultural sector by fostering innovation, protecting cultural rights, and unlocking the sector’s potential for socio-economic transformation.

Through these priorities, South Africa stands to benefit by attracting international investment and partnerships, building capacity in the cultural and creative sectors, promoting cultural diplomacy, and contributing meaningfully to the global discourse on culture and sustainable development.

Before I finish, I must answer the million-dollar question I keep being asked: are we going to financially compensate the people who have been winning at everything? The answer is unfortunately, “no”, because if we give our many stars those bonuses, they will bankrupt the state with the way that we are just winning at everything!

We are proposing herewith that the House adopts this budget. We thank you, Honourable Chairperson.

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