THE Ministry of Sport has finally announced its categorisation of sport codes after an intensive rating and selection process over the past year.
Only three codes have made the top ranking of ‘National Sport Codes’ namely football, netball and rugby, while four more codes were ranked as ‘Priority Sport Codes,’ namely athletics, Paralympics, boxing and wrestling.
A total of 15 more codes were categorised under ‘Development Sport Codes’ namely cricket, gymnastics, swimming, archery, hockey, volleyball, karate, kickboxing and martial arts, tennis, equestrian, horse racing, ice and inline hockey, basketball, squash and shooting.
The categorisation will, amongst others, determine how much financial support each code receives, but according to the chief administrator of the Namibia Sport Commission, Fred Mwiya, the exact amounts still need to be decided.
“The ministry is still working on the budget and will still inform us. But it’s not just financial support, it’s also technical and administrative support; we categorised the codes to see how we can prioritise our functions,” he said.
The categorisation of codes followed a detailed process over the past year during which each code was interviewed and rated.
“Last year we held a stakeholders meeting and interviewed all the sport codes. We held a workshop with the sport codes in July and explained the requirements on a rating scale to them. The sport codes then submitted all the documentation and then in August we started interviewing the federations,” Mwiya said.
“It was a transparent process and each code could see their marks on a rating scale. For instance they would get marks on a scale of 1 to 5 for the number of regions in which they are active and so on. Then we submitted it to the line ministry who are the policy makers,” he added.
According to the categorisation, less than half of the 48 codes which are registered with the NSC have been accommodated, but according to Mwiya, several codes did not turn up for the interviews.
“Some codes didn’t turn up for the interviews, they didn’t submit their documentation and didn’t come to the meetings. If you don’t go to write your exams, how can you be rated,” he asked.
Mwiya, however, added that all codes will still be supported.
“Some federations are not on the list now, but they are still members of the NSC. They fall in the open group and still get technical or administrative support from the NSC,” he said, adding that the categorisation is for a four-year period till 2022 after which it will be re-evaluated.
According to Mwiya, the criteria used to determine the categorisation included decentralisation and accessibility, governance, liquidity and international performance, amongst others.
“A code’s presence in the regions and their accessibility to the masses accounted for 50 percent of the overall mark. Performance at international level was 10 percent of the overall mark, while other criteria that played a role included the governance and administration, as well as the liquidity of the code.”
“This followed the proposals which emanated from the National Sport Conference in 2014, and our job was to implement it,” he added.
He said the Ministry took a holistic approach to the categorisation.
“A code like swimming can’t be in all the regions, because there are not swimming pools everywhere and its expensive to build one and these are issues which were taken into account and the Ministry looked at it in a holistic way,” he said.
A glaring omission, though, is cycling which does not appear on any of the lists, but that seems to have been an oversight according to the president of the Namibia Cycling Federation, Rolf Adrian.
“I enquired about our omission and was told that they are aware of the problem and that we should not worry and that they will revert back to us,” he said.
Cycling has been one of Namibia’s most successful sporting codes since independence. They have qualified for each Olympic Games since 2000 and have regularly produced African champions over the years like Mannie Heymans, Marc Bassingthwaighte, Dan Craven, Tristan de Lange, Michelle Vorster and Vera Adrian, while the 17-year-old Alex Miller this year also won gold medals at the Junior African Championships as well as the Africa Youth Games.
According to Adrian they also have an active BMX development programme in progress, which is now active in 10 of Namibia’s 14 regions.
