Cape Town – The South African Rugby Union (SARU) formalised its commitment to transformation by signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC) at a ceremony in Johannesburg on Thursday.
Mr Oregan Hoskins, president of SARU, signed the MOU on behalf the organisation to add to the commitment already captured in the Union’s previously published Strategic Transformation Plan (STP).
Rugby was one of five sports – cricket, soccer, athletics and netball were the others – that took the step following the work done by the Eminent Persons’ Group on Transformation in Sport (EPG). The EPG produced a pilot report in 2014 – and annually audits the transformation programmes of national federations – on which findings the MOU is based.
“SARU welcomes the work of the EPG and the Department of Sports and Recreation,” said Mr Hoskins.
“As a sport we are fully aligned to the National Sports Plan and earlier this year publicised our own Strategic Transformation Plan (STP) which is now incorporated into the MOU.
“It is our duty as custodians of rugby in South Africa to ensure that we remain relevant and vibrant in our emerging democracy and we will fail to do that if we don’t consciously work towards our transformation targets – this is not a threat, it is an opportunity.”
Mr Hoskins added that SARU had restructured its Development department to become the Strategic Performance Management department with its sole focus on delivery of the plan and compliance
“We look forward to continuing to work with the Department of Sports and Recreation and Sascoc on this critical work,” he said. - ANA