Mmapaseka Steve Letsike: 2026 Special Olympics South Africa
Programme Director;
Leadership of Special Olympics South Africa;
Representatives of the North West Provincial Government and the Rustenburg Local Municipality;
Coaches, officials, volunteers, families and supporters;
And, most importantly, our athletes;
Good afternoon.
As we come to the end of these National Summer Games, I think the most appropriate place to begin is simply by saying thank you to the athletes who have carried the spirit of these Games. Over the past few days, you have competed in athletics, basketball, bocce, football, netball, swimming and table tennis, and in doing so you have given us much more than a sporting spectacle.
You have allowed us to witness courage, discipline, friendship, disappointment, determination and joy in their most human forms. Some will leave Rustenburg with medals, others will leave without them, but every athlete who stepped onto a field, a court, a track or into the swimming pool has already demonstrated something important about what becomes possible when people are given an opportunity to participate fully and to be recognised for what they can do rather than judged by what society assumes they cannot do.
That, for me, is what gives Special Olympics its deeper meaning. Sport may be the arena in which we have gathered, but the real conversation is about dignity, belonging and equality. South Africa has spent more than three decades constructing a constitutional democracy founded on the proposition that every person possesses equal worth. Yet we know that the lived experience of equality still differs profoundly depending on who you are, where you live and the circumstances into which you are born.
For many persons with intellectual disabilities, exclusion does not always announce itself dramatically. Sometimes it is found in a school that does not know how to accommodate a learner, in a healthcare system that does not communicate appropriately, in a workplace that has already decided what a person cannot contribute, or in communities where disability is still approached through pity rather than rights and agency.
The lesson of these Games is therefore not that persons with intellectual disabilities are extraordinary because they have somehow overcome themselves. The lesson is that society often underestimates what people are capable of when barriers are placed in their way. When those barriers are removed, when support is available and when people are afforded the dignity of opportunity, talent finds expression.
That is why our national conversation on disability must increasingly move beyond charity and accommodation towards substantive inclusion. We should not be asking how persons with disabilities can fit into institutions that were never designed with them in mind. We should be asking how those institutions themselves must change so that inclusion becomes part of their design from the beginning.
This requires us to think about the entire life journey of a person with an intellectual disability. Inclusion must begin in early childhood and continue through education, healthcare, sport, skills development, employment, economic participation and independent living. It must also mean that persons with disabilities are represented where decisions are made about their lives.
The principle of "nothing about us without us" cannot remain a slogan that we repeat at disability events; it must become a principle of governance. Government, civil society, sporting bodies, communities and the private sector all have a responsibility to ensure that persons with intellectual disabilities are not regarded as passive recipients of programmes but as citizens with voices, aspirations, talents and the right to shape the society to which they belong.
As the Department responsible for Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities, we are also conscious that disability is never experienced in isolation from the other realities that structure people's lives. A young woman with an intellectual disability may experience exclusion not only because of disability, but also because she is young, because she is a woman, because she lives in a rural area, or because her family does not have the financial resources required to navigate systems that are often difficult even for those without disabilities.
If our policies treat people as though these realities can be separated from one another, we will inevitably design responses that miss the complexity of their lives. Inclusion therefore requires us to see the whole person, and to build systems capable of responding to human beings in all their diversity.
I am particularly pleased that the Healthy Athletes screenings have formed part of these Games, because they remind us that participation in sport is connected to a much broader question of wellbeing. Health inequalities experienced by persons with intellectual disabilities cannot be separated from questions of dignity and social participation. If we are serious about inclusion, then accessible and appropriate healthcare, early identification of health needs, prevention and sustained support must form part of the same conversation as sporting opportunity.
The Games have therefore demonstrated, in a very practical way, that inclusion works best when we refuse to divide a person into different administrative compartments and instead respond to the fullness of their life.
I want to acknowledge the families, caregivers, coaches, officials and volunteers who have made these Games possible. Behind every athlete there is often a network of people who have encouraged, supported, travelled, trained, advocated and sometimes fought for opportunities that should never have required a fight in the first place. Your contribution matters, but our long-term goal must also be to build a society in which families do not carry this responsibility alone.
Inclusion must become institutional, predictable and ordinary. A parent should not have to become an expert in navigating exclusion simply because their child has an intellectual disability.
In a short while, Team South Africa for the 2027 World Summer Games will be announced. For those athletes whose names will be called, it will be an extraordinary honour and responsibility. You will represent not only yourselves, but every athlete who competed here in Rustenburg and every young person with an intellectual disability who watches you and begins to imagine a larger horizon for their own life. For those whose names are not called today, I hope you understand that your contribution to these Games is no less meaningful. Selection is one moment in a much longer journey, and your participation has already helped to enlarge the space in which future athletes will compete.
Later this afternoon, the Special Olympics flag will be lowered and the Flame of Hope will be extinguished. There is something important in that symbolism, because the real test of these Games begins when we leave this field. The flame may be extinguished here, but the responsibility it represents must remain alive in our schools, our clinics, our workplaces, our sporting institutions and our communities. If Rustenburg has shown us what becomes possible when people are given the opportunity to belong, then our task is to take that lesson beyond these Games and build it into the ordinary life of our country.
That is how we honour the athletes who have competed here, and that is how we move closer to the South Africa promised by our Constitution: a society in which dignity is not conditional, equality is not abstract, and every person can say with confidence that there is a place for them in the future we are building together.
To every athlete, congratulations on what you have achieved. To those who will carry our flag to the 2027 World Summer Games, go forward with courage and pride. And to all of us, may we leave these Games with a renewed understanding that inclusion is not an act of generosity towards others; it is one of the measures by which we judge the maturity and humanity of our democracy.
I thank you.
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