This National Recreation Day event today comes at a time when as a country, we are grappling with issues of gender-based violence and femicide, poverty, unemployment and rampant inequality.
Recreation is a significant part of any nation’s culture, leisure time, health, economy and education. Individuals involved in physical activity benefit from a significantly enhanced quality of life. It is against this background that recreation is at the core of our Active Nation programmes.
The declaration of Cabinet for the first Friday of October being a National Recreation Day provides an opportunity to showcase and promote a number of active recreation activities South Africans can undertake for their health and wellbeing and encourage all South Africans to be physically active.
Since 2015 the National Recreation Day has been observed across the country led by all Sport, Arts and Culture Provincial Departments and the National Department. In 2017, we saw it necessary to also initiate a 365 days campaign, the “I Choose 2 B Active” campaign which is a call to action to get as many South African’s to be physically active, which the National Recreation Day is a highlight of.
We want to applaud the citizens who exercised innovation, who continued to and used all the virtual and social media platforms to exercise in their homes and also encourage others to pursue an active and healthy lifestyle.
Physical activity and active recreation must become a lifestyle to the majority of South Africans. Invest in your health and be physically active, Exercise regularly. It is not difficult to build physical activity into your daily life…at work, school, home, play…If you can and not already doing it, walk to work, or cycle to work.
Walking just 30 minutes a day every day can increase cardio-vascular fitness, strengthen bones, reduce excess body fat and boost muscular power and endurance.
One needs to only look at our elders who for most of their lives walked long distances to get to work, to attend social gatherings, to gather the harvest, tend to cattle to realise the benefits of physical activity.
They rarely faced debilitating lifestyle diseases like it is prevalent now. They were also blessed with longevity- a long life.
We are happy to be a partner to the Sport for Social Change Network, Love Life trust to implement this important project together in our country.
Let us use this day to commit to making a physically active lifestyle a choice and commit to a movement and encourage others to be a part of it in order for them to also change and also commit to a lifestyle that fosters a healthy way of living.
I choose to be active How about you?
