This was unveiled by SASCOC President Gideon Sam as the nation seeks to improve upon its medal haul at RIo 2016.

It followed a General Meeting at Olympic House in Johannesburg in which 78 national federations participated alongside the new Minister of Sports and Recreation Thembelani Nxexi.

“We need to prepare teams for Team South Africa to participate internationally and continentally," said Sam afterwards.

"It is our responsibility as national federations to ensure that we provide athletes with everything they need to be considered to be part of Team South Africa. 

"We are judged on what we have done at international and continental competitions."

South Africa won 10 medals at Rio 2016 including golds for Wayde van Niekerk over 400 metres and Caster Semenya in the women's 800m.

Van Niekerk won in a blistering world record time of 43.03sec.

Sam urged all sporting bodies to channel their efforts to fully support athletes from all parts of the nation, including small towns and villages.

They must also "analyse critically how they can produce athletes with the potential to go on and represent the country".

“For SASCOC the athletes are central and we need to ensure that they are well looked after,” Sam added.

“As federations, you should continuously think out of the box so that you develop sport and raise funds for athletes.

“As SASCOC we have to find smarter ways of preparing our athletes. 

"As leaders in the sports movement we have to sit down and work out how we are going to overcome this funding issue. 

"As we identify our high performance athletes we have to identify how we can get funding."

Nxesi, who replaced Fikile Mbalula last month after Durban was stripped of the 2022 Commonwealth Games, promised additional funding this financial year for the establishment of a National Training and Olympic Preparatory Centre (NTC) to be based in Bloemfontein. 

He hailed school sport, funding and good governance as three particular challenges to work on.

“We are going to have to ensure that where money has been budgeted for sport - wherever it resides - in education, in the provinces or municipalities – we have to ensure that that money is actually used for sport – and used optimally," he said.

"We are going to have to go back to National Treasury with proposals and to cost the priorities in the National Plan for Sport and Recreation for presentation to Cabinet.

“We have to jointly create the necessary platform for coordination of resources and the efforts of all the role players."