Olympics Team SA Report; SRSA 1st Quarter performance; National Youth Camp; Indigenous Games; National School Sport Championship; SAIDS Lab

Meeting report

Sport and Recreation South Africa (SRSA) on Financial Performance: Quarter 1 2016/17

Mr Alec Moemi, Director-General: SRSA said the Chief Financial Officer of SRSA would be talking on the first quarter performance of SRSA. He introduced his delegation.

Mr Lesedi Mere, CFO: SRSA, said the presentation reflected the progress made against key strategic objectives in the Annual Performance Plan (APP) of SRSA for Quarter 1 of 2016/17. The report had also been submitted to SRSA’s Audit Committee, National Treasury and the Department of Planning Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME) for performance monitoring purposes.

Programme 1 - Administration:
SRSA had set itself three targets but it had achieved only one target. One unachieved target dealt with performance assessment. However the Department had achieved this by the second quarter. The second unachieved target was payment of suppliers within 30 days. SRSA had developed a standard operating procedure where its implementation had only been implemented in the last month of Quarter 1. That issue would resolve itself by Quarter 2.

Programme 2 - Active Nation:
In this programme the Department had had to achieve five targets where three targets had not been achieved. One unachieved target was having 180 000 people actively participating in organised sport and recreation activities. In quarter 1 SRSA had managed only 20 250 participants because provinces had not submitted reports and therefore there could be no verification. By quarter 2 SRSA had managed to verify some reports as the targets related to the conditional grants that SRSA transferred to provinces. The second unachieved target was 500 school hubs and clubs supplied with equipment and attire as per established norms and standards. SRSA had had managed to do that for 118 schools and hubs because of similar verification challenges from provinces. The final unachieved target was supporting five academies where SRSA had supported only two for the same reasons as the other targets.

Programme 3 - Winning Nation:
SRSA had achieved three of its five targets. One unachieved target required ten athletes supported through the Ministerial Sport Bursary Programme whereas only eight athletes were supported. The second one was the number of major international events receiving intergovernmental support where SRSA only had to do one but could not achieve this.

Programme 5 - Infrastructure Support
There was only one target which related to number of post-support reports produced and the Department had not achieved it. In quarter 2 SRSA had supported a number of facilities, for example, the Wembley Basketball centre, the Megapark in Port Elizabeth and the National Stadium. The Department had developed the reports on support offered to those facilities and these would be submitted to the municipalities. Additionally, SRSA was currently capacitating the facility support unit as that had been an issue affecting performance on that target.
 

Budget and Expenditure analysis as at 30 June 2016
Mr Mere reminded the Committee that the Department’s track record showed that it caught up with its expenditure objectives by Quarters 2 and 3.

Discussion
Ms D Manana (ANC) said that underspending because of vacant posts had to be addressed. It was unacceptable that moderation of performance assessment could not be done because of a panel member not being available. She needed clarification on what that meant.

Mr S Malatsi (DA) said it was commendable that SRSA had penalised the two provinces for non-compliance. What was the level of interaction in terms of forecasts by SRSA for provinces - since correcting non-compliance after the fact was not the same thing. As he understood ongoing interaction could be laborious for SRSA in terms of its staff complement. Moreover SRSA’s image got impacted by external agencies whether it was the federations or provinces. This made it difficult for Parliament to accept this non-performance although SRSA’s performance was being affected by federations and provinces. He also asked for clarity on the monies paid to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

From his reading it seemed that provinces did not have the capacity to do the facilities audit or count. Possibly SRSA would have to be innovative since there was a research and bursary component within the Department. SRSA could encourage and fund research on sport infrastructure. Alternatively it could pilot a model for an infrastructure audit on one province and then move forward from that perspective. He did not believe at that stage that SRSA would ever get a full picture of what the facilities count was in each province.
 
Mr Malatsi asked if SRSA had a system of verification for the equipment it gave to clubs and academies.

On transfers to provinces, was it that the provinces simply did not have capacity? To what degree did SRSA get involved in assisting the provinces at that level since that also to a large extent contributed to SRSA budget component going to provinces? Had everything been sorted out in the federations as he had noticed in the document that the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC) had complied in terms of transfers? Had individual federations done similarly and was compliance being measured in a standardised way as some federations did not have the high level capacity as others did?

Mr S Ralegoma (ANC) shared the Committee’s concern about provincial non-compliance for transfers and how it was affecting SRSA performance. The facilities count had been a simplification of a facilities audit but still there were provinces struggling with that which would mean ongoing intervention by SRSA.

He thought that intervention at the district level in National Schools Sport was a competence of the Department of Basic Education (DBE) but noted from the document that SRSA had gone to intervene at that level. He needed a sense of the new format that had been implemented where instead of one National Schools Sport Championship (NSSC), there were four schools sport tournaments: what had been the impact of that on SRSA resources?

Mr P Moteka (EFF) was concerned by the justification that SRSA always started slow but caught up in key performance indicators (KPIs) by Quarters 2 and 3 as this could not always be applied in a government department. For example, at the end of Quarter 2 only eight out of 16 KPIs had been achieved.

Mr Moemi replied that the reason SRSA had justified moderation of performance assessment not being done due to unavailability of a panel member had been a very real reality within government. Though he was in control of SRSA staff, he also relied on other DGs to nominate staff from similar levels and even higher to sit on panels as external members and to do the work. As that staff were not paid for performance assessment,  meetings got scheduled and then they would told that the external moderator for performance assessment would be unavailable. It became irregular therefore for the panel to continue without the external moderator. At junior levels, level 5-6, 7-9 and 9-12 panel members could be found for those. It became challenging when senior staff had to be evaluated because Deputy Directors-General (DDGs) had to be on the panels. Across the public service evaluating DDGs became even more difficult because one had to align the diaries of ministers, as well as DGs. That was not due to one’s officials not wanting to do the work rather it was a consequence of relying on outside people coming to the party. In Quarter 1, SRSA had tried at least three times unsuccessfully to have a panel do the moderation for performance assessment. Even previously SRSA had struggled with panels as that target was a systemic challenge. To fix that challenge in Quarter 2, the DG managed to get panels together by ensuring that there were six hourly meetings instead of the standard three hours.

On the WADA payment, all countries were required to pay the money if a country wanted to participate in sport in terms of the WADA articles of agreement that governments had reached with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and other international federations. WADA used the formula of a country’s population size against its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to determine how much that country pays - the wealthier a country, the higher the contribution.

Previously when the DG had been an alternate executive member of WADA, there had been a debate on whether to penalise countries that had not been paying their dues. The IOC had felt that in the spirit of Olympics, countries open to scrutiny by WADA and other testing agencies, had to be allowed to participate at global level. That had created a big burden because each year WADA had a shortfall on its budget. The expectation was that the few countries that paid their dues would cover the shortfall from non-paying countries. In that way paying countries were being punished indirectly. The DG reminded the Committee that Cabinet in 1998 had taken the decision that SA would pay for all the African countries that could not pay the dues. SA’s dues alone were typically $2018 however, because of that Cabinet decision SA had found itself paying in the region of $18 000.

That format had been changed in 2013 where through a Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) mission to the African Union in Addis Ababa, SRSA had issued an all Africa notice which said that African countries that were not able to pay WADA had to indicate to SA that they needed assistance. At the time only Mauritius, the Seychelles, Ivory Coast and SA were paying WADA. Only the Comoros had come forward to ask for assistance after that notice and SRSA had informed WADA that it would no longer pay for everyone in Africa except for the Comoros debt. SA had been currently paying for itself. However, when fellow African countries asked for SA to pay there was a psychological contract. Subsequently, SA had been surprised that it had been voted out of the WADA Executive Committee and Foundation Board. At the most recent Committee of African Minister of Sport (CAMS) in Abidjan, the francophone countries had lobbied extensively to outvote SA in exchange for Ivory Coast on the WADA Executive Committee and Foundation Board as well as the Chairperson of the African Foundation Board (AFB). That had been the reason behind the strategy change in payments for WADA dues.

In the three previous financial years, SRSA had underestimated the nature of a facilities audit undertaking. SRSA had admitted and duly apologised for not meeting that target. In the following financial year the audit had been changed to a facilities count. The facilities count target had been achieved in that all provinces had counted and Auditor-General of South Africa (AGSA) had verified that indeed a count had taken place and was indeed complete. SRSA had therefore decided to go back to its original target of an audit but the target had been structured to be done over a five year period in modules. Therefore provinces were expected to do only module one and two of the audit. Gauteng, KwaZulu Natal (KZN) and the Western Cape (WC) had been mandated to do all five modules within the first two years as they had the capacity to do those. After Quarter 1, the WC and KZN had completed their audits, only Gauteng had underperformed, though SRSA knew they had the capacity.

Certainly there would a struggle with the smaller provinces and that spoke to Mr Malatsi’ question about provincial capacity whether for the audit or accountability for monies, there was no capacity since six of the nine provinces simply did not budget for sport programming. It was a recent development that some provincial treasuries had started budgeting for provincial SRSA salaries but the number of employees they could hire was limited.

Certainly government had to review the provinces and their treasuries availing money to sport programming and that had been why previously the DG had asked this Committee to have a joint sitting with the Committees on Appropriations and Finance so that National Treasury and SRSA could be jointly called to account for those matters. The DG had also appealed to the Select Committee on Education and Recreation that provinces had to budget for sports and recreation because incapacity would remain in the absence of that. Constitutionally, provinces were obligated to have a provincial SRSA as it was a concurrent function. The Municipal Infrastructure Grant (MIG) had never been intended to build that capacity as Treasury insisted that no more than 6% of that grant could be spent on sports.

It was with that same vigour that the Committee had sat with the Committee on Basic Education to fight for budgeting by DBE for school sports. It was strange that even municipalities that had been supposed to be budgeting for sport and recreation were writing to SRSA to provide kit for local teams.
 
SRSA usually had eight meetings a year with provinces on the grant framework to look at the targets where provinces had to complete their programme implementation agreements (PIAs), their business plans and to indicate to SRSA what would be achieved. SRSA drew from what the provinces had said they would achieve with the money allocated them by SRSA, in setting up its APP. Where SRSA believed the provincial targets were unrealistic, the Department went back to reduce those with the provinces. However, there were those targets that SRSA could not compromise on such as those which constituted agreements between Minister Mbalula and President Zuma. That was why when provinces underperformed as the figures suggested for the Quarter 1. When a province submitted its file to SRSA, it was only when SRSA had verified and was convinced the file would pass the AGSA test for evidence, that targets would be achieved. That was a real challenge for SRSA on sector indicators as these were what provinces had to do, and that spoke to the oversight role by SRSA over provinces.

In terms of equipment to schools, there too SRSA relied on provinces. Two years ago the Committee will recall SRSA had had a challenge where it had decided on a sample audit to check what was happening with equipment. SRSA had found that indeed there had been principals hoarding equipment where SRSA had since amended its requirements for giving schools equipment. One of the requirements was that a school had to be registered for the NSSC and would have participated in the second tournament which proved that something was happening. For Quarter 1, SRSA’s internal audit was completing a sample audit in three provinces to check whether provinces were allocating equipment according to the new criteria. It had, however, not gone back to see whether after allocation of equipment, the schools had been using the equipment.

The history behind the Director of School Sport was that SRSA had filled the vacancy but the candidate had declined the package. SRSA had tried again where the panel had been unable to recommend anyone. For the third time SRSA had advertised with the panel still being unable to recommend anyone. That was when the DG asked Human Resources (HR) for the applications to see for himself what the issue had been. He had found mostly teachers had applied for the post since it was for Director of School Sport, whereas the position was for a sports administrator. In the last round which was the fourth advertisement, SRSA had made an offer to a candidate and the hope was it would be accepted.

In terms of federations complying with accounting for monies, SRSA understood that many federations did not have capacity as they were run by volunteers but AGSA standards were the same for everyone in that monies had to be accounted for in line with Treasury regulations and the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA). The DG had explained to Chief Executive Officers and CFOs of federations that because of the burden and onerous task of accounting, many federation treasurers had to take leave for a week from their day jobs to do all the necessary work of accounting for the monies federations received. SRSA had in support of that increased the size of its federations support unit so that for category ‘C’ federations, which were the smallest, the federations support unit could sit with treasurers of those ‘C’ federations to complete all the compliance work. Ironically the bigger federations like Cricket South Africa (CSA) and the South African Rugby Union (SARU) because they had the capacity, compliance was possible and they received the lion’s share of the funding from SRSA. However, SRSA funding compared to SARU and CSA own resources made up only 1.3% of their budgets. SRSA money therefore was not the most important except bidding rights to host international tournaments; hosting and national colours as those were paramount to big federations.

It was true that the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between SRSA and DBE suggested that DBE was supposed to be running district tournaments so that provincial and national tournaments would be done by SRSA. The reality was that that had not been happening which why the DG had asked provincial SRSAs to do district tournaments with the little they had which was the only reason those tournaments had continued.

SRSA had since switched to the four tournaments where the swimming shootout was a standalone tournament that took place immediately after the Autumn Championships. 2016 was the first year of implementation of four tournaments where SRSA had promised to review the system after one year of implementation. Though SRSA had done its costing and believed it could do everything within budget, the DG said that in reality the championships were expensive because of the repetitive nature of some of the similar costs where SRSA would have paid once, it had paid four times. The DG, CFO and Chief Director: Active Nation had discussed two possible ways forward. It would be either going back to the single championship a year, however, SRSA had experience of the cumbersome nature of doing that or it could decide on certain key age categories. For instance, children in primary schools particularly in gymnastics and those types of sports had to end with their highest pinnacle of competition at provincial tournaments and not nationals. It was expensive because for every eight children, SRSA allocated one chaperone. Chaperones were expensive but the last thing SRSA would want is for a parent to entrust a 6 year old to SRSA where unfortunately the 6 year got lost somewhere in Pretoria. SRSA had already been contemplating that certain age categories were not to go to nationals due to unavoidable risks and costs, to reduce the cost burden. In certain codes SRSA envisaged allowing certain age categories which would reduce the number of children going to nationals by half. If those choices were not made, the championships would not be affordable.  SRSA had already perceived when it completed a round up after the consultative processes with provinces; the poorer provinces like Northern Cape, Limpopo and Mpumalanga had already run out of money. Limpopo remained with only R1.8 million in its Schools Sports budget when it still had a summer championship to conduct. SRSA was contemplating whether that championship should even be held if Limpopo would not be able to field teams and the tournament would only be attended by three or four provinces. The good that had come out of the pilot was that valuable lessons had been learnt and provinces had seen unavoidable costs.

That also spoke to the state of readiness for the summer championships in that SRSA had been reviewing the cost but a decision would be made at the Head Committee regular meeting in October 2016 about what would be done about the December championship. SRSA had to review the junior championship particularly for codes SRSA knew that the peak for children was age 13. Those codes would have to be removed completely from the junior championships. Kenya and Botswana did schools sport championships quite well. SA had been trying to do the British and Australian model with the requisite resources. Britain had a ratio of one coach to 43 participants in terms of capacity whereas SA had one coach to 819 participants with Britain’s sports plan aiming to increase that ratio to one coach to 25 participants. At the current levels of sports investment in SA, to reach one coach to 40 participants would take training of at least 18 000 a year for 20 years. The reality was that SRSA was only managing to train 3000 coaches every three years. At that rate if SA wanted to reach one coach to 40 participants, it would take 317 years.

Mr Mere said the 2% underspent for compensation of employees had been a drastic improvement from what had been happening in the 2014/15 financial year as SRSA had filled some posts and were currently in a process of adjustment. SRSA anticipated that only R2 million virements would be transferred from compensation of employees to goods and services unlike the previous financial year.

In terms of overspending, the CFO did not anticipate SRSA doing that as that would speak to unauthorised expenditure in terms of the PFMA. What SRSA strived for was at the required percentages of expenditure, however, it also believed in giving itself a cushion for unexpected eventualities.

The DG explained that indeed SRSA had been at 13% under expenditure in the same period the previous financial year. 2-3% under expenditure cushioned against over expenditure as 1% made over expenditure a real possibility where a clean audit would be gone and SRSA would have to go before the Standing Committee on Public Accounts.

The Chairperson proposed that in the fourth term the Committee review its programme to see if it could invite the Standing Committee on Appropriations with Treasury to a meeting.

Mr Malatsi asked what the current status of the Bloemfontein Laboratory was because he recalled that in the last engagement with the SA Institute for Drug-Free Sport (SAIDS), it had informed the Committee that doping tests were being sent to Dubai. How far was SA in regaining its accreditation to do its own testing?

Mr Moemi replied a lot of work had been done since last the report on the matter as SRSA had visited the laboratory twice and a working group had been set up between SRSA, SAIDS and the lab to address the outstanding issues. The working group had already applied through SAIDS for the National Lottery Commission (NLC) to fund refurbishment of the lab and buy the required new equipment. One spectrometer for urine analysis cost about R16 million where the need was for about four machines to meet the minimum targets. There were also blood oxygenation testing machines and blood analysis machines that were required. SRSA had allocated R2 million from its transfers budget to the lab and had asked the lab to formalise itself and to apply for recognition as a sport body, which would give the working committee justification for why SRSA had to fund it as it was not a public entity.

All of that was in process with the only delay being the lab’s council passing a resolution in that regard. With monies from SAIDS, SRSA and a little bit from the University of Free State (UFS) the working committee had managed to regain at least 75% accreditation where a certificate had been issued by WADA. The only thing that SAIDS was not allowed to test was erythropoietin (epo). All analysts had also been retrained during the shutdown period where some had been sent to the lab in Cologne, Germany to familiarise themselves with the new machinery that would be bought. There had also been agreement on the governance model for the lab where the lab would become a Sports Trust entity where half of its board members would be appointed by the UFS council so that the other half would be appointed by Minister Mbalula. The working committee was also engaging with the Department of Health (DoH) to ask it to register and declare that lab in UFS and part of the national laboratory system of Government since the idea was that DoH would also be able to allocate some resources to the lab in terms of scarce skills capacity. The arrangement with Dubai would end as soon as the lab had re-opened for business.

The Chairperson asked whether the lab shutdown had not put SAIDS in debt.

Mr Moemi replied that SAIDS had reported that since the lab shutdown in UFS there had been a sudden surge in their costs as SAIDS had to pay higher courier costs to get samples to Dubai. He said that SAIDS was overplaying that card because the SRSA mandate to SAIDS had been 6000 tests a year. Since the lab shutdown, the mandate had gone to 3000 tests where SRSA had specified that targeted and smart testing had to be done. As SA athletes were part of WADA’s biological passport, the Anti-Doping Administration & Management System (ADAMS), SAIDS could be able to look at high risk athletes. In particular since all athletes were obligated by the WADA code, adopted in 2013, to log in to the Whereabouts app to report where they were and what they were doing and that at any time a random SAIDS test would be required without prior notification. When an athlete as in the case of Thandani Ntshumayelo did not log his whereabouts when the sms came that he login, immediately that identified the athlete as high risk and that was when SAIDS had to vigorously search for an athlete to do the test. Therefore there was no need for a blanket approach to testing everyone because it was not cost efficient. The Whereabouts app made testing smart. SAIDS had issued about 117 tests since the beginning of 2016 with Whereabouts together with ADAMS, and had managed already to catch three athletes doping. Typically in the past it was possible for SAIDS to issue 3000 tests and catch not one doping athlete.

The Director of Scientific Support had asked SAIDS to submit its creditor age analysis and what SAIDS had paid to date for the tests to Dubai so SRSA could see where SAIDS had been struggling. SRSA was still awaiting those books even though SAIDS had to that date reported that it had run out of money though it had not even come half way. SAIDS had requested SRSA to authorise its second tranche early. However, things did not work like that even for SRSA as it submitted a cash flow to Treasury. SRSA could then do draw downs every month based on that cash flow and if SRSA had signed with SAIDS that its second tranche would be coming in October - that is what would happen. Treasury regulations prohibited SRSA from drawing more money than actually needed. That also spoke to the 2% under expenditure; that money was not sitting somewhere in the SRSA account, rather it had not been drawn down from Treasury by SRSA. SAIDS had to first satisfy SRSA with the books that indeed it was in trouble before SRSA went to Treasury to request the second tranche earlier than had been agreed.

Mr Malatsi said indeed what SRSA gave big federations was peanuts compared to their own resources. Was it not a perpetual cycle supporting bigger self-sufficient federations with the lion’s share of the funding compared to smaller federations that were not as financially self-sustaining? Looking at SRSA resources and the demand needing to be serviced from smaller federations and SRSA’s possible interventions to make more of an optimal difference amongst those smaller federations, was it justifiable to continue allocating in the manner that SRSA had been doing? Had there been thinking in exploring alternative ways of trying to redress resource allocation; because some of the smaller federations were not a lost cause, given some support.

On funding of federations, Mr Moemi replied that SRSA had amended the grant framework in 2012, adopted it in 2013 and that grant framework had been introduced since 2015. The new grant framework said that federations had been divided into three categories depending on the importance to SRSA, whether they were a mass participation code and other matters. The first casualty of that amended framework had been Polo South Africa; that federation would not and never again receive funding from SRSA. The DG said it was totally impractical for government to fund Polo and Bocce. They were nice to have as sporting codes that could be encouraged but could not be funded.

Codes that were not mass participation and could be maintained by private funding could not expect funding from government. Even the bigger federations, like CSA, SRSA was no longer just throwing money at them. The Department had been specific with CSA that the money from government had been ring-fenced for development women’s cricket. Moreover there was a separate conversation with CSA that CSA could not declare a profit of R110 million and then say that there was no money for development of cricket and specifically for women’s cricket. SRSA had had a similar discussion with SARU where the rugby federation had declared R74 million in 2015, because the money from SRSA had been ring-fenced for the rugby sevens, schools rugby, women’s rugby and even wheelchair rugby. Obviously with the new grant framework, there were some federations which felt that SRSA was over-regulating their codes. However, when SRSA had put money in, the law stipulated that the Department had to regulate.
 
Preparations for the 2016 national youth camps
Mr Moemi said he had already spoken to the state of readiness for the national school sports games in December 2016 when he had been responded that the SRSA meeting of the Head Committee in October 2016 would decide on December championship. He said the youth camps had been held since 2012 where the Committee would recall that SRSA had at some point changed the delivery methodology of the camps. The camps took place in all provinces at the same time where they all used the same manual and camp stewards facilitated that. SRSA had reviewed the Youth Camps as part of its monitoring and evaluation work in 2015 and in 2016 the programme had been chosen by the Department of Planning Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME). SA had had cultural exchanges with Germany where former youth campers from Germany had visited the youth camps of SA and some youth campers from SA had gone to Germany.
 
2016 Indigenous Games Festival
The Northern Cape had also started participating in the Indigenous Games national championships. Two of the nine Indigenous Games codes already had fully fledged structures where currently the processes were at an established Interim National Committee stage. Soon SRSA would be taking the interim code structures to their conferences to establish recognised sport bodies.

In 2015 SRSA had decided to host the Indigenous Games at Polokwane after that city had agreed that it intended to convert the Seshego Stadium to become the permanent home of the Indigenous Games. There would be permanent courts for games such as Kgokgo, Kgati and Diketo. SRSA had decided that to save the games, it had to benchmark against international communities which had Indigenous Games. In that spirit the Games had been benchmarked against the Mongolian games on the steppes of Mongolia, the Samurai games, the Highland Games of Scotland and the Maasai Olympics of Kenya. SRSA had realised that what made the games in these countries grow was not the games alone but because they had been accompanied by a festival. As a result SRSA had structured the Indigenous Games to be accompanied by a cultural festival with 2016 being the first year where there would be a fully fledged festival with the view that the footflow to the games would be brought by the festival. The money raised from the festival would hopefully sustain and grow the Indigenous Games as a concept.

SRSA had already been engaging Tiger Brands as a possible sponsor for the African food village as it had brands like King Korn Mtombo-Mmela and Mabela Meal which that brand could provide and invest with. If that was not done the games would die and SRSA had to sustain the Indigenous Games because it was the biggest single contributor of Sport to Heritage; which was also why SRSA had decided to host the Games in September so that the closing or opening ceremonies could be on Heritage Day.

Team SA performance at 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro
SRSA and the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC) had not done the full review of the performance yet, however, planning was something that immediately started after each Olympic cycle. After the review of the performance SRSA and SASCOC would be looking forward to Tokyo 2020. There had been an agreement that Athletics South Africa (ASA) and Swimming South Africa from where normally medalling athletes came, the likes of Miles Brown and Akani Simbine though they would not medal, would be given a chance; particularly the exposure to international tournaments so that by 2020 Tokyo they could give SA medals. After London 2012, SRSA had tracked athletes in preparation for Rio 2016 across the four year period. In 2015 SRSA had set SASCOC a target of eight medals having duly recognised from where the medals would come. As an investment, monies had been ring-fenced in specific federations around particular athletes. Certainly Team SA for the Olympics was narrowing as planning for those games had gradually become targeted.

Discussion
Mr D Bergman (DA) said if there was real introspection, over the last two years, marketing was certainly the most lacking unit of SRSA units as most other aspects had been improving over the years. He had been imagining -  before the DG mentioned that there would be less enthusiasm from the Committee about attending the Indigenous Games rather than the Durban July - that there was the Grahamstown festival as cultural festival where two or more departments were involved. Mr Bergman sometimes wondered if the Indigenous Games should be the focus or an event should be the focus so that the Games could then piggy back on that event. He believed there had to be prominence placed on the sports since he believed the more sport that SRSA could provide, the more inclusivity SRSA could provide, the better. But if SRSA would start off with something which was not its competency such as marketing or strategising around marketing; those things were best place under the Departments of Arts and Culture (DAC) or Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA). He reiterated his mantra that it was important for the Committee to prioritise attendance of NSSC, district tournaments and the Indigenous Games to see whether real transformation was taking place at development and grassroots sports levels.

The Indigenous Games (IG) had to be marketed as a premium event and not secondary to other events in the sports calendar because some IG could be found to be older and have more historical significance than the benchmarks against which SA’s IG was being measured against. Broadcast time was also important in terms of the IG as a certain person at the SABC who loved local content would possibly embrace introducing the IG to SABC’s television audience.

Mr Bergman would certainly want to be invited to the IG as he was worse-off for not knowing almost all the games the DG had mentioned. Possibly SRSA could see what was in the social calendar in terms of culture to see if IG could not piggy back on those, so that the IG did not have to happen once a year.

Mr Malatsi said he would definitely attend a Dibeke final as he had played that indigenous sport in his childhood. However, he wanted the Department’s sentiments about why there had been no amateur boxers at the Olympics in Rio, qualification aside, given the strength and the potential of boxing in SA and the fact that it would have been probably the first Olympics where SA had fielded no amateur boxers. Had SRSA since engaged with the South African National Boxing Organisation (SANABO) on the development throughput because he understood that amateur leagues would only be starting in the near future in the various divisions, ultimately, however, in terms of not being able to produce contenders therein became problematic. What forecasting was there in that regard?

Scientific support was crucial in verification and for planning. However, in terms of the NSSC content and the amount that could be raided from the database about each athlete; was there a correlation between how SRSA engaged with federations in terms of their focus? For example, where it could be perceived there was a need for more activities given the throughput from district tournaments, was the NSSC ring-fencing or targeting funding for those activities based on scientific support?

Mr Malatsi said most of the broadcasting on the IG and the Youth Camps were the opening and closing ceremonies. Did the celebrities often seen at those events have a role and were they contracted or had they been there as invitees, as they were public figures which would attract crowds?

Ms Manana was concerned that SASCOC had only recognised Juksei as a fully fledged indigenous game to the exclusion of the eight other games which were played at the IG, as Juksei also had a racialised history.

She was also concerned about the abuse Minister Mbalula had received from Sunette Viljoen in social media and wanted to know what channels where there she could have used to vent her frustrations rather than resorting to social media. How true had her accusations been about outstanding payments due to her?

The Chairperson said that possibly because of the language challenges she did not know any of the indigenous games mentioned in the presentation; she requested some translation.

She cautioned the Committee that the federations always tried to invite members to their events but the issue was that Parliament had to approve attendance if the invites were to be at the expense of the Committee budget.

Mr Moemi said that SABC 2 was a broadcast partner of the IG with SRSA and SABC radio. About seven radio station broadcast from the IG festival. On SportsBuzz, the SABC 2 youth sports programme on Saturday morning broadcast some of the matches. As part of the agreement, SABC 2 had agreed to give the IG some of its talent from actors to programme presenters on the channel with the intention to make the SABC 2 talent, ambassadors of the games. The DG had been informed by his staff that the celebrities had been tweeting a lot about the games at the last festival when they had attended. 2016 was the third year of the partnership between SABC 2 and SRSA for the IG.

SASCOC had recognised Juksei because it had been the first indigenous games federation to set up structures with all the requisite documents. The other games which had so far being coordinated by the code structures such as Diketo, had no constitution, federation and even clubs such that where clubs did exist they were not affiliated, had no records or a list of members. That was why the DG had highlighted that SRSA was working with the code structures to master that and to formalise them into recognised sporting bodies.

In terms of what the names of the games referred to: SRSA during its standardisation process it had commissioned research on the games across the country where it had been found that a single game was played with varied rules and called by different names. Therefore SRSA had made the people of the code structures, interim committees, particularly where a single game had three to four names to choose a standard name. Therefore the chosen names certainly would not be known by everybody currently and SRSA had had to also standardise the rules so that wherever Dibeke was played in SA, the rules were the same. Every year SRSA published a pamphlet about an indigenous game, its rules and how it was played as it was growing the list of IG codes. SRSA was a member of The Association for Sport for All (TAfSA) under the umbrella of the IOC for promotion of traditional and recreational sport. TAfSA had been holding the world traditional games festival every four years where SA had sent a team in 2012 in Silale, Lithuania where that team had returned with the gold cup. That team had been doing the Zulu theme code of dress and culture, and in 2016 the team attending the TAfSA games in Jakarta, Indonesia would be dressed in Tsonga.

SRSA indeed got quite busy in Quarter 3, as Ms Manana had alluded, because the hockey premier league was ongoing, the basketball league, the open boxing league would be starting in October and most importantly the hockey premier league had already started being featured on Supersport. The provincial sport awards were currently underway and they would culminate in the national sports awards.

Mr Moemi said that indeed there was a direct correlation in the data mined from the NSSC through scientific support to determine a lot of policy trajectories and changes. In two of the underperforming provinces at tournaments, SRSA had wanted to know why the Northern Cape struggled at every tournament. With the MIG process SRSA had began to prioritise in particular, facilities for the codes SRSA knew those struggling provinces excelled in. SRSA was mining data but across all its programmes and not only the NSSC through its scientific support. As to whether data mined was used fully and optimally, the DG said he did not believe so. However, the data was there to be mined for varied priorities.

Mr Moemi said Minister Mbalula had indeed made commitments after consulting the National Lotteries Commission (NLC) and SASCOC and the NLC having duly agreed it would pay the medalling athletes those incentives. Every athlete on Operation Excellence (OPEX) had already been paid what had been promised in terms of the original contracts and they were aware that when a commitment was made that did not mean the money would be in their individual bank accounts the following day. There were processes that had to be followed for example, an athlete could refuse the money but SRSA still had to have a signed contract of refusal from the athlete. Only Sunette seemed to have issues with the process because the NLC had only confirmed on the 13 September 2016 that it would release money to SASCOC so that SASCOC could then pay the athletes the incentives. SRSA was beginning to believe that its relationship with Ms Viljoen was not based purely on patriotism but rather money because it had not been the first time she had fought with the administration of sport in SA.

That also spoke to what SRSA could afford in terms of training camps for athletes all over the world because the NLC grant which Ms Viljoen had been tweeting about even before the Rio Olympics was for the four year training preparation cycle to Tokyo 2020 and not only one year. Ms Viljoen was not the only athlete that had fought with administration. Mr Roland Schoeman had done so at some point as well. SRSA was not abusing any athletes as many were quite satisfied with how things had changed because coaches had become part of the modules paid for by the Department.

Mr Malatsi wanted clarity on the incentives; where the incentives from the NLC via SASCOC the same as the Ministerial commitments incentives?

The DG replied that they were separate things as ministerial commitments came from the NLC apart from SASCOC incentives.

Mr Malatsi then asked that following that difference, the contention then was the time delay in the processing for the money from the Ministry. Did SRSA really feel that it had been bullied by Ms Viljoen?

Mr Moteka said that the DG and SRSA had to just bear with athlete attitudes as they were human. He agreed with the Chairperson that the list of indigenous games be described so that everyone understood.

Mr Ralegoma said that the more self-sustaining federations had acted similarly to Ms Viljoen in terms of threatening SRSA over regulation issues; eventually SRSA had to regulate sport in the way it had been doing. He advised that contracts had to be stuck to without wanting to overcompensate as government ended being bullied for promises not fulfilled. For example, the issues that the South African Football Association (SAFA) had faced when there had been a Bafana Bafana revolt at a continental competition.
 
The Chairperson said that with SA being a democratic country, everyone was guaranteed freedom of speech and social networks made the expression of that right more prevalent. She asked whether SRSA could afford to gather the Rio Olympics medallists to attend a plenary session as visitors.

The DG said that he welcomed Mr Moteka’s counsel and SRSA was alive to that and the Department would never antagonise an athlete, especially a medalling athlete like Ms Viljoen.

He said that SRSA would not be able to afford to bring athletes to Parliament including the Paralympians as Treasury would probably frown upon that as there was no new money that SRSA would be receiving. Athletes based in Cape Town certainly could visit Parliament through invites by their federations at their personal expense.

In terms of planning for Olympics, the DG believed that SRSA had to plan five Olympics ahead to allow for enough time for potential to peak. That would mean looking at the current crop of children at the Junior Championships to that fifth Olympic where they would be medalling; however that entire planning projection was not where SA was currently. Possibly in four years’ time SRSA could start planning that way.
The administration culture had changed over the medium term since the arrival of the DG; it had been the first time that SRSA employees had begun interacting with project planning cycles on an electronic system; they had begun to talk due diligence and gradually that culture had gained traction amongst SRSA’s youthful workforce.

Mr Malatsi said that there was a developmental pathway even at elite level, but indeed the mentality and culture the DG had alluded to possibly needed to trickle down to federations in terms of long term planning and how opportunities at prestigious levels like the Olympics as a platform where athletes would be gradually exposed to. Indeed there was a fair argument about the qualification times where people could be potential medallists in the succeeding competition having been given an opportunity in the preceding competition. Many federations did not seem to have that long term planning because they wanted to field medallists as that was a selling point just as development therein was seen as a grassroots phenomenon only.

The Chairperson thanked SRSA and said the Committee would appreciate a delegation from SRSA on its oversight visit to Free State in the week of 19 September 2016. There had also been the matter of the state of infrastructure at Hluhluwe, KZN where the Committee had informed SAFA about the state of that stadium. SAFA had promised to look into that and therefore she requested SRSA follow up on that matter.

Committee Report on Sport and Recreation SA performance for Quarter 4 of 2015/16
Mr Teboho Thebehae, Committee Content Advisor, said the draft report before the Committee had been presented to the Committee on 23 May 2016 and covered SRSA’s performance for January - March 2016. He then read through the observations and recommendations.

Discussion
Mr Bergman said he was impressed with the first two recommendations but in terms of encouraging innovative methods and more options to enable all rugby fans to attend matches and facilitate improved access to matches, he would replace the ‘rugby’ with ‘sports’. The Committee kept recommending the same in terms of filling of vacancies and facing the same challenges Mr Bergman had no problem if the money saved from those unfilled posts was translated to equipment for schools or improvements for the NSSC.
Though the DG had alluded to the fact that unsuitable people applied for the vacant posts the Committee could sanction SRSA if the critical vacancies had not been filled within a specific period.

On transformation he though public hearings for the public to say how the sports sector needed to change through possibly a national roadshow by SRSA to allow inputs from the fans and supporters instead of input from the players, federations and the Minister and SRSA only; as was the usual case. That could enable the Committee to get from a grassroots level what other issues were apart from the reports from the above mentioned stakeholders and, also enable the Committee to possibly come up with a transformation paper that would have all those inputs including those already submitted by SRSA and federations.

Mr Ralegoma was concerned as to why the Committee was going through the report whereby it would be also completing its Budgetary Review and Recommendations Report (BRRR) a month later. If the Committee wanted schools sport to die then living it in the hands of DBE was a certain way of doing that. He therefore proposed that the recommendation be rather that there had to be more emphasis on the MOU between SRSA and DBE On schools sport at the district level. He agreed with Mr Bergman’s proposal of replacing ‘rugby’ with ‘sports’ as well as the proposed public hearings to allow fans and supporters inputs but, conducted by the Committee and not roadshows. Furthermore the Minister had had an agreement with the big five federations on transformation targets which they had not met, that needed no further public consultation rather the punitive measures as had been set out in SRSA documents before the Committee had to be implemented.

Mr Moteka was concerned that though the Committee had identified as concerns: The fact that CSA had only reached 80 out of 24 000 schools. The slow pace of reaching an agreement with regard to transformation targets with all 76 federations instead of the five only. The slow pace of transformation, and the limited space and grounds for sport in townships compound the problem of limited access to facilities.
There had been no corresponding recommendations in the recommendations section of the draft report On all the above statements. That report would be incomplete without correspondingly dealing with those three concerns. Therefore he recommended that cricket, rugby, volleyball and hockey be set targets and timeframes as to how many schools they had to reach by when; out of the 24 0000 public schools. Though the Committee was satisfied with how SRSA with the assistance of the Eminent Persons Group (EPG) had been driving the transformation agenda in federations targeting 5 out of 76 was not satisfactory at all. There had to be more movement in that regard.

It was important for SRSA to inform the Committee which rural areas or townships would be supplied with facilities by when in terms of granting access to sport and sporting opportunities as that had an effect on the Committee’s transformation agenda.

Ms Manana asked if the Committee could not recommend that those municipalities that were using the MIG portion for sports for other purposes rather than sports; be forced to return the money to provincial SRSA instead.

Ms B Dlomo (ANC) requested that it be recommended that Minister Mbalula consult Treasury about possibly withholding the transfer of the sports portion of the MIG to municipalities that had a historical tendency for using it for other purposes or possibly transferring the money to provincial SRSA rather than municipalities.

Mr Malatsi thought that recommendations were used as a tool to check the level of accountability so that at a later stage the Committee could measure whether they had been incorporated or not. It became difficult to link accountability to a specific recommendation were they had been so generically written for example, recommendation on ‘encouragement of all stakeholders to support SRSA and the Bloemfontein drug testing facility at UFS to ensure that the facility was licensed and compliant as soon as possible’; the recommendation had said nothing about SAIDS when SRSA provide resources to SAIDS and then oversaw the use of said resources. The recommendation was void without the specific inclusion of that entity therein. Furthermore there had to be clarity because SAIDS had a testing license, the testing functions had been suspended because of the new regulations.

The concern on slow progress on training of coaches, especially in schools sports also had to have a corresponding recommendation.
With the last recommendations as it was, Mr Malatsi proposed that ‘unions’ be replaced with ‘federations’.

The first recommendation was also too broad as engagements with DBE had been taking place already and it became difficult in future to measure accountability based on on-going engagements without any specified outcomes.

Mr Bergman said he understood the concerns by Mr Ralegoma around the contracts between EPG, SRSA and the big five federations on the transformation targets and his proposal was not made to interfere with those processes but to assist; because once something was signed that did not mean that possibly using the heading of the contracts more people could not be drawn into the debate on transformation as that had never been done in the 21years of democracy where the Committee went to grass roots to get inputs so that policy could be influenced by supporters and the ordinary person as well.

The Chairperson said that there was nothing wrong with holding public hearings as a Committee, however, her experience with that exercise was that only those that could afford to come to Parliament came to public hearings and those people were not the entire intended or representative population whose inputs were required. Her proposal was for the Committee to monitor the outcomes of the resolutions of the EPG in terms of the unmet targets.

Ms Manana said that the Committee needed to encourage communities to participate in municipal Infrastructure Development Plans (IDPs).

Mr Malatsi suggested if public hearings did not perfectly fit into the recommendations then possibly they could be made a resolution of the Committee.

Mr Thebehae said that the draft report covered the targets that SRSA had planned for its fourth quarter 2015/16 and the work completed by that time. The recommendations therefore had been based on the deliverables at that period because the following process in October 2016 SRSA would present a full report on its Annual Performance Plan (APP) whereby the recommendations on the draft before Committee would be saying to SRSA that in the 2016/17 financial year; the APP had to accommodate the issues raised in the Committees draft report. In as far as implementing the recommendations for future as they were relevant, considering the 2016/17 quarter 1 report had just been tabled; the tools to ensure that the recommendations were implemented would be in the SRSA Annual Report (AR) and the Committees BRRR as those were instruments that could be used the policy direction of SRSA. Unfortunately the recommendations were late for implementation for quarter 2 though following that then the Committee could monitor implementation.

Previously the staff had spoken to the wording of recommendations; that in terms of Intergovernmental relations (IGR) and separation of powers. The manner in which the Committee as the oversight body of the executive wrote recommendations to the Minister, to a sense had to observe the limitation of the powers of the Committee. Essentially the Committee could engage the executive but there was a limit as to it instructing the executive as that was the prerogative of the head of the executive. However; that did not mean the executive could not be held accountable by the Committee.

Sometimes it became counterproductive to list 20 recommendations where each concern had a corresponding recommendation as that reduced the Committees work to specific concerns whereas recommendations were there to address broader issues. For example, the concerns around slow progress in transformation and training of coaches because essentially the Committee had accepted that the EPG was the body monitoring the pace of transformation, held federations accountable and had punitive measures for non-transformation by federations. In the final recommendation, in the absence of a system in place the Committee would have a case in saying SRSA had to monitor transformation but because there was the EPG which had produced three reports to date since its establishment. Considering the delegated role of monitoring transformation to the EPG that still did not absolve the executive in ensuring there was transformation and intervention in its absence. On the concern about 5 to 76 federations the Committee could call the EPG to account as to how many federations to date apart from the original 5 had moved in terms of transformation.

The proposals on public hearings though relevant were proposals for resolution of the Committee on work for reports like the BRRR and the programme of the Committee.

The Chairperson concurred that possibly public hearings though were needed that required adjustments to the Committees budget. She also recommended that in quarter 4 the Committee had to ensure that SRSA accounted in how far implementation of recommendations had gone.

Mr Moteka cautioned that the work of the EPG did not substitute or absolve the Committee of its responsibilities. His recommendation on limited access to facilities spoke directly to slow transformation and therefore he maintained that recommendation should be included in the adopted report.

The Chairperson asked whether the Committee accepted the report with the amendments made from the inputs from members.

Mr Bergman asked if the Committee would be allowed first to see the amendments or were they to approve the report in the hope of their inputs being reflected later on?

Mr Thebehae said there would still be a consideration of the report after having included the changes.

The Committee supported Mr Thebehae’s proposal that the report be shelved for adoption on another day.

Proposed Committee oversight visit to the Free State
Mr Thebehae explained that most members would leave on a Sunday for the Free State where the Committee would be on oversight for the whole week from the 19 September to the 23 September 2016. He then explained the logistics, including the matter of early notification by members that would not be in the Free State the whole week as there had been an instruction from the House Chairperson that previously Committees had had a tendency where members did not notify staff timeously to cancel accommodation for the whole week. The result was that Parliament paid for wasteful accommodation.

He detailed the programme for each day of the oversight visit including the federations the Committee would be interacting with and the walkabouts at sport focus schools in that province. The Committee would be visiting some municipalities to see how the MIG had been utilised including visits to sports facilities.
The Committee would also visit high performance centres.

The Committee argued at length about members that would not be in the Free State for the whole oversight duration with a final consensus that the Committee assistant be notified immediately after the meeting by members as to their availability.

The meeting was adjourned.