Sport and Recreation SA on its Annual Performance & Strategic Plans; Bid for Commonwealth Games 2022

Meeting report

Matters arising from the Committee's work with Sport and Recreation South Africa (SRSA)
Athletics South Africa (ASA)
Mr Alec Moemi, Director General: SRSA, briefed the Committee briefly on pre-presentation issues, some of which were matters arising from previous meetings. He said that the polarisation and paralysis along racial lines at ASA had continued even after the intervention and talks by SRSA. Around 2009 the majority of provinces had started pushing for a pseudo takeover of ASA seeing that the regions were mostly black African led. The South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC) intervention there, which had led to a new conference that had elected the so called “unity list”- which said that the board and the executive would be led by predominantly black administrators, so that ASA administration would be led by predominantly white administrators. Mr Leonard Chuene had then been elected the President of ASA. Three years after that election there were maladministration allegations at ASA whereby the Ministry had requested SASCOC to intervene. After the intervention there was still dissatisfaction whereby the National Sport and Recreation Amendment Act, 2007 allowed the Minister to intervene on his own accord, which was what actually happened. Based on the commission report which had found wrongdoing, SRSA had asked people to recuse themselves as a way of helping ASA move forward.

SRSA had arranged for a new ASA conference where Adv James Evans was elected president. Similar allegations to those alleged with the previous president surfaced again where SASCOC commissioned an inquiry whose report indicated that there had been wrongdoing again. It had been further found that the board had contravened the revised Code and Report on Governance Principles for South Africa (King III) whereafter the suspension of the Chief Operations Officer (CEO) for alleged wrongdoing: Adv Evans had then declared himself an executive chairperson. That meant that as the chairperson of the board he would also be the CEO. Since then the Ministry had requested Adv Evans to step aside so that no further harm could be caused to ASA and the sport of athletics. Unfortunately he had adamantly refused, so much so, that SRSA had three litigation cases it had to defend. Due to that unending battle between SRSA and Adv Evans sponsors left ASA. As SRSA with SASCOC were briefing ASA structures on what the commission had found, what essentially happened then was that the Comrades, the Two Oceans and the Soweto Marathon properties of ASA, which are on concession to private companies that deliver them, were negotiated with the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) by Adv Evans. SABC then paid ASA directly for the delivery of those properties instead of the companies that normally delivered them. As that was 2012 there was a huge dispute by the three companies who were then compelled to give SABC the rights to broadcast the properties without SABC paying them, as the money had already been transferred to ASA. ASA at that time was also unwilling to share the money, which was where the dispute had emanated from. To save the Two Oceans and the Comrades from disrepute, the Western Cape and KwaZulu Natal Governments intervened that year and gave the companies some money to deliver the races.

As there was no money for the Soweto Marathon, the Gauteng South Athletics Club (GSAC) which delivered the marathon had been adamant that no marathon would take place. SRSA had fielded questions from print media and Parliament so that the Gauteng government with its provincial sports department and the National SRSA had eventually put up the money to host the marathon. However, since GSAC had not wanted to deliver the marathon based on the argument that if Adv Evans was to negotiate for the rights; he had to share the rights with the properties. GSAC had also found that SABC had a right to sue ASA since in exchange for the money; ASA was obligated to deliver the races so that SABC could broadcast them. In the absence of the races there was obviously a breach of contract between ASA and the SABC. SRSA had had to again intervene after the SABC lawyers had served papers on ASA citing the Minister as the second respondent. SRSA had convinced the SABC to shelve the matter provided that in 2013 SRSA would negotiate a better deal where SABC would get a discount to broadcast the race, whilst it would pay the rights money over to the properties. That deal had come to fruition in 2013 without any further issues.

SRSA had given the background to exhibit the weakness in the law that was currently being exploited by athletes, whereby the new National Sport and Recreation Amendment Act had a proposed amendment which spoke to the protection of federations from athletes.

The current case of Mr Jan Blignaut, a pole-vaulter that had injured himself at an ASA sanctioned event had been initiated at a time when ASA had just voted no confidence in Adv Evans and his Board. Adv Evans had obtained an interim interdict so that the interim committee of ASA after the vote of no confidence had been put on hold by the interdict whilst Adv Evans was considered to be in charge of ASA by law. In the midst of all that no one had noticed that Mr Blignaut’s case needed to be opposed in court. Since there was no defence in the matter the court handed a default judgement. SRSA's assessment of the case was that it could have won the case had it defended it as it had won a similar case earlier.

Cricket South Africa (CSA)
Mr Moemi said that though the transformation barometer showed cricket meeting its generic black targets essentially only Coloured and Indian players were being fielded with a few to no black African players. To that extent there had been gross dissatisfaction about the non-fielding of Aaron Phangiso at the Cricket World Cup (CWC) 2015. However, SRSA policy on selection of the team remained the same, which is selection remained the sole prerogative of the coach and selectors. Therefore SRSA had never ever in its history nor has it started in 2015 to prescribe selection to coaches and selectors in any sporting code.
The allegations during the CWC 2015 had been that the CEO of CSA, Mr Haroon Lorgat had sent an SMS to Mr Russell Domingo, the coach of the Proteas, saying that one more black player had to be put on the field. Further, it was alleged Minister Fikile Mbalula had said to Mr Lorgat that Mr Domingo add one more black player to the field. SRSA had then asked the coach to respond to whether he had received such instructions which he denied. However, the CSA board decided to institute its own inquiry into the matter based on the utterances of Mr Mike Horn, conditioning coach for the Proteas, who had said that he had been aware of the instruction. The inquiry found no basis for the allegations and Mr Horn apologised for the damage he had caused to the integrity of CSA. Over and above that, the Minister reaffirmed the SRSA policy on selection of national teams in a press briefing, and CSA held its own briefing to announce the results of its enquiry and to lay the matter to rest.

Basketball South Africa (BSA)
Mr Moemi said SRSA believed the issue here was simply ill-discipline amongst some of the national team players. He elaborated on the criteria and obligation after selection for national colours for each player. The culture of possibly making money whilst on national duty could not be found in rugby possibly because rugby players were well contracted and paid. However for most federations that were not as well-resourced; playing for the country was rather an issue of pride for players to be a representative at tournaments. Mr Moemi then made an example and comparison of how the issue with basketball had emanated using a historically similar case with Bafana Bafana.

He said some of the senior semi-professional players of the national basketball team had organised themselves to complain that they were owed money for national duty from about four years ago which they wanted paid. They had made the demands in a similar manner to Bafana, on the eve of the first Four Nations Basketball Tournament which SRSA had organised with three of the strongest countries in basketball on the continent. They had held the coach to ransom by refusing to play and threatening other players who were eager to play. On the list of 11 concerns, the players were raising only two concerns that could really be addressed by SRSA.

The coach then abandoned the first day of training camp to release all the players and re-select a new team where the ill-disciplined players were not selected and new ones replaced them. With dissatisfaction, the concerned group wrote letters that resulted in both parliamentary and media questions on the matter that SRSA had to clarify. The two issues deemed necessary to be addressed were addressed, and the new team proudly competed to receive a bronze medal in the tournament, after a seven year period of no international competition. With basketball as well, SRSA policy remained the same: selection was up to the coach so that if he wanted to select ill-disciplined players for future tournaments that was his prerogative.

Swimming South Africa
Mr Moemi said that the issue here was related to the previous one because how qualifiers worked and how the team got selected was important. He reminded the Committee of the stories of Mr Simon Magakwe during the 2012 Olympics together with Mr Greg Shushu, the weightlifter. He said that the Olympics had qualifying standards, where standard one/A was an athlete’s international ranking, whereby if an athlete was a Usain Bolt, that athlete did not have to go to trials to qualify for the Olympics. Therefore the top eight in the world of athletics qualified for the Olympics. Qualifying standard two/B was an athlete going for trials by competing in a meet. Qualifying standard C was where there were Olympic qualifiers tournaments where depending on the code, winners of position one–four with particular minimum qualifying times would qualify for the Olympics. Qualifying standard D/ Olympic solidarity qualification was the one that allowed the “Eel” from Equatorial Guinea, who had been the slowest swimmer, to participate and experience the Olympics without typically qualifying. That was by invitation and the athlete had to be a particular country’s best irrespective of the record times they were performing at. SA had been invited to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia the same way with Mr Sive Speelman. He then elaborated why SRSA had declined the invitation because of the cost to participate. Mr Shushu had also cited the Minister that though he had qualified he had not been selected for the 2012 Olympics. Mr Moemi reminded the Committee that before then SA used to send a 500 plus delegation to an Olympics who would bring home about one to three medals, which simply was not cost effective.

Using the standard A and B, SRSA had sent a delegation of about 128 athletes with support to the 2012 Olympics whereas Mr Shushu had qualified with standard C. With that he had taken SRSA to court that he had to be selected as he had qualified whereas SASCOC knew that the competitors in his class were beyond him in performance. Therefore SRSA had then enforced an SA standard above the Olympic standards before qualifiers that all federations had signed up to. The rules cannot change after an athlete had agreed to them. In terms of both swimmers and Mr Shushu, it was unfair to cry foul after they had agreed to the rules about qualifying as per the set standards . The country simply did have the resources to send large teams, that had no guarantee of medalling, to international competitions. SRSA preferred doing what countries like Jamaica and Kenya did, which was to send lean teams to competitions which produced at least 75-80% medals. Of course that had to be done gradually over a period of time.

Discussion
The Chairperson noted that the pre-briefing by SRSA had been necessary.

Mr S Ralegoma (ANC) welcomed the clarification by SRSA and was concerned about the bad precedent set by the case ASA had lost to Mr Blignaut as it could affect all federations in the future and therefore SRSA had to mitigate that precedent.
 
Mr D Bergman (DA) said that although no one argued about transformation needing to take place in cricket; the risk whether perceived or real, however was that when it came to the CWC, SA could be expelled from the International Cricket Council (ICC) so the Proteas no longer could participate in international tournaments. Therefore the Committee had to ensure that when CSA started “handling” the Proteas or CSA got “handled” by SRSA, such information did not suddenly appear in court papers when Afriforum had taken CSA to court. There should not be a possibility of CSA being expelled from the ICC.
 
Mr Bergman said that most of SAs medals generally had come from surprise athletes in terms of the Olympic team, in BMX, rowing and athletics. Therefore he agreed that indeed curtailing of costs was necessary though there would have to be a very transparent check and balance of seeing that no athlete could complain afterwards that though he had qualified he was being excluded because of colour, and that the checklist would be very well documented to guard against such opportunistic tendencies.

There had been an equestrian society conference that SASCOC intervened in which had been raised with the Committee where there were possibly race and administrative issues that needed to be addressed by SRSA and the Committee. Was there any merit to such concerns?

Ms S Malatsi (DA) asked whether it was not about time if that had already not been done to move to a standardised SA criterion of qualification for international major tournaments, so that athletes outside that barometer when federations felt strongly about their competitiveness: they could then fund said athletes themselves because the mismatch of what SRSA contributed to sending large teams to elite competitions against the output in terms of medals was unacceptable, over and above the fact that athletes always complained about being left out though they qualified.

Different from Mr Blignaut’s case he was concerned about the liability and protection of athletes who got either injured or sick during national duty; what was SRSAs and federations’ policy and stance on medical insurance for athletes? Ancillary to the update Mr Malatsi said he would have been grateful for an update on the current status of Boxing South Africa.

Mr M Filtane (UDM) urged the chairperson to not hesitate to call a special meeting of the Committee to deliberate on matters that were of interest internationally such as the developments in the Proteas during the recent CWC. He further suggested that SRSA becomes more involved in the contracting of players by federations for national duty and to ensure that there would be two clauses in those contracts namely: 1) when a player becomes semi-professional or professional and is on national duty, one is not allowed to boycott participation on the eve of an international game/ tournament. 2) All sporting codes are compelled to report such a case as that of Mr Blignaut’s to SRSA so that it is aware of such matters and that someone designated can then monitor such a situation.

Mr Moemi replied that in the 2012 London Olympics the athletes that had medalled were not surprise packages for SRSA because it had had its scientific support unit assess the selected team and to evaluate its competitors globally. SRSA had expected a silver medal from the rowing team based on those assessments such that when it was allocating money to SASCOC for that competition and the Paralympics that year, SRSA had ring-fenced money around athletes that its scientific support unit had declared possible medal winners and had a separate purse for the whole team as well, which SASCOC had not initially accepted. SRSA had maintained that it was and had not selected the athletes but was simply saying they needed proper support which spoke to the ring-fencing. All those athletes that had money ring-fenced around medalled in London where SRSA had asked SASCOC for seven medals and the country recovered six which was a success for SRSA.

The equestrian sport was historically a difficult sport to organise because of its nature. As a code the federation and SRSA could not afford the equipment for athletes to play the sport. Therefore all horse related codes were quite expensive whereby the clubs were run by parents owning from farms, with their farm hands and their neighbouring farmers. Show jumping had been the dominant equestrian sport since it had more than the other equestrian sports. Typically then, the Jockeys Association of South Africa (JASA), the Polo Association of South Africa (PASA) had been engaged by SRSA over the years to get them to fall under the umbrella of equestrian sports and both had eventually applied to be recognised as federations which would be part of equestrian. The show jumping clubs however, were currently refusing to be part of that umbrella whereby SRSA were saying the equestrian sports had to form an equestrian federation which would govern all the different horse related sports. SRSA together with SASCOC had given equestrian sports two years to form that federation whereby time was almost up and seemingly they had not done any work in setting up that structure, which had to be aligned to accommodate everyone else. There was currently panic over the possible withdrawal of recognition of equestrian sports which meant that SRSA would not fund those codes and whatever championships they would hold, would not be called SA championships neither could they represent the country in international competitions. The reason why show jumping equestrian did not want JASA to become part of the federation was that in recent years the leading jockeys were black African with JASA administration also being predominantly black.

In terms of federations paying for athletes they would want to take to competitions having qualified on qualifications standards C & D: the problem therein would be that those who could afford to pay their way to the Olympics would pay, which would bring a lot of corruption to sports. All that had to be instilled further into athletes was that when they qualified by the agreed to standards, which they knew: then they needed to be frank about accepting when they had failed to record the required times for qualification.

SRSA concurred with the idea of medical insurance for athletes; so much so that in the Netball Premier League (NPL) and the Basketball Premier League (BPL) it had bought medical insurance for the athletes. SRSA would also be bringing in phase 1 of Thabang Lebese Benefit programme which was intended to support all active athletes across all codes, as well as to buy burial cover for all destitute athletes. Previous talks between SRSA with National Treasury (NT) for this phase 1 of the program had cost about R97 million to cover all destitute former athletes that had National colours alone. Moreover SRSA would compel all federations to ensure that current athletes bought insurance, education and funeral policies out of their own money.

As far as SRSA was concerned the CSA and CWC 2015 matter was closed.

Regarding boxing, the loop was turning so much that where the regulator-Boxing SA- was being curtailed from doing its job then the current situation in boxing were boxers were not being paid would emerge. Unfortunately boxers were also mischievous in that though SRSA was trying to protect them from exploitation by promoters, they themselves chose to wave their rights by signing agreements with promoters; that deposits and guarantees for matches should not be paid over to Boxing SA, and that promoters would pay them after a bout.

The Chairperson thanked the DG for the pre-briefing. She also requested the Committee’s permission to make a media statement about the recent xenophobic attacks in SA.

Sport and Recreation SA (SRSA) Strategic Plan 2015-2020 & Annual Performance Plan 2015-2016
Mr Moemi then took the Committee through the Strategic Plan (SP) and the Annual Performance Plan (APP (see document). 27% of the 262 areas of activity in the National Sport and Recreation Plan (NSRP) had been attended to, with the ever contracting budget of SRSA. To implement the whole plan annually would cost about R10, 6 billion for the first ten years so that thereafter it would come to R6 billion then R4 billion going into the future. Therefore SRSA envisaged that the returning of the 15% Municipal Infrastructure Grant (MIG) for sport to SRSA would give its budget R3 billion to implement the NSRP over a 36 years period.
Only the National Sport and Recreation Amendment Bill, 2016 would be able to be passed in parliament during the current legislative cycle with the provision that SRSA also prioritise one more Bill from its legislative basket. SRSA currently felt that the South African Institute for Drug-free Sport Amendment Bill, 2016 was more important.

Advocate transformation in sport and recreation
SRSA envisaged that at least 80% of the national federations would be meeting their transformation targets by the end of five years from 2014 going forward.

For the first time the grant framework that SRSA was using spoke to linking success to transformation hence the R107 million transformation allocations set aside. That is, the federations which transformed and did well during national duty: they would be rewarded.
 
Discussion
Ms B Abrahams (ANC) asked what challenges there were regarding provinces auditing their facilities? When would the refurbishment and building of children’s parks start? What was the use of funding LoveLife seeing that its work was not very visible?

Mr Bergman said that possibly an introduction of e key performance indicator (KPI) similar to a customer survey to participants of the National Schools Sport Championships (NSSC) asking them for feedback on how well such a tournament had been organised?

Mr Malatsi asked what the mechanisms of accountability were, regarding provinces inability to spend their sport and recreation grants; ancillary to that was the transformation allocation to federations and what would then be the instrument to measure compliance to transformation targets achievement. Was the facilities count a change from and audit due to limitation of resources?

Mr L Ntshayisa (AIC) said that in club development there were recurring challenges that local clubs faced that SRSA needed to attend to. What intervention was SRSA thinking of putting in place to curtail the use of sport infrastructure monies for other priorities by municipalities?

Mr S Mabika (NFP) said that the sporting needs of the country far outweighed the budget Treasury allocated to SRSA and that was a known fact; however, was there a monitoring tool for the sporting equipment in provinces which had been handed over but was currently sitting in someone’s office/ storage facility, as had been the case in Limpopo that the Committee discovered during oversight?

How was SRSA budgeting for the National Sports Awards, seeing that there was revenue generated from the voting that the country did for its favourite Sports star?

Mr Filtane asked what negative impact would result from the passing of only one piece of legislation from the basket that SRSA would have wished to have had passed as a priority entirely?

In terms of harnessing the socio-economic contributions that can create a better life for all South Africans from the mission statement of SRSA: Mr Filtane did not see anything in the strategic goals referring to those socio-economic effects which would result from participating in sports. That sentiment was based on a conversation he had had with a fairly senior provincial official of SRSA about job creation through SRSA initiatives where the official had said that those effects would only be felt when SRSA ensured that there were concrete programmes that would create clearly identifiable jobs.

Could SRSA give the Committee a sample of the transformation activities it wished to rollout seeing that R107 million had been set aside towards that objective?

Ms D Manana (ANC) noted that there seemed to be misalignment between strategic objectives and the APP which could lead to audit queries: could that be looked into? How far was the process of establishing the Indigenous Games federation, which provinces had established a provincial structure which would fall under that federation, had SASCOC registered such a federation?

Did SRSA have a list of municipalities that already had children’s play parks?

How much resources had SRSA allocated to the Eminent Persons Group (EPG) to ensure that it fulfilled its mandate of holding federations accountable for transformation.

Mr Ralegoma was concerned about the delay SRSA anticipated in the processing of Bills by the leader of government business as 2016 was not a good year to program that processing of legislation in, as there was going to be local government elections. Could SRSA speak to the alignment of its strategic objectives, APP and the National Development Plan (NDP): Especially since sub programme 3 where matters concerning facilities; SRSA had referred them to the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA). That clarity needed to be emphasised so that COGTA could then take care of facilities in schools and communities.

The chairperson asked SRSA to actually speak to the real challenges that schools faced in participating in schools sport.

Mr Moemi replied that SRSAs quality assurance in terms of schools sport was that if one were too look at SRSAs 2011 SP and then compare it to the 2015/16 SP; one would see a vast difference in terms of SRSAs measurement of output. SRSA had engaged The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in 2012 to come and do a survey with the learners where learners were asked questions like: did you make friends? Did u enjoy the games and so on? The findings were an eye opener for SRSA on which areas it needed to improve in delivering the NSSC. It had since improved those areas one of which was edutainment.

SRSA had piloted a talent identification programme for the Ministerial Sports Bursary where there were currently 54 recipients that had been identified at the NSCC.

Since 2014 SRSA had also had its SP being checked for compliance by the Auditor-General SA (AGSA) using a template prepared by the Treasury where SRSA had been found to be complying.

Concerning provincial expenditure of SRSA funds for other priorities by provinces; the department had finally convinced Treasury to allow it to establish a schedule of penalties where provinces would now be penalised for such transgressions. Gradually the penalties were cumulative depending on the lateness to comply by each province.

The scorecard and the transformation charter were the only tools that SRSA was using to measure transformation in federations.

SRSA did monitor the use of equipment by provinces though end-user distribution was not entirely efficient. It had also standardised the tendering system where all provinces would buy from a list of suppliers on the SRSA supplier database. The department would certainly inform the Chief Audit Executive (CAE) on her next round of auditing provinces, to also audit whether the required clubs were getting their kit and equipment from provincial SRSA.

The sports awards budget was R20 million per year where SRSA never spent all that money since sponsors also assisted in leveraging that amount. SRSA would of course welcome more sponsorship for the awards, but those who would want to criticise the awards always doing that from a perspective that there was corruption in the awards did not help either as SRSA had envisaged that the awards should be paying themselves by 2015.

Concerning the play parks; SRSA showed the Committee pictures of a recent park handed over to a community in Virginia, in the Free State province. Mr Moemi noted that there was a big demand for those parks in small communities, together with combi-courts, outdoor gyms and recreational parks that SRSA was rolling out.

He said that municipalities simply lacked the capacity to audit and establish new sports facilities which was why SRSA was assisting therein. That was also why SRSA had decided to conduct a facilities count instead of an audit.

SRSA supported the South African Institute for Drug-free Sport (SAIDS) Amendment Bill, to be passed by 2016 so that SAIDS could be empowered to compel the testing of learners participating in sports at schools randomly.

Ms Sumayya Khan, Chief Operations Officer (COO), SRSA said that the funding that SRSA gave LoveLife was ring-fenced around that organisation. In the last three years LoveLife had aligned with the NSRP and its work assisted and enhanced the department’s NSSC programme and the youth camps programme as well.

Dr Bernadus Van Der Spuy, Chief Director: Strategic Support, SRSA said that SRSA had identified every area in the NSRP that needed to be enhanced and had therefore endeavoured to align the NSRP with the NDP even with the SP and the APP. The SP had then gone to every strategic objective where over five years SRSA had indicated how achievement would be reached.

In terms of harnessing the socio-economic contributions that can create a better life for all South Africans through sport; SRSA had put that statement as a mission with reference to sport tourism during hosting of large events, where jobs could be created and sport had a direct economic impact on South Africans. Moreover SRSA would be working closer with the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) to establish a baseline knowledge bank through a survey on how South Africans felt about the social cohesion impact of sport and how they supported the National teams.

On the recognition of indigenous games codes SASCOC currently only recognised Morabaraba and Juksei but SRSA had built into its 2015/16 operational plan, assistance of those not recognised indigenous games codes.

SRSA had also provided for internal and external client satisfaction surveys so that it could monitor the success of its programmes in its plans going forward.

Concerning a facilities count instead of a facilities audit was mainly because of the lack of money to complete an audit and the capacity to do that job.

Ms Khan also added that regarding the MIG funding, there were only about 237 facilities in the entire country though provinces had been receiving that funding for a while, which indicated that that funding was not being used for its intended purposes. In 2013 SRSA had started with the South African Local Government Association (SALGA) on a process to develop a proposal that had been communicated with Treasury to get the MIG to return to SRSA. Treasury had responded that it was reviewing all conditional grants funding for Local Government where it said that it preferred a consolidated funding that would cater to all the different sectors that benefited from conditional grants, instead of the MIG going to SRSA.

Mr Teboho Thebehae, Committee content advisor said that in reviewing the SRSA SP the Committee needed to be clarified how the SP aligned with the states 2014-19 Medium Term Strategic Framework(MTSF) where SRSA was signatory to outcome 14: Nation building and fostering social cohesion. How was SRSA translating its strategic outcomes in the APP to speak to that outcome 14? It was not clear from the last three APP strategic outcomes how that harmony between it and outcome 14 would be achieved.

The tools to assess the impact of SRSAs programmes on South Africans and how it was fostering social cohesion and building the nation needed to be clarified as well.

Regarding international agreements that SRSA had gone into the DG had indicated earlier that SRSA was reviewing all of them so as to check and maximise benefits for the country from those agreements. How far was that process?

Mr Mphumzi Mdekazi, Committee researcher said that the Committee had to push SRSA to monitor its programmes more vigilantly, especially where scholar transport was concerned in terms of intra and interschool sport competitions. Was that SRSAs or the Department of Basic Education (DBE) responsibility? Could the DG also speak to the planned 22 tournaments seeing that the SABC still was not broadcasting boxing in 2014/15?

Mr Moemi replied that the scholar transport responsibility was that of DBE, especially at schools were no fees were paid as they were those that suffered: where children had to choose between staying later to play sports versus going home at 13:00 when scholar transport had been provided for by DBE. DBE had committed twice that in the renewing of scholar transport tenders it would ensure that transport was provided for on sport Wednesdays going forward. Only the Free State province had lived up to that commitment since joint resolutions between DBE and SRSA on the issue in 2014.

Regarding boxing at SABC SRSA still had an interim interdict against it, where finally it had acceded to appointing a team of lawyers to deal with the court actions in that matter. He went onto to elaborate on the details of those matters.

Dr Van der Spuy said that all the APP strategic objectives were 100% aligned to the pillars on which the NDP was based on. However, it had elevated transformation to be a specific strategic objective, together with the goal to have an efficient and effective department.

In the original MTSF, sport originally had been a very small part of outcome 12 wherein the new MTSF made sport through SRSA, a larger part in outcome 14. On the SRSA SP, outcome14 indicators and mandate by SRSA had been clearly defined with targets. Moreover SRSA reported on a quarterly basis to the Presidency on the achievement of those targets. The SP was also informed by the NDP, the white paper on sport 2013, the NSRP and the Medium-Term Expenditure Frameworks (MTEFs). Then the areas identified in the SP were then broken down to annual targets that were to be monitored for achievement for the following three years of an MTEF. The targets then informed the APP which then established SRSAs operational plans. Operational plans had technical indicator descriptors (TID) which then described in detail what was meant by a particular indicator.

In terms of conditional grants, SRSA worked very closely with the grant unit to ensure that there was alignment between the grants framework and the documents informing SRSAs direction.

The Management Performance Assessment Tool (MPAT) was an ongoing performance management tool that SRSA was continuing to use: where the challenge was to really prove with the MPAT that it did make a difference in people’s lives.
SRSA had developed a case document for sport where it was publishing cases where the socio-economic impact for sport had been proven and was being measured.

South Africa’s Bid To Host 2022 Commonwealth Games
Mr Moemi said that the broken down amount to host the games had come to around R2.5 billion where SRSA had asked Treasury to add another R1 billion to the hosting of the games. That additional amount was so that SRSA could go identify and prepare a different set of athletes from the current medal winners through a parallel operation excellence (OPEX) as it anticipated that current elite athletes would be nearing their peak forms by 2022.
Furthermore SRSA believed strongly that hosting the COMMONWEALTH in 2022 would be a great stepping stone for a future Olympic bid by SA.
On the 2 of September 2015 member states of the commonwealth would be voting for the hosts of the 2022 games, where the only candidate to vote for was just EThekwini.

The chairperson thanked SRSA and noted that the she hoped that the recent xenophobic attacks would not affect the commonwealth delegations view of SA, which would be coming to inspect eThekwini.

Mr Filtane reiterated that the Minister of SRSA, the federations could give their voice to the condemnation of xenophobia in SA but urged the chairperson to also add her voice as a Member of Parliament (MP). He was satisfied also that SRSA could make a case for the socio-economic impacts it was having in people’s lives through its programmes.

Ms Manana also shared Mr Filtane’s sentiments adding that some of those pictures in digital media were also digitally imposed fakes but were damaging the country’s image.

The chairperson then reminded the Committee that there had already been a plenary session on xenophobic attacks led by the President, Mr Jacob Zuma. Moreover there had also been church debates on that matter.

The meeting was then adjourned.