Excesses of Sascoc board truly astonishing

Alot of people have testified to the Zulman Inquiry over the last few weeks, with the three-member committee getting some real insight into the destructive nature of South African sports administration, and there is only one thing thus far on which the witnesses have unanimously agreed. Sascoc is a rotting mess.

Most of the revelations extracted by the inquiry committee have been repeated for years. Allegations of financial misappropriation, infighting and bullying have become synonymous with the country’s Olympic body.

But the guilty parties have had nowhere to run while sitting in the witness box, and labour law expert Shamima Gaibie has been particularly effective in gathering crucial information by targeting key areas of concern.

The money the Sascoc board has been lavishing on themselves is astounding, and though the issue is not being raised for the first time, the “no comment” option hasn’t been available to witnesses on the stand.

The long-running complaint of Sascoc bosses flying business class is hardly a scandal. Board members in any organisation are likely to receive similar luxuries.

But the extravagant spending sprees which have come to light have been ludicrous. First-class flights and five-star accommodation for board members to attend events that don’t even require their presence, spouses and partners receiving daily allowances of R2 400 while travelling overseas on Sascoc’s account, president Gideon Sam pocketing R6 000 daily allowances and allegedly still double dipping, R5.6 million on a disciplinary inquiry into three staff members. Indeed, the reckless waste of limited funds by the non-profit body’s executive

Wesley Bo on

has been extreme.

It’s also become clear why the media has been stonewalled from any attempts to dig to the bottom of a heap of allegations. For one, it turns out it’s a deep pit, and two, there is all sorts of dirt at the bottom that people are trying to hide.

It seemed relatively obvious before the inquiry began that the SS Griffin report released by Reddy, after he apparently had the office scanned for bugs, was tainted. Someone had spent hours working on the document on senior manager Jean Kelly’s computer, and Reddy refers to himself in the first person in a report which was supposed to have been written by someone else.

So it was bizarre when he sat straight-faced in the box this week, insisting it was legit. But Gaibie did some digging, and what she revealed was astounding.

Reddy compiled most of the document himself, creating an elaborate story around a relatively brief report issued by SS Griffin, and then tried to pass it off as evidence in his defence.

As Gaibie explained to a seemingly baffled Reddy: “This is tantamount to fraud.”

Sascoc deputy president Hajera Kajee was another who took to the stand and painted an image of herself and her peers as being not only greedy, but useless too.

Asked by committee member Ali Bacher whether she thought board allowances were exorbitant, Kajee agreed, but she didn’t explain why the executive hadn’t simply changed the policy.

The tales of deception, fraud and backstabbing have unravelled an image of a Sascoc board that is so damaged, even its own executive agrees it should be dissolved.

The long-term solution, however, cannot be tackled until all the dirty laundry has been aired and the inquiry committee compiles its final report.

And with Sam preparing to appear before the panel next week, no doubt with more mud to fling at the opposing faction, it remains unclear how anyone is going to fix a machine that has been stripped bare by a self-inflicted virus.

At least we now know for sure that the virus exists, and nobody can hide from the facts. Once they ascertain just how much damage it has caused, considering how ineffective the Sascoc membership has become in solving its own problems, we’ll probably also have to rely on the committee to find a cure.