Canoeing South Africa rallies the rebels to oust Sascoc board
Olympic body faces unhappy federations and bleak finances
● Disgruntled sports bodies have banded together to demand a special general meeting at which they want to get rid of the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) board.
Canoeing SA sent a letter on Friday to Sascoc’s acting CEO, Ravi Govender, telling him it had received support from 29 other federations backing its call for the meeting.
That’s more than the third of member bodies required by the Sascoc constitution.
Canoeing SA wants the meeting “held on a digital platform within the next 30 days”, which would make the deadline June 7.
The proposed agenda is twofold. One is “to move a vote of no confidence in the board of Sascoc and to have them relieved of their duties with immediate effect”.
The second is to appoint no more than three administrators to run the organisation until elections are finalised.
Acting Sascoc president Aleck Skhosana said the board would discuss the issue tomorrow.
Canoeing’s call caps a tough week for the Sascoc executive, during which it took a pounding in parliament and on the balance sheet.
To boot, Mark Alexander, Sascoc’s longest-serving executive member, resigned, saying he had too much work at SA Rugby and World Rugby. His departure means just two elected representatives remain. The others are co-opted or ex officio.
Sascoc, through Gride Investments, owns nearly 4-million shares in Phumelela Gaming, which went into business rescue on Friday. Its shares were suspended from trading.
About R30m has been wiped off Sascoc’s books since it was valued at R34m on March 31 2019. If it were to be removed entirely, Sascoc’s total assets from that time would drop from R48.5m to less than R14m.
Govender told the sports, arts & culture committee and the select committee for education, technology, arts & culture on Wednesday that Sascoc was expecting an R8m loss for the current financial year.
Sascoc’s retained income, R3.47m at last count, could change from black to red, if it hasn’t already.
Govender said Sascoc had been hurt by the National Lotteries Commission cutting its annual grant by R100m since 2017.
Officials within sports bodies are questioning why the department of trade & industry, which runs the lottery, is making decisions that severely affect sport policy.
Even the sport department’s funding model is not conducive for individual bodies running effective programmes that develop athletes from age-group to elite level.
Sascoc still survives although it operates under austerity measures, with athletes no longer receiving Operation Excellence funding and key Sascoc personnel not being replaced after they have resigned.
Olympic codes in the country have been emasculated by bureaucrats.
There is hope in some quarters that a new board — although it’s likely to include at least a couple of old faces — will turn things around .
Sascoc’s image has been hammered in the past few years amid governance breaches and evidence of money wastage.
It would seem different sports bodies had different core reasons for supporting Canoeing SA’s call, but the common thread perhaps is a feeling of disconnect between themselves and the board members.
Canoeing’s call came less than 24 hours after the Sascoc board had given notice to federations that it planned to call its own special meeting, taking account of Covid-19 restrictions, to give feedback on various issues. Canoeing’s call is the fourth for a special meeting at Sascoc within six months.
The first, last November, was to scrap Sascoc’s tough Olympic qualifying criteria and replace them with the easier, internationally accepted standards.
At the time some federations already demanded the board be pushed out.
The second special meeting was held in January, to make constitutional changes to allow for early elections. The ballot was scheduled for March 28, but was postponed indefinitely because of the pandemic.
Since then Sascoc has been hit by controversies.
Acting president Barry Hendricks was placed on leave by the board after a legal opinion by an independent advocate stated he had acted unethically when having a discussion with Tennis SA (TSA) president Gavin Crookes.
The discussion resulted in the alleged blocking of TSA board member Ntambi Ravele from the Sascoc list of nominees.
Three different investigations are running on the matter, two by Sascoc and one by TSA.
Hendricks alleged that the board was no longer constituted properly and should be disbanded.
A Sascoc board member this week said Hendricks had declared a dispute with the umbrella body over his suspension.
There was a feeling in some quarters that because all but one of the board members intended standing in the Sascoc elections, they were conflicted in their decision to suspend Hendricks.
Some sports bodies are unimpressed at recent statements that Sascoc still has to make further constitutional changes before elections can be held.
“We left the January meeting thinking we had done everything that was necessary,” said one official.