Here’s hoping for the truth in Sascoc probe

Asking the correct questions, more often than not, is more difficult than finding the correct answers. So this week, interspersed between the occasional rambling witness and a retired judge breaking the monotony by answering his cellphone, the questions raised by the Zulman inquiry into Sascoc governance rang louder than the answers submitted by witnesses.

Not all the answers were dull, however, and witness responses made some clanging noises of their own.

Within just two days, the inquiry committee has heard a number of the burning issues which have kept the pot boiling in recent years within the embattled Olympic body.

Perhaps the most damning allegations made this week, as the long-awaited inquiry got under way, were fired at Sascoc president Gideon Sam.

Though he looked to have swept aside former chief executive Tubby Reddy on the eve of the inquiry, with Reddy facing the axe in a long-running power feud between the organisation’s bosses, Sam was being set up for a grilling from the committee.

And while the allegations were not new, the committee heard for the first time that Sam was a director for service provider Accelerate Sport and had allegedly disrupted an investigation and forced a legal dispute between Sascoc and the SA Fitness Sport Aerobic Federation in order to

Wesley Bo on

protect a “friend”.

Sam will have a chance to defend himself later in the six-week inquiry, as will Reddy, who was also among those criticised by witnesses in the early stages of the process.

Not everyone who appeared this week, however, managed to get their points across, perhaps highlighted by a wrestling club president whose claims of Sascoc breaking the Olympic charter by eliminating one of five continen- tal rings devolved into a convoluted but valiant attempt to stand up for athletes.

What he meant to say was that Sascoc had denied wrestlers a chance to compete at the Rio Olympics by shutting the door on the African Championships qualifiers.

It’s an important point regarding qualifying criteria, which in many cases in recent years has been controversially exclusive, with various federations claiming they were bullied into signing off on qualifying policies.

But the inquiry panel, which clearly knows little about Olympic sports, won’t ask the right questions if witnesses are not making seemingly valid points.

It’s going to be a long process, which may well extend beyond the expected closing date, and the most significant role-players are provisionally scheduled to appear in the closing stages of the inquiry.

When they do testify, the inquiry panel won’t have much firepower to dig their way to the roots of various issues if the witnesses are not in a position to explain basic processes in the first place.

Thus far, the inquiry has opened a few cans of worms, which may already have been unsealed but may never be resolved if they slip through the committee’s grasp.

The quality of witnesses is key, and if the right people take the stand, opening the door for the committee to ask the right questions, we may finally get the right answers. Maybe even the truth.