Sport and Recreation SA on its 2014 Strategic Plan & input from SA Institute on Drug Free Sport, South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC) SA Local Government Association (SALGA)

Meeting report

SRSA Strategic Plan 2014-2019 & SRSA Annual Performance Plan 2014/15:
[This meeting started earlier than advertised and part was missed by PMG]
Mr Alec Moemi (Director General: SRSA) spoke to the legal framework governing sport in the country, which the Department was intending to reformulate. SRSA planned to bring one amendment to the Safety at Sports and Recreational Events Act, because it had unintended limitations. That Act had affected community sports adversely, as compliance issues for rural sports tournament organizers were prohibiting the development of such events. SRSA was currently requesting that some of the requirements in applications for rural sports tournaments be waved in exceptional cases, such as the payment of a deposit to the South African Police Service (SAPS). The next amendment that SRSA was bringing to the Committee was the power for the South African Institute for Drug Free Sports (SAIDS) to test children in schools as provided for in the proposed South African Institute for Drug-free Sport Amendment Act. This was due to the increase in the incidence of drug abuse and performance enhancing substances used by athletes even in high schools. The fact that school governing bodies currently, had the option to opt in or out before SAIDS could conduct the tests had resulted in a lot of litigation against SAIDS, even though it was simply carrying out its mandate. The other law that SRSA was amending was the South African Boxing Act, by repealing it completely. It would be replaced by the South African Combat Sport Bill, which would regulate all combat sports, including those that were outside the law, like traditional boxing ( Musangwe) in Limpopo.

The Inter-governmental Relations Framework Act together with the Division of Revenue Act were laws that SRSA was intending to amend as well, since almost half of its budget had been consecutively transferred to provinces over the last few years. In trying to regulate its working relationship with provinces, SRSA had introduced a new grant framework.

Strategic Influences
In looking at strategic influences on its Strategic Plan (SP) and its Annual Performance Plan (APP), the country had become a dominant force in sports administration globally, where SRSA Deputy Minister, Mr Gert Oosthuizen had became the Chairperson of the Conference of Parties on Sport Development. In the coordination of that body’s work, 132 countries had ratified the programme of action for that body. South Africa also chaired the United Nations Organization for Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO) sport for peace and development working group of the Secretary General.

At the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), SA had been Africa’s only executive representative and coordinator, whose term would be ending in November 2014. SRSA contributed about 60% of the resources for the regional WADA through SAIDS. SA was also chairing the International Anti-Doping Agency (IADA), a loose governments’ anti-doping arrangement, globally. The country had recently put a bid in to host the IADA offices so that SAIDS could play a more important role in that sector; moreover the country was also a member of the Institute of National Anti-Doping Organisations (INADO). In Sport Development Region Five of the African Union Sports Council SA was the current SG of the region through Mr Mbuso Mbhele, where SRSA contributed about 90% of the resources to run the Council and the regional games, which were to be hosted by Zimbabwe in 2014. The country had also chaired the Conference of African Ministers of Sport (CAMS) for three terms. The swimming federation in the African Continent had been consistently chaired by SA and other sporting codes. Mr Gideon Sam (President: SASCOC) was the Vice President of the Commonwealth Games Association (CGA). SRSA believed that the White Paper on Sport and Recreation which was its official policy remained the national policy. The last National Sports Plan which was enacted in 1958 had prioritised the white child for eight times more funding than the black child; it had prioritised Cricket and Rugby and later on Athletics. Since then the SA Afrikaner had been dominant in both cricket and rugby largely due to the success of that plan and that phenomenon was still prevalent to date. The current National Sports and Recreation Plan (NSRP) was adopted in November 2011 to reverse the legacy of its predecessor. Cabinet approved the plan on the 18 of May 2012, since then it remained an unfunded mandate even though it was being implemented. Of the SRSA R880 million budget allocation each year, R525 million went to provinces as a conditional grant. R210 million was given to sporting federations and SASCOC as transfers, that left SRSA with about R90 million for its administration. Above all of this SRSA had received a letter cutting back its allocation by one percent for the next three years at least, over and above the unfunded NSRP. That of course had had adverse effects on the funding of SRSA entities and its other stakeholders dependent on it.

National Development Plan
The National Development Plan (NDP) was highlighted that SA needed to be realistic about its sporting results, as it was a developing country that judged itself on developed countries standards of excellence. SA hardly ever judged itself against Nigeria, Kenya or Brazil, but compared itself to New Zealand, Australia and others, where the former three had comparable Gross Domestic Products (GDPs) and levels of development. Even though the nation expected its national representatives to do as well as those developed countries, the NDP specified which countries could be used as a yardstick for performance. Participation approximating the country’s demographics had been an issue that the NDP agreed to. Certain single issue or specific interest groups had threatened litigation against SRSA in that regard. SRSA was of the opinion that a country simply could not have 87% African youth participating in under 18 sports, but have none in the national junior teams. That issue was not racial but was an issue of sustainability as the white population was constantly shrinking in SA. This was evinced by the Human Science Research Council (HSRC) and Lancet reports, which had found that the increase in the emigrating white population had moved from four to 18% since ‘94.

Strategic Planning 2014 - 2019
An active nation emphasizes that as many South Africans as possible should participate in sports. Of the four to six percent internationally recognized as athletically gifted within societies, an active nation affords identification of that talent. The winning nation theme spoke largely to high performance work that SASCOC does with the National Teams and their performance on the global stage. Sport as a tool largely spoke to the obligation that SRSA was expected to fulfil as the Minister had signed a performance agreement which spoke to sport utility as a tool to promote unity, reconciliation, nation building and social cohesion. SRSA disagreed with the notion that the biggest challenge facing sports was money, because in using the Olympics as a measure and on a rand for rand base, what SA invested in sports compared to Jamaica, Kenya and others was having very weak returns as the country was underperforming. That was mainly due to the fact that the country was trying to be everything to everyone. SRSA was satisfied with SASCOCs decision to prioritise funding certain sports, even though the funding would remain equitable it was unsustainable to do so equally. That phenomenon of sponsoring sports like figure skating and other winter sports which did not have a rich legacy in the country was the reason SA was performing dismally internationally. The White Paper on Sports and Recreation had since, clearly explained that SRSA would fund equitably, but not equally. The bigger challenge was access rather than money as it seemed that some federations were putting artificial glass ceilings to prevent many black people from participating, especially in sports such as rugby. SASCOC had since given those sport federations until December 2014 to align to the new geo-political boundaries. For instance the Blue Bulls were called the Northern Bulls even though they were only catering for North Gauteng and Pretoria, instead of including Mpumalanga and Limpopo together with the regions they were already accommodating. Additionally the issue of conflict of interest where governance was concerned, remained contested. For example, the Free State Cheetahs board of directors constituted 80% of the directors of the Free State Rugby Union. Moreover, that union governed only one franchise, the Cheetahs. That meant that if the Union were able to support 40 new players in one year in that province, it would not matter that there were possibly about 180 talented rugby players in the province as the obvious conclusion would be that all 40 of those players would come from the Cheetahs development.
 SRSA wanted to liberalise all of that, so that it could ensure equitable access as per its mission.

SRSA’s insistence on equitable access to participation also spoke to a healthier quality of life for citizens, since currently so much expenditure went to health with very poor outcomes. Increasing the health budget at the expense of the sport budget annually was simply treating symptoms and not the root causes to those poor outcomes. The World Health Organization (WHO) Annexure 17 dealing with SA, stated that the burden of morbidity of diseases in the country, was driven by the so-called ‘lifestyle diseases’. The medication to treat any of those diseases one would find, was more than the entire budget of SRSA. During the previous political dispensation, there were very few cases of those lifestyle diseases as teachers were trained then. Without any facilities, they managed to make exercising fun by creating sing-along recitations. The more active the nation, the less the prevalence of those lifestyle diseases. SRSA was for that reason appealing for the health budget to be cut back in favour of the sports budget to get citizens to be more active.

Strategic Goals 2014 – 2019
In terms of goal one, SRSA had Mr Sam Ramsamy was coordinating the World Walking Month in October 2014, as declared by The Association For International Sport For All (TAFISA), as part of the International Organising Committee (IOC). SRSA would from 2014, record how many citizens were participating annually and use that as a baseline, so that over the next five years SRSA would seek to increase participation by 5% annually through sport participation campaigns. Should SRSA succeed: 25% more citizens would have participated in active lifestyle activities by 2019.

Goal 2: Sport And Recreation Sector Adequately Transformed
The Minister had appointed a sport transformation commission at the sport and recreation Indaba. Dr Somadoda Fikeni chaired that Eminent Persons Group (EPG) on sports transformation Committee, with eminent persons in society and sports. The EPG administered the Transformation Charter and the Transformation Scorecard, whereby all federations had signed up to the former. SRSA and SASCOC issued a transformation barometer annually, which had been piloted with the codes, soccer, netball, cricket and rugby. From those results sports federations were found to not have met the targets set out and agreed upon since ’94. SRSA had then decided to revise the targets and to add 11 more codes to the original five as signatories to the charter, and to be measured annually going forward. SRSA had discarded the quota system in favour of the multidimensional scorecard with seven dimensions, measuring a federation’s governance, expenditure of allocations, gender demographics from coaching to referring and international representativity in governing bodies. For federations that were complying with the targets, their funding would be increased. SRSA had formulated a new two tier grant framework, where tier one had a 10% of a federations annual budget given to it, guaranteed whether it complied or not. Tier two was incentivised to link the remaining 90% of the annual budget of a federation to the seven dimensions of the scorecard that is, with each dimension complied with; a federation would receive points which increased the funding percentage received from SRSA.

Goal 3: Athletes achieve international success
SRSA would continue to fund SASCOC to ensure that the Bloemfontein National High Performance Training Centre developed to the level of any other University High Performance Academy. That was because currently it would cost R 40 000 to train the country’s top athletes in Bloemfontein annually rather than the R278 000 per athlete when using academies based at universities. The issues with those university academies was that though they were national property, the institutions were saying all specialists used for the development of those athletes, needed to be paid professional rates.

Goal 6: An efficient and effective organisation
SRSA currently had a score of three on the Monitoring and Performance Assessment Tool (MPAT) used by the State. In 2013 only four National Departments made a three and there were no Departments with a four, with SRSA being amongst the top four. SRSA had also targeted to remain receiving unqualified audits annually, going towards 2019.

Tabling Contingencies
In the Fourth Parliament it was agreed that SRSA could re-table its 2014-2019 SP and 2014/15 APP in the Fifth Parliament so that if the new Portfolio Committee felt there needed to be changes, those could be effected during the Adjustment Budget in September 2014.

Strategic Project Renewal
20 Years of democracy
In celebrating 20 Years of democracy SRSA had already held a commemorative match between SA and Australia in cricket as that country played the first match against SA after its readmission into International cricket post ’94. Children born in 1994 would be participating in Youth Camps in 2014, which were another tool SRSA was using to fulfil its social cohesion mandate as per outcome 14. Those camps were seen as a lifelong commitment by its participants, in the same vein as boy scouts and girl guides. Ekhaya was a social and co-operate mobile hub that SRSA took to major International multi-coded sporting events for the benefit of SA athletes, SASCOC and its other stakeholders and partners. That type of entity had now been copied by other countries as was seen in the London Olympics of 2012.

Facilities
SRSA had finalised the National Facilities Plan (NFP) with seven grades of facilities. SRSA was currently insisting that Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) and National Treasury agree that the ring fenced 15% Municipal Infrastructure Grant (MIG) should be harvested from all municipalities and consolidated into one grant for building. The reason was that, currently, municipalities that were being given the 15% to build sports facilities were redirecting that funding to other things. SASCOC and the SA Local Government Association (SALGA) also supported that proposal as well. SRSA was sympathetic to struggling municipalities that used that money for other things because they could not be expected to build facilities when there were threats of water and electricity shortages and cuts. This was why it was insisting on harvesting the MIG. Secondly there was unevenness, which was symptomatic of the equitable share formula challenges, as 15% could not build a proper facility for some municipalities, which of course could not be maintained anyhow. Inversely, for other municipalities, 15% was so much that Etwatwa in Gauteng wanted to build a R700 million facility, which of course SRSA could not agree to. If that harvesting did not occur, the status quo would remain and even if facilities where built the problems with maintaining them would persist.

Recreation
SRSA believed in promoting active recreation programmes, particularly where facilities were not a key feature in completing those activities. It had started Cycle for Life, where it had already began making township bicycle circuits and distributing bicycles to township bicycle clubs. Cycle for Life would be launched officially in the near future as recreational cycling for a healthy lifestyle programme.

School sport
This programme remained SRSA’s biggest programme as it received 40% of its annual budget; and that was driven by SRSA’s belief that school sport was an important component and catalyst to sport development. Towards that end SRSA had adopted a top school league format that currently included 11 codes with about 15 740 schools registered, with only about 11 000 active participants, sadly. That was mainly due to the fact that some of the schools had not played any sports of any kind for the last 18 years. SRSA had assisted in getting those schools that actively showed interest in wanting to restart their sporting programmes, get sportswear, equipment and a self-help manual for teachers that were driving the interest in the 16 prioritised sport codes for school sport.

Mr Moemi suggested that SRSA be given a day where it could brief the Committee on the challenges and achievements of getting school sport up and running in SA. The South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU) had previously demanded that the Minister and DG of Basic Education should resign and SADTU had agreed on a go-slow, instructing teachers to stop any extracurricular activities. Moreover with the SA Schools Act making school sport optional, SRSA felt that Basic Education needed to push for an amendment to the Schools Act to make sport compulsory and a part of the curriculum. In independent schools children, through their parents, had to play at least three codes as part of the curriculum. Moreover a most challenging issue was the clustering of physical education with life orientation as one subject, because that had been the biggest weakness of the democratic dispensation as there was no more training for physical education teachers, which were the drivers of school sport. Life orientation teachers also had a burdened curriculum as arts and culture, sport, personal hygiene and sex education all were to be taught by them. Therefore bringing back physical education as a compulsory curriculum subject would be advantageous, but Basic Education was arguing that that would add a R3.5 billion tag to their salary bill which was unappetising to argue for. SRSA was suggesting that the Sports and Recreation Committee should have a joint Committee with Basic Education to see how far it could go in getting school sports going. By 2017 SRSA believed it would have a national school sport championship of 25 000 youngsters.

Federations
SRSA was thinking of building a sports house which would house itself, SASCOC and all the other smaller federations. Moreover it would want to have a soccer pitch on those grounds so as to avoid renting municipal stadia at exorbitant amounts, and to share functions amongst those federations from auditors to other technical functions.

Sport and Recreation South Africa
SRSA was currently operating with a staff of 118 whereby its target was to have a 297 staff complement. Its typical staff turnover was three years for recent varsity sports graduates; consequently SRSA was also targeting staff retention as a goal going forward.

2014/15 Deliverables: Active Recreation
Even though SRSA had always been called by its acronym it had always been more focused on sports, but since 2012 it had begun a partnership with Wide Open Spaces (WOS) where SRSA had been rolling out recreational facilities such as recreational halls in municipalities like the City of Johannesburg. SRSA was currently piloting 12 recreational halls with Johannesburg. SRSA had also finalised its own sport mascot (TAKUMA) which had been used in the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) tournament. Hagozonke had been given to SAIDS to promote anti-doping in schools and Shingo would be used to promote school sport: that had been mainly driven by the belief that if children were so entertained by cartoons and were willing to pay to watch them, then the mascots could also generate interest and income for SRSA to further drive its development projects. The sports bus was modelled along the idea of an ice cream truck so as to indicate to children when there was a sporting event or a coaching clinic at the nearest sports grounds. SRSA had commissioned 12 busses one of which would be given to SASCOC, one to each province and two would remain with national SRSA.

Participation Promotion Campaigns
With the UNITE Campaign SRSA was looking at hosting a super weekend in September 2014, based on the Nelson Mandela Sports and Culture day for social cohesion, SRSA had held in 2013. The Sports and Culture day had raised R11 million towards the Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital. SRSA was thinking of selling the ’95 International Rugby Board (IRB) World Cup Jersey that Nelson Mandela wore. The asking price was about R50 million to keep the jersey for 10 years then SRSA would fetch it from that owner. Mr Moemi went on to elaborate on the super weekend SRSA was planning. In October SRSA would also coordinate a ten city Big Walk across all nine city capitals of SA with an estimated target of 100 000 participants. SRSA was also asking Cabinet to declare the first Friday of October to be National Recreation Day, where companies, the state and other businesses were to allow employees to do aerobics and other physical activities.

Community Sport: Rural Sport Improvement Programme
With this programme SRSA was intending to empower amaKhosi through the National House of Traditional Leaders (NHTL) to develop sport in their constituencies through distribution of equipment and some seed money to arrange tournaments. 16 amaKhosi had so far been empowered. SRSA had also rolled out modified sport facilities as young people seemed to be more interested in that, like the T20 cricket tournament and the five-a-side soccer game. The National Sport Volunteer Corps had so far registered 1 500 volunteers on its database from former athletes, sport administrators and coaches to help with school sport development. Indigenous Games were also becoming more formalised with the elaboration of additional codes like drie stokkies. There would also be a cultural festival as part of those games with an invitation to the Scots to come and showcase the Scottish Highland Games.

The Andrew Mlangeni golf development programme had been handed over to the SA Golf Development Board to improve the profile of the game, so that more young black players could enter and develop their game further. A number of golf courses were being accredited so as to increase the current 34 players that were being supported through that programme.

2014/2015 Deliverables: Scientific Support
Through the Ministerial Sport Bursary Programme, talented learners from grade eight to matriculation, were supported through a R100 000 sport grant each, to attend sport focus schools to nurture their talents further. SRSA was also about to sign off with the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) on Operation Victory Lap: a programme where matriculants were recruited for military training in the army, whereupon qualification they would be conscripted as athletes even though they would be receiving army salaries. Those athletes would not be seeing in the general qualifiers, but would be seeing separately by SASCOC.

Major Events
SA had recently won an award for being the best Sports Tourism destination in the world. SRSA had a planned theme that had been presented before Cabinet, which would be its hosting plan for the World Military Games (WMG) that it would co-host with the Department of Defence (DoD) in 2017. In 2018 SRSA would host the World Chess Olympiad. In 2019 it would host the African Games, in 2022 the Commonwealth Games and finally in 2024 the Olympic Games. Even though Cabinet had not signed off on the Olympics Bid, lobbying for everything had been ongoing.

Recognition Systems: Andrew Mlangeni Green jacket programme
SRSA was currently recognising the unsung heroes of colour in sport through the History of Sport and the green jacket programmes, individuals like Grant Khomo, Blanche Moila and Jacob ‘Jake’ Ntuli and others. There was also the Ministerial Outstanding Sports Performance Accolades Programme which honoured outstanding athletes annually, which had already had occurred on 1 July 2014.

Sport & Recreation Service Providers: Thabang Lebese Player Benefit Programme
SRSA was currently working with SASCOC to formalise agreements with national federations to institute an insurance scheme for current players to avoid the scenario of former sports stars dying as paupers that family members struggle to even bury those individuals. SRSA was looking at a once off insurance premium to cover all former players across all codes, whereby the last proposed amount had been R79 million. The Netball Premier League had finally been formalised and launched as a professional code.

SRSA was seeking the Committees support on the Sports event Ticket Levy, which would be modelled along the 2.5% levy deducted from one’s hotel bill or an airline ticket and paid over to the tourism authorities to develop the tourism. That levy would generate a new revenue stream for sport development in the country, and current ticket sale and match attendance rate estimates where that if a five percent ticket levy was imposed, SRSA would make in excess of R 10 billion a year. That money would go via the Revenue Fund so that it could be allocated to SRSA.

Discussion
Mr D Bergman (DA) asked SRSA whether it had communicated with Home Affairs on how it would coordinate international exchanges when other countries were coming to SA for sports, considering the new visa regulations which had been introduced by that Department.

Mr Moteka noted the omission of timeframes and figures on everything that had been presented, which would make it difficult for the Committee to monitor SRSA. He understood that the DG had not been at SRSA for the entire 20 years, but there still remained rural areas without any sports. If SRSA could target distributing two sport facilities in those deep rural municipalities annually, possibly the rural communities could claim service delivery provision. The empowerment of amaKhosi through whatever seed money or equipment would be distributed, could further exacerbate the factionalism amongst traditional leadership councils, as amaKhosi possibly would develop facilities for their supporters at the expense of their detractors. A better solution would be to give those resources to local municipalities, and for SRSA to develop a proper and effective monitoring mechanism to make sure that the resources would be used for their intended purposes.

Ms D Manana (ANC) asked whether SRSA was monitoring how the budget for provincial school sport was being spent, since there was a possibility of nepotism and patronage where selection of athletes was concerned, especially for the School Sport Mass Participation (SSMP) programme. There was a possibility for similar challenges for the Golden Games. Did SRSA still run the Siyadlala programme for out of school children. Could it be more stringent with monitoring how its resources where being used? She commended SRSA for its elaboration of the codes in the indigenous sport festival and empowering traditional leaders to develop sport in their regions.

Ms B Abrahams (ANC) wanted to know what criteria where used in the distribution of bicycles in schools as some constituencies had not received bicycles. In terms of the Top school league, she recommended the revival of the regional professional and national leagues. Having being involved with the soccer legends and masters, of the registered individuals she knew, they had been asking when they were going to be utilised. What was the criterion for eligibility for the proposed Sport Insurance?

Mr G Malatsi (DA) asked if SRSA have a database to monitor the progress of school sport participants, from Primary to High School and beyond? How did SRSA envision the Sports event Ticket Levy to work? Had there been consultations with stadia managers to find out how they felt about the levy because there was a possibility that in adding this the normal ticket price, it could further discourage supporters from attending matches. The various legislative amendments mentioned in the presentation seemed indicative of giving SRSA more power to be directly involved in intervening in federations. Was SRSA frustrated with the ineffectiveness of current legislation in giving SRSA power to expedite processes in the event of challenges within federations?

Mr S Ralegoma (ANC) asked whether SRSA had not a concrete agreement with the Department of Basic Education (DBE) on the use of sporting facilities in schools, as there was a large discrepancy between advantaged and disadvantaged schools. How was Soccer and Rugby doing in the area of development? Did SASCOC or SRSA have influence in the big three sporting codes (Soccer, Rugby and Cricket) since they were controlled by big federations that seemed to be independent? As there was a key proposal from the NDP concerning mass participation, would it not be useful to use that to assist in the planned mass participation events for the year? How far had SRSA gone in ensuring that federation boundaries had been amended to be similar to geo-political boundaries? Mr Ralegoma noted that the 15% earmarked for sports needed to do just that even though sometimes there was a challenge of facilities being there without any programmes for their use. There was a need for some kind of intervention between municipalities and school sport federations in townships, as there were no grounds for facilities in those communities owing to human settlement priorities.

Mr S Mmusi (ANC) asked whether WADA and IADA were not performing the same function. What was the vision of SRSA in amending the SAIDS Bill, because with every amendment there were financial implications? Moreover there could be a situation where the amendment sought by SRSA to test children could be in conflict with other pieces of legislation. Rural Development in sport seemed to be spoken about in an isolated manner, could not the presentation of SRSA be biased towards Rural Development in a robust manner as urban areas were better serviced already. What had been ring fenced in terms of the MIG already?

The Chairperson said that as a young woman she played netball, and it bothered her that netball as a sport was not recognised in the same manner as soccer or rugby. Could the DG elaborate on the Bafana Bafana challenges? Could he speak to performance as much as he had attended to compliance in the presentation? The Committee would need to have immediate oversight visits to check on what the 50% of the SRSA budget had done in provinces. When would be the SRSA presentation on its legislative amendments to the Committee be coming? The Committee needed the list of the traditional leader councils that had benefited from the SRSA rural sport development programme already. There seemed to be an accusation of mismanagement of the MIG by municipalities.

The DG replied that everyone in government was toiling with the visa and immigration regulations issue. Even SAIDS had issues as testing samples from African tournaments, that needed to be worked on in Bloemfontein were sometimes held by Port health, through another piece of legislation dealing with the movement of body fluids into and out of the country. Cabinet did not approve that SRSA be one of the cmmittees at the new border agency establishments, which affected international exchanges. SRSA had always been assisted with international exchanges by Home Affairs, the Departments of Health (DOH) or International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO). With SASCOC insisting that all federations publish a calendar of intended activities, SRSA did not foresee a problem even with the new regulations. The problem arose when countries wanted to come to SA at short notice or federations not notifying government timeously. For example the yellow fever inoculation issue, if one came from a region of high incidence of that fever, there needed to be a yellow fever certificate for the inoculation. Your reputation did not matter as that issue was a matter of national security.
The DG replied that in the actual documents that the presentation was summarised from, there were timeframes and figures for all targeted goals both for the APP and the SP.

SRSA had obligations to rural communities, even where municipalities were struggling. That was why amaKhosi had been brought in because in land held under trust both the municipality and amaKhosi had to be involved in the development of sport. So far that strategy had worked and no conflicts had affected it so far, to SRSA knowledge.

SRSA had a rural bias in the roll out of their delivery programmes, especially in school sport and its challenges as it was easier to give equipment to rural communities for them to play recreationally on their own than it was to do the same for schools. The issues with schools, especially farm schools, was the nearest school to that farm school would be 50 kilometres away. Having a match between those two schools would be that difficult! In such schools where parents were not paying fees and DBE was budgeting nothing for school sport it was unrealistic for those schools to be participants in school sport. The best solution then becomes a first come first serve base of servicing, because those schools that are proactive would probably participate in SSMP. Compounding that problem would be the fact that everyone just wants to play football, which would then make the football league expensive and cumbersome. Another solution would be to get schools in urban areas that were close to big stadia which were unaffordable for school sport to play alternative indoor sporting codes. Sport focus schools would be there other alternative, so that all children talented in a particular sport could be routed to that focus school, as the country simply would not be able to build swimming pools for all schools in the country.

SRSA did monitor how the provincial SRSA budget was spent as of 2012; especially regarding the outcomes given in Strategic Plan as intended goals to be achieved at the end of each financial year. Of the first three provinces audited in that regard, SRSA had been disappointed and had reported that to the previous Committee. For example in Mpumalanga, for club development, SRSA had found that a recreational soccer ball had been given to developing clubs for training purposes. The ball had lasted three weeks and the provincial SRSA would then say it had delivered on its performance report. In other provinces SRSA had found that the funding had been used for Arts and Culture in music festivals, where the funding would be used to ferry athletes to the festival. In 2014 SRSA had completed concluding an audit of six provinces and because of the poor outcomes, SRSA had decided to start imposing penalties on the same grant for non-compliance. The DG had indicated to Provincial Head of Departments (HOD) that SRSA would consider criminal proceedings if they further continued authorising expenditure of SRSA resources for unintended purposes. Mr Moemi added that all he could do was to withhold the transfer of funds according to the Division of Revenue Act (DORA), whereas it was not always effective for provinces, as it was the children who suffered instead of the provincial administration. Compounding the issue was that only three provinces budgeted from their own equitable share budget for sport.

National SRSA financed and directed how national tournaments were to be conducted and the league was a knockout league, which meant that those schools needed to have actually won in the provincials and not those that were chosen. In 2012 SRSA became aware that certain schools had not participated in district festivals, but were allowed to be part of the provincials. Because of such issues SRSA had had to disqualify schools from Mpumalanga, KwaZulu Natal, the North West and the Eastern Cape from the National Championships in 2013. In future the provincial administration would be punished directly as those learners would need to be accommodated and there was the emotional trauma they would suffer from being disqualified.

SRSA no longer had the Siyadlala Community Mass Participation Programme. It had been conceptualised as a mass participation recreational programme. Looking at the amount of money that had been spent there and its returns, there was nothing to show. SA state departments suffered from a lack of boldness to leave programmes that were not working for those that were bearing fruits. With Golden Games, a similar situation was prevalent, moreover SRSA was having turf battles with the Department of Social Development (DSD) over who was running that programme. Therefore the DG had decided to let DSD lead those games, but then DSD wanted to lead the Golden Games and have SRSA pay for them. Similarly DBE wanted to lead school sport but was not budgeting for it. SRSA had eventually managed to start working better with DSD and was happy with the current arrangement.

The distribution of bicycle presented a challenge for SRSA, and it had since asked Cycling SA as a federation to identify community clubs that could stand to benefit from that Cycle for Life programme. Velokhaya in Khayelitsha piloted that programme with SRSA and that had worked very well. The Minister had cycled 104 kilometres of the Cape Argus Cycle race to promote anti-doping in sport. SRSA had since then used the Cape Epic and the Cape Argus to identify future talent, where two major townships in every province had been identified to benefit from Cycle for Life. Atlantis was the second township after Khayelitsha to benefit from Cycle for Life.

SRSA had realized that some of the former legends on the database calling for utility of their services were not actually volunteering, but wanted actual and professional payment. At one time when a team from the Eastern Cape were going to represent SA in the Milo Continental championship in Nigeria and were playing a preparatory game before leaving, and legends were called to present a motivational talk. They had asked for R10 000 each to talk to those children and a coaching clinic was priced at R30 000 for a prominent former athlete. SRSA could not sustain such trends which was why it was not considering proposals by so called ‘volunteers’. Actual volunteers had already signed up to coach.

The criterion for the Thabang Lebese Player Benefit Programme was that an athlete needed to have played one cap for the national team in whatever sporting code.

Both SRSA and SASCOC already tracked talent excellence and identified players through their databases. SRSA did believe in tracking second placed or promising athletes and had already asked the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) to develop a system to track those athletes.

The Sports event Ticket Levy was a working model in tourism therefore SRSA believed it would work for sport as well. The unintended consequence possibly would be that ticket prices would increase, but supporters had shown that they did not mind paying twice the original amount of a normal ticket, for a Kaizer Chiefs vs Orlando Pirates game. Federations being entitled to gate takings simply meant that SRSA would have to audit them so that the levy could be deducted from those takings and paid over to the South African Revenue Service (SARS).

SRSA indeed wanted to give the Minister more powers where legislative amendments were concerned since everyone accused SRSA when federations where in trouble. For the blame to stick, it was better for SRSA to be blamed for not intervening where it had the power to do so initially.

SRSA assented that there were challenges in the distribution of facilities between advantaged and disadvantaged schools and that more could be done which was why SRSA was putting its multipurpose courts in schools rather than communities, as a way of bridging that gap.

SASCOC would be better able to respond to what challenges there were in the big three federations. Where Bafana and soccer in general where concerned. amaGlug Glug ( under 23 National Side) had not played a single game in four years. The expectation though, was that it was the team that needed to represent SA in the Rio Olympics of 2016. The South African Football Association (SAFA) had then approached SRSA with a big grand plan to revive amaGlug Glug with a R158 million support tag. Mr Moemi had then told SAFA that that team did not exist, what should happen was that SAFA were to take Amajita (under 20 National side) with Mr Shakes Mashaba as the national coach and prepare for Rio Olympics 2016. That would receive resource support from SRSA. That was the only time SRSA had leverage over SAFA, when the federation needed money from SRSA and it was the first time that the International Federation of Football Association (FIFA) had not interpreted that as interference. Indeed there were larger problems with soccer in the country as SAFA were currently owing its debtors R52 million. SRSA had tried to investigate that issue together with match fixing allegations, where Minister Fikile Mbalula had travelled to Zurich to explain to FIFA that laws had been broken in SA and that needed investigation. FIFA refused, when SRSA asked SASCOC to do that, SAFA threatened that FIFA would ban SA from participating in international games.

The DG hoped that possibly one day the Committee would be bold enough to agree to have the country suspended from international football so that SAFA could be investigated as that would not be happening in Africa for the first time. When Nigeria was suspended from international football for six years, its government investigated its football association and things were rectified. At one point SRSA had enquired from the Presidency if a commission of inquiry would not best serve to investigate the allegations of match fixing.

IADA was a loose arrangement of governments alone which strategized and shared new techniques on how to test for doping in sports. IADA for SA was a preparatory forum of governments for the real WADA, because at WADA there were public utilities which were governments and sport movements which were international federations. Most of the time the international federations wanted weaker laws in dealing with anti-doping and governments always lost out to sport movements in that regard.

The SAIDS amendments were ready as they had been to the State Law Advisors (SLA) and had been certified. Currently they had been listed with the Leader of Government Business, the Deputy President Mr Cyril Ramaphosa. SRSA was waiting for Cabinet to advise it on when that Bill would be tabled and approved, but there had been no legislative conflicts identified by the SLA. Therefore in choosing to play sport, one voluntarily waived the right to refuse testing drugs.

There were gyms in rural communities that were there through SRSA and their own natural resources like mountains but there were very few hikers and abseiling enthusiasts. Generally the SA population were fond of demanding what was not there without thinking of the utility that was available.

Two years ago SRSA had promised Parliament that it would fight that the 15% in the social infrastructure component should be ring-fenced for sport, and that had happened. Treasury had then issued new regulations after that had happened, that municipalities should use that MIG 15% for sport only. That had not been happening though, and so SRSA was currently saying it wants all those 15% MIG allocations to be harvested and put in one pool to create a new grant. Ring-fencing had not worked out and so SRSA was asking for consolidation of the MIG allocations.

SRSA would supply senior officials to attend the Committee oversight visits to the provinces and would share with it what needed focus. SRSA would present all the proposed legislative amendments as soon as Mr Ramaphosa responded to SRSA. Indeed, as DG he was more emphatic on compliance than on performance. That was because when he filled the post he had promised the previous Portfolio Committee that in his first three years as DG he would address issues of compliance. SRSA had improved on compliance and even on performance, because SRSA was at 44% in terms of its performance indicators when Mr Moemi became DG. In 2014 SRSA performance indicators were at about 80% and by the end of Mr Moemi’s term as DG, he promised that SRSA would be achieving 100% on its performance indicators.

It had not been Netball SA that had approached SRSA with a proposal for a professional league, it was the opposite. SASCOC had agreed with SRSA to approach the Lotteries Board to give Netball SA a once-off grant, so that it could buy enough courts to be able to have the Netball Premier League (NPL) go all over SA.

The mandate from the previous Committee to SRSA was to focus on transformation, school sport, to turn around Boxing SA and to get better audit outcomes. SRSA adopted these key priorities as directed by the previous Committee and would appreciate a similar prioritisation schedule from the current Committee.

The Chairperson said that the Committee would need a separate briefing on transformation as it maintained that there had been no transformation especially in rural areas. The current Committee would probably reprioritize the key areas as the former Committee had done with possible additions to the mandate it would be giving to SRSA. She was shocked to find out that six provinces did not budget for sports from their equitable share. She asked the Committee whether SRSA needed not to come back for another briefing.

Mr Moteka agreed that the SRSA delegation needed to return the following week for another briefing.

Mr Bergman agreed that indeed SRSA needed to engage the Committee before the commonwealth games.

Mr Ralegoma reminded the Committee that it had just adopted it programme and perhaps it would be best to submit written questions to SRSA on outstanding issues from the current briefing.

The Chairperson told Mr Ralegoma that SRSA was returning the following week on the 8 July 2014.

Ms Matshidiso Mfikoe (Committee Chairperson: SALGA working group) commented that there were issues involving SALGA: that SALGA would want to shed clarity on, if that was permitted.

The Chairperson responded that she had assumed that whatever was presented on, involving SALGA, Ms Mfikoe’s delegation would note those issues down and deal with them during the SALGA presentation.

Mr Moemi said that budget vote 20 was not new in that it had already been tabled and allocated; all that was necessary was to show how SRSA had allocated money to its programmes that he had presented on. There were no reprioritizations nor were there any adjustments for unforeseen costs in budget vote 20, unless the Committee felt otherwise. The only reason for the re-tabling was to give SRSA a window opportunity to shift anything if at all, during the adjustment budget process in September. SRSA felt that immediately after its budget appropriation, it could start work on its 2015/16 APP as well as budget inputs so that the Committee could then direct SRSA on how it could adjust these. It would be a struggle to do so, having committed money to programmes across all its entities, itself included, as they currently were. There was not much that SRSA could play around with, as the R525 million already went to municipalities leaving only federation transfers as movable funding with SRSA's goods and services budget.

The Chairperson asked whether the Committee wanted a proper and detailed briefing now or would it want to read up on what had been presented that day. There was a window period for possible adjustments, should the Committee feel it was necessary to have those done.

Mr Malatsi felt that the Committee certainly would need an opportunity to engage the budget, especially as there was that period for adjustment that was available.

Mr Ralegoma agreed that indeed as caucuses or even as Members there was a need for the budget to be studied in preparation for the 8 July 2014.

Mr Moteka said that he agreed with the notion to study the budget vote 20 so that it could be presented on 8 July 21014.

The Chairperson agreed that SRSA should come to present on the 8 July.

South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC) input on SRSA budget
Mr Tubby Reddy, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), SASCOC said that his organization was comprised of 71 national federations and nine provincial sport confederations. He then took the Committee through the SASCOC presentation. The sport-specific Long Term Participant Development Models were to do with athletes and coach development.

Performances at the London 2012 Games – Paralympics
Mr Reddy reiterated that indeed even SASCOC, like SRSA could not support all Paralympics sporting codes catered for in the country and as a result it was focusing on those codes which had returns of medals.

Road to Rio 2016
Ms Ezera Tshabangu, General Manager, High Performance Division, SASCOC, said that the leadership of SASCOC felt it appropriate to brief the Committee on the entire process of qualifications and selection leading up to the Rio Olympics in 2016, seeing that was prevalent in the print media.

The process starts with the International Olympic Committee or International Federations agreeing on an international selection policy, that all the 204 countries will have to use to qualify, however the National Olympic charter allows the National Olympic Committees room to modify that policy to be standardized for that particular country. SA had always not believed in qualifying through universality places, wildcards or reallocated slots and that the country’s athletes were competitive enough to qualify on merit. After sitting with national federations to check whether everyone had similar understanding of the international selection policy, SASCOC then would deal with sport specific selection policies. After the London Olympics, SASCOC had started with the generic selection criteria where a committee would look at various selection policies after which a generic selection policy would be published on the SASCOC website. With sport specific policies, like for the Commonwealth Games, the top five was the position agreed upon with all member federations.

The country had finalised the SA Sports Academy Framework and Policy Guidelines, which indicated how academies were supposed to function and what minimum standards were needed for an academy to be recognised by SASCOC. SASCOC had found that there had been bogus academies that had defrauded parents of earnings. It had managed to align four provincial academies through the new academy framework. SRSA had drafted the regulations in terms of the Provincial Academy Commission. SASCOC was hoping that process would be finalised so that the commission could be regulated and everyone could start aligning to that. The deadline for alignment was November 2014 so that provincial government did not fund academies that were refusing to align. SASCOC believed that the academy system would be stronger when it started at the district level moving upwards.

National Training Centre
SASCOC had signed an agreement with the Free State government for the use of the national training centre in Bloemfontein for some of the country's national federations. Mr Reddy with the Free State HOD for sport were currently addressing the expansion of accommodation at the centre so that bigger teams could use the centre.

Key Games delivery for 2014: Commonwealth Games
SASCOC was taking 187 athletes to the Commonwealth Games.

Mr Reddy noted that SASCOC had inherited many sporting code responsibilities from the National Sports and Recreation Plan (NSRP) without the necessary funding. SASCOC was hopeful that the Committee would help the Minister and the DG try harder to unlock more funding for the development of sport in general.

Discussion
The Chairperson commended SASCOC for a concise presentation and permitted the Committee to engage SASCOC.

Mr Bergman asked for clarity on how SASCOC worked with the big three federations in the country? Where would SASCOC be found scouting for talent? Concerning a recent incident at the Pan African swimming tournament, SASCOC was fined close to R100 000 because of a South African swimmer. Was there a programme that formalised reimbursement of SASCOC for such penalties by those athletes that were being paid well through sponsorship deals? There seemed to be a similar trend with Operation Excellence (OPEX), where advantaged people were getting more advantages, was there no other programme to redirect those resources to less advantaged athletes?

Mr Ralegoma had a similar question about the relationship between the United School Sport Association of South Africa (USSASA) and SASCOC? He noted that SASCOC had a net estimated surplus budget, but was still asking for more.

The Chairperson asked SASCOC to clarify issues that had been in print media recently. Could SASCOC go into detail about the Commonwealth Games preparation and how it was funded? Was SASCOC able to mediate in the governance issues of SAFA? Could SASCOC elaborate on the type of support it received from the Lotteries Board?

Mr Reddy replied that SASCOC was the mother body for sport in SA and that indeed even the big three federations were all governed by SASCOC rules and statutes. Concerning Cricket SA (CSA) there had been an inquiry by SRSA where SASCOC did not agree entirely with the outcomes of that investigation, especially where there was a notion that independents were better suited to run sports than sports people. After that there had been a debate where finally an agreement prevailed that, because there were geo-political boundaries in SA, all nine provinces needed to be represented on national federation leadership. Only when those provinces needed independent expertise would those independents be called in. Again SASCOC had had issues with CSA over the national colours, which were the King protea, but where the cricket team used a combination logo with a King protea and the SA flag attached to it. CSA had recently communicated that it should stop using a combination logo.

SASCOC had tried to investigate the match fixing allegations levelled against SAFA, its R57 million loss in revenue, its cumulative loss of R92 million in 2012 alone, and its further loss of R46 million in 2013, and, thirdly, a dossier had been dropped anonymously at the security gates of SASCOC offices. Upon perusing the document, SASCOC saw that it contained many allegations against SAFA, and that was handed over to the Hawks. Following that, these three items were recorded in a full documented folder and handed over to Minister Mbalula, who then handed that folder to the President of SA, seeking a judicial commission of inquiry into SAFA. The President handed back that decision to Mr Mbalula earlier in 2014, and following that the Hawks had sent Mr Reddy a letter asking why SASCOC had not completed the forensic audit into SAFA. He had tabled a letter to the SASCOC board which then decided to audit SAFA. Mr Gideon Sam informed Dr Danny Jordan of the forensic audit that SASCOC was intending to do. SAFA then threw all its toys out of the cot. Whereas all the audit was intended to do was to see the financial state of SAFA, excluding the dossier or the match fixing allegations. SASCOC had indicated to SAFA that it would send a three-person committee to look into SAFAs finances and SAFA has yet to respond to that communiqué.

He said that national federations had the responsibility to scout for talent as they were the custodians of their sporting codes. Only when athletes had reached a certain level through the federation did SASCOC take over.

Indeed no athlete gave back what they earned, yet they were still supported. The problem there was that unless there was a policy decision that they would not be supported, because of their level of performance, they were entitled to that support because of the criteria that SASCOC published.

SASCOC generally budgeted to continue functioning through from one end of a cycle to the beginning of the following one.

The funding received from the Lotteries Board was project based, to deliver teams and prepare athletes. It was generally about R110 million per year.

Ms Tshabangu said that SASCOC had put athletes identified as potential medallists at the Commonwealth Games on OPEX. The evaluation had been moved to September and federations had been submitting their preparation camp budgets which SASCOC was busy sorting through, to decide how best to assist in the final preparations for the games.

The Chairperson noted that from the responses of SRSA and SASCOC, it seemed that there were things that needed the Committee’s direct engagement. It could not be allowed that certain individuals only account to themselves. Until SAFA came before the Committee, all that had been deliberated would be taken under advisement.

Mr Moteka said that as the new Committee, it was going to do oversight. SASCOC should go with that message.

SA Institute on Drug Free Sport input on Budget Vote 20
Mr Khalid Galant, Chief Executive Officer, SAIDS, apologised on behalf of Dr Victor Ramathisele, SAIDS board chairperson, who was absent on the day due to prior commitments.

Mr Galant said that SAIDS was the national anti-doping authority in the country, which received its mandate through the Drug Free Sport Act of 1997. SAIDS was an independent entity in sport, reporting directly to the Minister through SRSA. It had a board of directors which were appointed by the Minister with decentralised doping control operations. It had 80 part-time doping control officers across the country. It had about 20 contracted educators delivering education programmes around the country. Additional support to SAIDS included various commissions and an independent tribunal board which dealt with all the doping cases. The serving board of directors had been appointed in December 2012.

Possibly on an oversight visit to SAIDS the Committee could be shown the type of work that SAIDS did. Part of SAIDS core business was to act like a regulatory agency, since it was enforcing an international anti-doping code.

In SA SAIDS had charged Ludwig Mamabolo with doping in 2012, who then challenged the charge with a team of ten lawyers against SAIDS one. An estimate of how much that would have cost SAIDS after having lost the case to Mr Mamabolo was in excess of R2.5 million for that year alone, when SAIDS had only budgeted around R300 000 for legal services for that year. That had been part of SAIDS motivation for an increase in its budget allocation.

Mr Galant invited the Committee for an oversight visit to its laboratories in Newlands Cape Town.

The Chairperson thanked SAIDS for its brief presentation and said that since she had not been aware that it was possible to adjust the budget, it would be up to the Committee to see what it could do.

Mr Mmusi asked for more clarity on the issue of Mr Mamabolo.

Mr Malatsi asked SAIDS to elaborate on its work with junior athletes in youth championships.

Mr M Filtane (UDM) said he noted that the SAIDS message seemed to be targeted at premier athletes and junior athletes at schools only when in fact the drugs came from the communities. What was SAIDS doing about communities allowing drugs amongst their sportsmen and women.

Mr Ralegoma commented that SAIDS would probably have to strengthen its campaign about the fact that it tested everyone and was not biased against particular athletes.

Ms Mfikoe felt that SAIDS seemed to be focused more on testing in established sporting codes, without really dealing with the prevalence of drug use in communities which was curtailing sports potential before it could be nurtured further. Could SAIDS not accommodate anti-drug advocacy in communities as well, even though it was probably outside its mandate?

Mr Bergman suggested that the focus for the resources of SAIDS needed to be directed more towards schools, clubs and higher learning institutions with 20% been used on premier athletes considering that at professional level athletes stood to lose more if they used drugs to enhance their performance. He felt that SA did not address drug use amongst its professional athletes effectively enough, seeing that they were always caught at big competitions. Could SAIDS elaborate on whether or not there was enough education about doping?

The Chairperson told the DG that it seemed the Committee felt that it was impossible to operate SRSA with such a meagre budget when it had to deal with so many different facets of sports in SA. SRSA needed to include the figures it required for the budget vote so that the Committee could better lobby for more funding. What the DG had said was logical such as the health budget ever increasing at the expense of SRSA budget, even though lifestyles diseases would not be avoided if sports remained optional at schools.

Mr Galant said SAIDS did target athletes if there was a suspicion of doping in sport, but Mr Mamabolo had been tested because he won the competition. In top events it was normal to test podium finishers or medal finisher or where there was money to be won. In cycling events like the Cape Epic an individual could get money up until 20^th place, such as a finish at number seven guaranteed that person R300 000 prize money. There was a doping risk profile, which was a scientific formula that SAIDS used based on the propensity for the athletes to perform, where he or she ranked in the world and the nature of the sport. For example table tennis would have a lower risk profile compared too weight lifting, cycling or rugby.

With Mr Mamabolo there were deviations from the standard caused by SAIDs officials and SAIDS had accounted for that, and there were definitely some weaknesses in the SAIDS system as well which had since been improved. Even if there were no deviations from SAIDS, to give the Committee an idea of the litigious nature of sport: Mr Galant had received an e-mail that SA would host a mountain bike race in 2015 and prize money for that race was $1 million exactly. Since sport was such big money, athletes would sometimes try to cut corners, for example, the Lance Armstrong case in the Tour de France. No matter what the offence when athletes had the money they could employ big legal teams to oppose charges and legal firms had realised that they could get big media exposure with athletes which was why they sometimes worked for free. SAIDS faced such challenges.

SAIDS did not announce ahead of time where it would test and whom it would test but indeed events like the youth games in Botswana, the Zone 6 games in December 2014 and Craven Week, individuals could expect SAIDS to test at such events, especially as it held educational anti-doping programmes in the weeks leading up to those events. At Craven Week in 2013 there had been four positive tests for steroids, but if there still was an athlete testing positive for any substance in 2014, that would be pretty ill advised.

The SAIDS anti-doping code now had provision for the prosecution of the athlete's entourage from coaches to technical staff for peddling or coercing athletes to use substance enhancement. There had been an athletic coach that had been banned for five years already through that provision and two boxing managers as well. About a month ago there had been a big steroid seizure in northern Gauteng where SAIDS was working with the Medicines Control Council together with law enforcement to curtail drug use and to find out how those drugs could affect its testing strategy.

The Minister of Sport had been part of the I Play Fair awareness campaign ran by SAIDS when he had participated in the Cape Argus cycle tour.

Possible causes for testing positive for substances could be that some athletes would be taking steroids directly and hoping that the test would fail. There was an issue with labelling in the country and the use of sports supplements. SAIDS would be hosting an educational seminar in Gauteng in October on sports supplements themed: changing the nature of the conversation around sports nutrition and whether supplements still had a role in high performance sport or was food sufficient. Dischem had started a special labelling strategy on the supplements on its shelves as its brand faced possible revenue loss from all those positive tests in sports relating to its supplements.

The Chairperson thanked Mr Galant and notified him to be mindful to send the invitations he had mentioned as early as possible because the Committee had many priorities. The Committee would try to honour most invitation but that depended on the programme as well. She said SALGA had an opportunity to respond to questions affecting it that had been directed at the DG. Local Municipalities were indeed the linchpin in all the work of government and about whether it succeeded or not.

Ms Mfikoe said that indeed if SALGA had as good an understanding of governance as the Chairperson had just said and government understood SALGA as well as the Chairperson, then SA would be served much better by the state. What was important for SALGA was the recognition that it was not a small child, in whose interests decisions were to be taken. The Constitution recognised local government and for Ms Mfikoe it was important for that clarity to prevail. SALGA appreciated the opportunity to respond, particularly to the State Of the Nation Address (SONA) because that meant that national government recognised local government.

Local government seemed not to have been consulted amongst some of the important stakeholders in the SRSA Strategic Plan drafting. Inversely that same Strategic Plan stipulated that all SRSA programmes were implemented at local government level which posed a conundrum as all wards were situated in municipalities and as SALGA, it would want to be recognised as an important stakeholders to consult. SALGA recognised that it was a key participant in some of the strategic thrusts of SRSA and were interested in building an active nation, which SALGA called active citizenry. SALGA wanted to be a winning nation and it understood that that needed streamlined coordination, moreover it subscribed to the healthy living lifestyle programme, which would be positively influenced by healthy eating and sport and recreation. SALGA would ask the DG that to clarify at some point where the cut-off point was for allocation to provinces, as there seemed to be an assumption that provincial budget allocations did get to municipalities which lead to the thinking that provinces shared those allocations with municipalities, when in fact SALGA was not sure what portion municipalities received from provinces. Seeing that the DG was not certain of what the municipal allocations were from provinces, SALGA would do an assessment of how much of the sport grant actually filtered down to local municipalities. It would request SRSA to do likewise so as to clarify this.

South African Local Government Association (SALGA) input on SRSA budget
Councillor Matshidiso Mfikoe said in supporting local municipalities on the effective use of the MIG portion ring-fenced for sports infrastructure, SALGA felt there was a need for a thorough analysis of all municipalities in the country, so that after the harvesting of the MIG portion had been completed, government did not remove resources from municipalities that actually needed them to redirect them to those that did not have a need. SALGA was finding that since municipalities were divided into three groups, metros and districts were the focal points for resource distribution leaving out local municipalities like a lost child (see document for full input).

Discussion
The Chairperson said that since every sphere of government had the obligation to monitor: SALGA needed to strengthen its monitoring tools and to oversee the work of its Members of the Executive Councils (MECs) of local government. What findings had SALGA uncovered on the work of its MECs?

Mr Moteka noted that SALGA's presentation talked more to urban local government and not rural local government. SALGA needed to know that the focus of the Committee was on rural sport development; moreover it needed a presentation on challenges, achieved targets and proposed targets for rural local government, and reasons for increased funding. The Committee had not received that from SALGA as there was local government in every corner of SA but there was no sport happening.

Mr Malatsi asked whether there had been any SALGA interventions to address municipal underspending of SRSA funding or the redirection of that funding for other purposes? If those interventions had been undertaken, what had been the outcomes?

Mr Mmusi asked SALGA for its direct mandate apart from the MIG and the Urban Settlement Development Grant (USDG) in supporting sport as it was in better placed to fundraise for sport development because it knew local industries from where funds could be lobbied. SALGA had stated that part of the MIG was used to maintain facilities, but Mr Mmusi had seen the opposite happening at facilities even though municipalities were there. How sure was SALGA that municipalities were maintaining facilities?

Ms Manana asked what communities were meant to do when local or district municipalities refused to give resources to build or maintain sporting facilities? Similarly when it was the provincial department that withheld resources from municipalities as a result of communities approaching the departments directly for sporting resources: what was SALGAs intervention in such scenarios?

Mr Filtane noted that SALGA seemed to be contradicting itself. From his personal experience in rural local government, ward councillors seldom spoke about sport challenges at public gatherings. Therefore his belief was that the cause of the challenges in sport development in local government was not a lack of funding but that sport needed to be advocated more.

Mr M Mabika (NFP) asked whether SALGA had a way of ensuring that all municipalities participated in sport. That was because sport development did not hinge on facilities, but actual participation. Moreover municipalities did not budget for sport and yet did not understand why there was no sport participation. What was SALGA doing about that? SALGA needed to do something to compel all municipalities to participate in sporting activities. Alternatively one was left to wonder whether the sport grant given to provinces was only for facilities or if it included ensuring participation over and above building facilities.

Mr Ralegoma (ANC) said that SALGA was not a municipality, but a representative of municipalities at provincial and national level and it was an advocate in favour of municipalities. Municipalities would remain poor because they were not funded directly from the fiscus. The Committee would be creating another problem if it blamed municipalities for their failures without their being directly funded. A municipality’s function was to render basic services and not everything else. Public officials from provincial and national spheres of government put unnecessary pressure on ward councillors. He differed strongly with some of Mr Filtane’s statements. Municipalities had to be self-sufficient currently, apart from the conditional grants.

The Chairperson read from the Constitution and the NDP what the role of a municipality was. Notably a municipality was compelled to have sport and recreation so that drug abuse could be curtailed. She agreed with the need to investigate the use of the MIG sport allocation because municipalities became fiscal dumping sites when MECs found that they could not properly account for underspending at the end of a financial cycle. SALGA could intervene in the resolution of such tendencies, which was why the Chairperson planned to call SALGA back for another briefing but with the nine MECs for Sport in the country present to come and account as well - so there could be no blame shifting.

The Chairperson warned Members and the presenters not to feel as if they were undermining each other because the discussion had simply taken a discursive format, but was not combative.

Mr Moemi said that the SALGA that was presenting that day was probably not the same as the one SRSA met regularly, if that was the true position SALGA was taking because that would mean the work had gone back three years into the past.

SALGA extensively participated in SRSA Strategic Plan processes because it had been part of the steering Committee and chaired some of the sessions at the recent Sports Indaba and the NSRP had been finalised through SALGA's participation.

SRSA with SALGA had consulted provinces and districts and had held the first Municipal Conference on Sport and Recreation in 2012. It was at that conference that SRSA had adopted the position of centralisation and consolidation of the MIG grant. SRSA had asked SALGA to appoint a person to serve as a SALGA representative on the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Recreation and that representative had been serving there regularly. It was rather unfortunate then for SALGA to say SRSA did not recognise SALGA as a partner. It was further untrue that the Minister of Sport simply goes into a municipality and hands over a sport facility without the knowledge and approval of its management. Where such had happened, SALGA needed to inform SRSA so such issues could be attended to.

SRSA had done an in-depth analysis through a working group convened by COGTA on how the MIG had been working and how it had been failing, and SALGA was a participant there consistently. At the last meeting of that working group, three provinces reports had been tabled on the non-performance of the MIG grant.

Mr Moemi said that there was an untrue perception that national government needed to fund municipalities in order for them to undertake programmes. The DORA grant stated quite clearly that national departments funded provinces. It was the constitutional expectation that municipalities should address the issue of facilities and programmes. SRSA did acknowledge that some municipalities were poor and had suggested that in the next round of demarcation by the Municipal Demarcation Board, government should look at financially unviable municipalities and decide whether it would be proper to continue as they were. Moreover if the equitable share formula was not modified from what it was, then the richer municipalities would become more so and the poorer ones would remain unserviceable. That was the reason SRSA had suggested harvesting the MIG grant 15% for sport, so that poor municipalities could be absolved from utilising money intended for sport for other purposes.

SRSA did not support established clubs at all across all codes.

Ward based sport committees were not structures that needed to be created by SRSA, but for the municipality to coordinate its own submissions for its Integrated Development Plan (IDP) that it would need voices from everyone. Those structures would help the municipality decide which facilities to build in which wards. Those structures would need to be administered as part of the general municipal system.

SRSA had completed an analysis with COGTA where 261 violent uprisings were reported. When SRSA asked for the summary of demands and analysed it, no where were there protests over sports facilities. Due to that, it was saddening when a Mayor called SRSA to ask for money to buy kit for a local team. There would be no sports at all if SRSA was to leave sport up to municipalities in SA.

Ms Mfikoe maintained that she had never been invited to a single meeting with the DG of SRSA and possibly there needed to be engagements between her working group which was responsible for program implementation in Gauteng and SRSA. She was picking up a misunderstanding of what local government was from the Committee, which was an attitude that was given to municipalities and individual councillors. What needed to be clarified going forward was the role of individual councillors and what municipalities were meant to do constitutionally. SALGA could not go to the City of Polokwane and say it "must do sports" because as the DG had said that needed to be part of that city’s IDP.

SALGA was taking up the common challenges of municipalities that it thought needed legislative amendments and advocated for those.

Ms Mfikoe still felt that ward sport committee were everyone’s obligation in terms of entrenching sport and recreation in wards. IDPs would then determine how much went to those committees when the municipal budget was approved by council.

Indeed municipalities had to be self-sufficient since for municipalities the only other source of funding were conditional grants. Conditional grants had stipulations; therefore municipalities could not change what the grant stipulations were.

SALGA did run provincial games, in which not all provinces participated. KZN, Gauteng and Mpumalanga had those games.

Challenges for municipalities were that grant funding was not reaching its destination on time and fiscal dumping.

SALGA was an advocacy group for its member municipalities. A resolution had been taken that SALGA should be represented at the Inter-Governmental Relations (IGR) meetings between MECs and Members of the Mayoral Committee (MMCs). There SALGA would be able to monitor how MECs led departments. SALGA had been called to attend Cabinet lekgotlas with new Premiers in the fifth administration. That was a new phenomenon where political engagements with SALGA were now happening, whereas SALGA in the past was probably seen in a technical role.

Mr Mvuyisi April, SALGA, Acting Director / Specialist: Human Development, said that issues of sport and recreation at local government were complex. He acknowledged most of the things that Mr Mabika had been saying as true regarding promotion of sport and recreation at local government. Municipalities participated erratically in SALGA games, citing issues of budgeting and having no real clarity on what they were supposed to be doing for sport and recreation. That is, they did not know whether to do development sport, intra-municipal sport or mayoral cups. Therefore the development of the Local Government Sport and Recreation Framework was about standardising how local government could engage the NSRP.

He apologised to the DG of SRSA and excused SALGA saying the delegation was not denying SALGA's involvement in SRSA Strategic Plan processes, seeing that SALGA CEO, Mr Xolile George, was with SRSA and SASCOC deliberating over issues of sport. Mr April admitted that municipalities were utilising the MIG grant varyingly, but the Department which the DG was talking about in his presentation was different to what the current SALGA delegation dealt with in terms of community development. Those engagements probably would have happened, but this delegation would not have been aware of them which was an internal matter.

SALGA were currently trying to undertake an audit to reveal how many municipalities had sport facilities, what facilities were they, in what condition were they in, how often where they used, what were some of the monies coming from provinces to municipalities for sport and recreation and what budget from equitable share was there for sport. That audit would then give a picture of the challenges that local government was facing in sport and recreation development. SALGA had engaged individual municipalities on particular grants and unfunded mandates through its financial directorate. SALGA had not purposely misrepresented SRSA, but certainly there had been misunderstandings.

The Chairperson said that the Committee accepted SALGA's apology about misrepresentation of facts and that it had not been purposeful. She instructed SALGA to better prepare when coming to present.

Mr Bergman said that somewhere along the line, the Committee needed to forge a much better and closer relationship with SALGA as it could do much of the work for national and alleviate some of the pressures that SRSA had to deal with at local government. He recommended that people needed to be incentivised for better performance and penalized for non-compliance and that should apply to municipalities. Similarly like the Tour de France SRSA could do something like that with the support of SALGA.

Mr Mmusi said that he had taken offence at the accusation that Members of Parliament (MPs) did not know what a local government association is. He asked Ms Mfikoe to withdraw that statement through the Chairperson.The Chairperson agreed that that statement was rather malicious and asked Ms Mfikoe to apologise.

Ms Mfikoe apologised to the Committee including the DG.

Mr Moteka accepted the apology and noted that SALGA really had to return to Parliament with the mayors and MECs to come and account for what was not happening in municipalities - as alluded to by the Chairperson.

Mr Malatsi observed for the second time for that day that where there was lack of preparation by presenters, that tended to affect the Committee's work and conduct. He asked for better preparation from visitors so as to eliminate accusations and rebuttals instead of quality debates.

The Chairperson thanked the Committee for the professional conduct it had shown so far and called the DG to present the budget vote for SRSA.

Budget Vote 20 for SRSA
Mr Moemi said that the bulk of the programs had already been presented on as such he would highlight figures. In 2014 the SRSA had been cut back by about R26.5 million. The Active nation program still remained the biggest and was currently driven through schools sport. By economic classification SRSA had just over R1 billion. For transfers and subsidies there was at R812.9 million for which provinces were to be allocated R617.6 million. Public entities included Boxing SA and SAIDS with non-profit institutions including all national federation, SASCOC as well as other recreational bodies that SRSA financed. They all shared R174.7 million. The active nation program received R601.9 million. The winning nation program received R229.5 million. Sport support was a program driven largely by transfers to national federations and it had been allocated R109.6 million.

The APP went into detail on what had been summarised, and the SRSA received an allocation letter which would indicate how much it was supposed to get in terms of the three year cycle. The numbers were different because they were revised estimates from Treasury of the original budget. That was why there was a discrepancy in the numbers.

The Chairperson noted that the Committee had different documents from the DG.

Mr Ralegoma accepted that there was a note saying that the documents were revised.

The Chairperson asked the secretariat to make sure the budget documents were revised by the following morning. She thanked SALGA and SRSA for staying the whole day and asked the DG to tell the Minister that the Committee was there to assist SRSA.

The meeting was adjourned.