Department of Sport & Recreation on its 2013/14 Annual Report; Audit Outcomes: AGSA briefing; BRRR

Meeting report

Opening Remarks
The Chairperson welcomed everyone back for the third session of Parliament in 2014. She then thanked the Members that had prioritised the Committees work from events to oversight and the strategic workshop. Moreover she was grateful for the South African Sports Council and Olympic Committee (SASCOC) and Sport and Recreation SA (SRSA’s) participation in that workshop. She suggested that the consideration of minutes be moved to the end as the agenda points were quite a few and some needed to be prioritised.

Mr S Ralegoma (ANC) moved for the adoption of the amended agenda.

Mr S Malatsi (DA) seconded the motion.

The amended agenda was adopted.

The Chairperson then handed over to the Auditor-General of SA (AGSA) delegation to brief the Committee.

Briefing by the Office of the Auditor-General of SA (AGSA)
Mr Abrie Adendorff, AGSA Senior Manager, introduced his colleague and noted that he would be transferred to the Department of Correctional Services thence forward. He then noted that he would be using two documents for his presentation after which he took the Committee through the presentation. He also referred to a third document, which was the AGSA’s book on its mandate and content of its work, where the definition of a clean audit was outlined. A clean audit was when the financial statements were free from material mistakes; there were no material findings on the annual performance report and there were no material findings on the non-compliance with key legislation.

The SRSA had received a clean audit for the 2013/14 financial cycle.

Audit outcomes for the portfolio
There was space for improvement where senior management of SRSA and the South African Institute on Drug-free Sport (SAIDS) could do more review work and do more monitoring than they were currently doing, so as to ascertain more efficient running of procedures at both institutions.

Key controls
Where ICT governance and controls on financial statements were concerned, the computer auditors at AGSA had said audit area had been measured per controls instead of auditee and that six controls had been tested for there.  Those outcomes where a result of being ran by the Culture, Arts, Tourism, Hospitality, Sports Sector Education and Training Authority (CATHSSETA) and that was why there was that concern there.

Risk Areas
Mr Adendorff started cross referring between his main presentation and the Committee briefing note.

Quality of submitted financial statements
He said all the entities except for Boxing SA (BSA) had Chief Executive Officers (CEO) in place. Moreover SAIDS and BSA had qualified Chief Financial officers (CFOs) in place, but looking at the financial statements submitted for auditing. Therefore although there was a CFO at BSA, AGSAs auditors had to show that individual that of the submitted financial statements, certain components were not according to accepted standards. Mr Adendorff said if the quality of submitted financial statements were not correct the first time around and AGSA had to come in and help auditees with correcting those misstatements, that lengthened the time the AGSA had to spend on that particular audit. After all that the audit Committees of auditees would then lament that the audit fees of AGSA were too high, even though when the AGSA at its strategic planning for the next audit would use the previous audits hours history to calculate how much it would cost to audit the auditee again. If AGSA would have to continue correcting financial misstatements of SAIDS and BSA, that would have a snowball effect on fees going forward. If that could be addressed it would certainly assist the AGSA.

Most common root causes
At SRSA where the accounting officer, the CFO, the COO, the head of internal audit, supply chain management (SCM) and the Human Resource (HR) managers were all filled vacancies had stabilised the Department leading to the clean audit. The previous year the AGSA had given the SRSA pointers to improve their strategic plan (SP) and performance information, which the SRSA had indeed done. Therefore if the Committee and SRSA could take BSA and SAIDS, and deal with them as children that had been out of line, that would help a lot.  

Status of key commitments by Minister
For SAIDS and BSA with the findings on their audit and management reports, there certainly was a lot of work to be done in terms of those commitments.

Considerations for portfolio Committees when dealing with performance monitoring
Mr Adendorff said though the SRSA was not a core service delivery Department like Health, Basic Education or Transport, sport was an integral part of the National Development Plan (NDP) for the country. Therefore it was important for the Committee to consider the suggestions of the AGSA when dealing with performance monitoring.

He said the AGSAs audit reports always came after actions, even though it was at times asked why it had not reported earlier.

SAIDS was not so much a culprit even though there certainly was space for improvement but BSA was quite concerning, especially the suspension of both the CEO and the acting COO. The appointed administrative staff by SRSA to oversee BSA was certainly trying their utter best to get BSA right.  The disciplinary processes of the CEO and the CEO were taking a bit long whereas the AGSA would really welcome the appointment of a new CEO.

The Chairperson thanked the Office of the AGSA and noted that probably the Committee were not surprised by the findings against BSA as it had briefed the Committee, where it had emerged that most of its budget went to employee salaries and litigation. Certainly the Committee with SRSA would oversee to the resolution of the challenges at BSA, because if the status quo remained boxers would continue suffering. She was satisfied about the confirmation that SRSA was performing optimally and she encouraged the good work. The Committee had noted that in the strategic workshop and oversight at SAIDS, there were some challenges there, but that the entity had assented to that. The Committee would also support SAIDS where necessary as well, but the Committee would alternatively not agree to some of the increases in budgets that were being asked for, when the entities were unable to account for those funds.  As it was, the SRSA was being underfunded and poorly prioritised by the state and when SRSA was asking for budgetary increases with those underperforming entities that certainly undermined the Committees and SRSAs efforts. Certainly then the Committee with SRSA would need to be more harsh with SAIDS and BSA as the funds that were being mismanaged did not belong to those entities.

She then called for questions and comments on the presentation from the Committee.

Discussion
Mr D Bergman (DA) said it was a real red herring that SAIDS was struggling on its financial health risk area, because the fact that it commanded a small budget from SRSA without having the internal financial controls to regulate its spending seemed to speak to the fact that the Committee had not being overseeing that entity rigorously on its financial health. The note that SAIDS was technically insolvent needed the Committee’s real attention. In terms of how SASCOC was supposed to fit into that whole picture: SRSA possibly could have a clean audit report based on its financial statements but could the SRSAs relationship with SASCOC and its financial statements have a bearing on SRSA and how important were those relationships between the Committee and SASCOC and SRSA.

Mr Ralegoma was also concerned with the statement that SAIDS was technically insolvent, but felt that the Director General (DG) of SRSA would be able to shed more light in that regard. As for BSA, he was surprised that there was anything commendable in how the entity was being run because there were neither controls nor consequences for any of its misdemeanours. 14. 4% over expenditure was huge and combining that with the suspension of two senior officials could possibly highlight how things had been going on there without any consequences. Even though the SRSA had seconded administrative staff to the BSA, the continuation of that arrangement worryingly could disadvantage the SRSA in the long run: It certainly would be prudent to quickly ensure that the BSA organogram was 21 rather than 14 as that would be queried soon as 7 staff from SRSA at BSA was about half BSAs staff compliment. It was shocking that instead of an adverse opinion, BSA had been commended because AGSA had corrected BSAs misstatements during audit. The Committee could not accept that outcome in that manner because should something happen to or at SRSA then BSA would be in serious trouble. The assistance that SRSA was giving BSA for the time being was acceptable but Mr Ralegoma was concerned over the absence of internal controls at BSA, surely the DG could possibly respond to his concern.

Mr P Moteka (EFF) asked the AGSA how the Committee was supposed to help those entities remedy their performance woes. Because there had to be someone accountable with necessary consequences being meted out to such officials. He noted the challenges in the findings against the SRSA and therefore wanted to know for how long the SRSA had been functioning with those internal control deficiencies and inadequate policies and procedures when coming to debtors collections. Had it not learned any lessons from previous years where that tendency had been prevalent before? It would be unacceptable for the AGSA to find adversely where SRSAs financial health was concerned the following year.

Mr Malatsi commented that he agreed with Mr Ralegoma on the unhealthy overdependence of the two entities on the SRSA. Not only where they failing to operate with the little SRSA support they received already, they also seemed to be unable to find alternative revenue streams to assist them perform at the level they were supposed to be, because of a lack of internal controls. Moreover there was a potential gap there as the entities belonged to SRSA and that when deficiencies occurred and whether SRSA had a way of sufficiently monitoring the operations of the entities and whether those flaws were being picked up earlier or even belatedly; it could then intervene in such cases timeously.

Moreover, it was a challenge for entities that could not account for failing to deliver on their mandates and expenditure to always have an SRSA to run to for intervention, and the Committee with SRSA needed to find a realistic balancing act between not portraying the SRSA as a pot of gold for BSA and SAIDS whilst they could not account. That needed to be aligned with what the BSA and SAIDS mandates where, versus what was expected of both of them.  So that the Committee could stop looking at things in retrospect always because once a year had ended, all it could do was to recommend and hope for implementation in the following financial year. Because currently the prevailing situation was that of even when the Committee would demand accountability from the previous BSA management, the CEO and acting COO had been suspended so that then the state was left with seeking accountability from people that were not responsible for the current state of affairs.

The Chairperson said the AGSA could respond but asked the Committee if all the questions directed to the DG could wait for his SRSA presentation.

Mr Alec Moemi, SRSA DG, responded that his presentation would not cover the two entities and asked if he could be allowed to deal with all the questions put to him regarding BSA and SRSA in the presence of the AGSA.

The Chairperson replied that it was acceptable and that he could respond after Mr Adendorff.

Mr Adendorff responded that regarding financial health; the AGSA was doing calculations that even though the SRSA, SAIDS and BSA where state institutions the analysis of financial health were warning indicators given to the SRSA, SAIDS and BSA to say that they needed to focus on the particular issues there. And that those were areas of concern for AGSA.

Regarding seeking of accountability with the non-performing entities as Mr Malatsi had pointed out: through the SRSA and the boards at the two entities, they all needed to look at previous performance reports and the individual performance contracts of the CEO’s and CFO’s. In those performance contracts they needed to include in there the condition that if a particular outcome of an audit was found, a particular consequence would ensue. So that going into a new financial year, that new CEO and CFO would know that if he was not performing or their staff were not performing they would not receive bonuses or salary increases. If that then could possibly be enforced by the Committee on the boards that could assist in getting the accountability turned around.

Mr Moemi said SAIDS was a well-managed entity but it certainly had challenges. It certainly could account for its expenditure and was executing its mandate of educating and testing athletes. The SAIDS was a schedule 3C entity, meaning it was a service provider not generating revenue. In the previous two years SAIDS had not had as many challenges, they had come about mainly as a result of the Ludwick Mamabolo case against SAIDS which had forced changes in terms of the chain of custody in testing protocols of athletes had had to be amended completely. That had then more than doubled the cost of what SAIDS normally had to do, and SRSA was still insisting and also in terms of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) code.

SAIDS was expected to do 3000 tests per year. With all that and for SAIDS to remain an accredited anti-doping agency, it was required to continue with that number of tests but SRSA had since approached the National Treasury (NT) twice to say that the requirements on SAIDS had become so onerous that that required a relook on SAIDS baseline. NT had not approved that relook and as a consequence SAIDS would continue being under financial pressure budget wise. SAIDS was not insolvent yet they were technically so, if one considered the strict definition of insolvency; when one’s liabilities exceeded ones assets. Many companies and individuals were technically like that because what they owed the banks versus what they had assets  

BSA had always been a problem child in terms of performance and accountability levels. Because the Committee was new it possibly would not know where BSA was coming from through the efforts of the SRSA. The current situation there was quite different from what it had been two years ago. When Mr Moemi was appointed DG, in his first meeting with AGSA: it had presented a dashboard report on BSA which had been entirely red. Even then AGSA had recommended that BSA needed to be closed and to be made a Chief Directorate of SRSA. Following that recommendation would have meant that SRSA would be taking a moribund institution and its mandate which had been conceptualized in the first place to be taken outside SRSA so that it could more efficient on its own, as a regulatory body because SRSA was not managing boxing very well at that time. Collapsing BSA back into SRSA would have taken a Department that was barely making its audit unqualified to possibly an adverse opinion. The SRSA had then in 2011 requested the AGSA to give it an opportunity to see if it could not put a turn-around strategy in place and that plan had been completed and submitted to AGSA. It had also been submitted to the new BSA board and was being implemented when SRSA quickly realised that the challenge with BSA was its leadership. Certainly there were money challenges that were quite observable in BSA but BSA was a schedule 3B entity, meaning that it had to generate some portion of its own revenue where the other portion would be coming from the state, but BSA was currently generating was 20% of its revenue with the state contributing the 80%. Contrasting that with other schedule 3B entities of government in other Departments, one would quickly see that those that were doing well and in good financial health; their revenue ratio was reversed. They raised 80% revenue on their own and received 20% as operational expenses. The model with BSA had been crooked from the beginning and the DG had raised that issue with NT that the baseline of BSA versus what it was expected to do was wrong. And for BSA to be turned around, the estimated baseline would be approximately R15 million minimum because at that time the baseline was at about R5 million. For instance, BSA needed inspectors to check the facilities and whether everyone had registered the number of boxers at those facilities, but the entity did not have the capacity to do that. If BSA did not know who was out there, it would not know who to collect registration fees from. The conundrum for BSA then was whether to increase staff to collect better and not afford it after that or should it keep staff at low numbers and not have the capacity to verify what was out there? When SRSA had begun the turn-around strategy and realised that the CEO was the problem, it had gotten the BSA board to suspend that CEO. The COO was then appointed as Acting CEO, but unfortunately not before long the Acting CEO also had challenges, so the board also suspended him as well. It certainly would seem that finalising those suspensions was taking forever, but the DG had learned that those disciplinary processes needed to be done meticulously because if they were messed up once, that whole process became a waste of time. Forcing such issues where one would then have to pay high salaries to persons not at work and having to reinstate them resulted in big unauthorised or wasteful expenditure findings at audit.

The SRSA was being meticulous because it had recently received the first report from the investigator, in respect of the suspended CEO. After reviewing the report the DG still had questions and so the investigator had had to go back to check those issues. So he had returned to the DG with more findings: and the delay in the tabling of the report had worked in favour of the SRSA because by the time the AGSA had given SRSA the first audit report of the financial year during which the suspended CEO had been in charge and from what had been briefly gleaned from those findings. The SRSA for instance had found a new charge to add to the charges against the suspended CEO, which was that he had signed a lease agreement for BSAs new offices without the board’s approval. Moreover the BSA Act was saying that the board had to get a new building in consultation with the Minister where there had been no such consultation or board approval. In the old offices where BSA had been housed, it had been paying an average of about R33 per square meter whereas the new lease agreement was charging R289 per square meter. That pricing being more than tenfold than before, which now made the BSAs operational costs rocket to 40% for office rentals in its annual budget from an older 8% for the same thing was just unacceptable.  The commitment that SRSA had in ensuring that the maximum penalty would be given to the suspended CEO, including the delays in the disciplinary proceedings was that important.

Since the addition of that charge on top of everything else the opposing legal team had offered to settle with the SRSA and BSA. It wanted the SRSA to withdraw the charges in favour of the suspended CEO resigning and SRSA paying him some months salaries, the DG had refused outright. SRSA wanted to fire the suspended CEO and to try and recover from his pensions as much as it could of the unauthorised expenditure he had signed off at BSA.

Relating to the suspended Acting CEO, the first report had recently been submitted by the investigator and the administrator at BSA had consulted with the DG to get his permission to proceed with charging that Acting CEO.  The DG had agreed and after the next BSA board meeting the Acting CEO would be charged. Even the Acting CEOs charge sheet was quite in favour of the BSA and SRSA and the Department wanted to set an example with how it was dealing with those officials.

Mr Moemi then said he would have taken the Committee into confidence over the new steps it would be taking in respect of disciplining those officials were it not for the PMG monitor present at the meeting. 

Mr Malatsi then argued that PMG was not really media and what were the DGs misgivings in telling the Committee what he had planned to tell it.

Mr Moemi responded that because the detailed report would be put up onto the internet he could not go on because of the sensitivity of the matter it would not be wise to speak in public before actually acting against all those officials as that would be construed as unfair process legally.

The BSA had a new board which was very competent and the disheartening issue that BSA had overspent by 14% was just an indication that its baseline was wrong. Additionally, that there was no accountability at BSA was not founded as SRSAs commitment that people had to account was quite high, even within the Department.

Mr Moemi said the Committee was quite aware that he was amongst those few DGs that did not just dismiss people; because he followed corrupt officials to try and recover the wasted monies, furthermore he went further opened cases against those where the matters were criminal. Even in the BSA case where two CEOs had been suspended successfully, showed the SRSAs interest in accountability. SRSA had also insisted that the new board should implement the BSAs mandate and that the status quo that had been happening in boxing with people getting authorisation of tournaments without having paid deposits and everything due to the BSA should stop. As a result BSA had thus far not initiated a single litigation whereas everyone was suing it .The SRSA could not leave BSA to be sued by everyone without defending it; and probably the reason why BSAs expenditure on legal fees was that high at that stage was not because the board was doing something wrong. It was for that reason that BSA had only lost one case out of the five litigation cases against it.  That case had nothing to do with the new board but the CEO who had gone live on electronic media and vilified a particular promoter without any concrete evidence. That CEO had been sued whereby the previous board also had not distanced itself from his utterances so that the utterances were taken to be a BSA statement. Of the four other cases which BSA had won, were with costs for senior counsel; therefore SRSA had to help BSA defend so that it could then implement the law as it was. If the Act said people had to pay deposits over to BSA first before a tournament, then the board had to insist that that was done no matter who the promoter was. The litigation was exactly because there had been inconsistencies in treatment of promoters by the board and there had to a time where it would get to say, from a particular point onwards treatment would be the same and all promoters had to just pay the deposit.

The Chairperson thanked Mr Moemi but noted that even the new board of BSA needed to have timeframes with its targets and mandate so that it should not be found sitting on its laurels whilst there were challenges remaining at BSA. The Committee would be calling on the DG to keep it updated to ensure that BSA was aware the SRSA and the Committee were paying close attention concerning its affairs. Possibly the Committee also would need to refrain from going to the media with incomplete information concerning entities and federations. The recovery and rescue of boxing had to be concluded speedily as it had been going for a while already.    

Mr Ralegoma said he had read that a Personal Assistant had been the board secretary and that needed changing as well as that affected governance issues at the BSA.

The Chairperson thanked AGSA again and paused the proceedings for a comfort break.

At the resumption of proceedings the Chairperson handed over to the DG to do the SRSA presentation.

Sport and Recreation SA briefing on Annual Report and Financial Statements of Vote 20- Department of Sport and Recreation for 2013/14
Mr Moemi said he would not go into detail on the annual report (AR) as there was also an executive summary which he would be using instead, even though both documents had been given to the Committee.

Mr Moemi said Basketball South Africa (BBSA) was the 2014 federation of the year. The AR had thus taken the BBSA as a theme. Since 2012, SRSA had introduced an annual ward system for federations that were doing well, first of this was Netball SA (NSA) which was followed by Tennis SA (TSA).   SRSA allocated R10 million to the federation of the year on top of the annual allocation which a chosen federation would have been allocated. A federation had to submit separate plans to SRSA on what it intended to do with that additional grant. From then on SRSA would then work with said federation to ensure that it would put on leagues or programmes that were self-sustaining in the long run. The SRSA had achieved quite a few things with that award system with federations that had won the grant.

Of the recurring issues at SRSA was the fact that it still had not put a Human Resources (HR) plan in place.  That was because even though there was a written plan in place; in terms of the process SRSA had to get concurrence from the Minister of Public Service and Administration, Mr Collins Chabane, and over the past two years it had been requesting that concurrence from Mr Chabane. The Minister of SRSA, Mr Fikile Mbalula had written four letters to date to the different Ministers that had come and gone at the Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) to request that concurrence for the HR plan of SRSA. That had not happened as yet and Mr Mbalula had made an unprecedented move to take Minister Chabane to the Public Service Commission (PSC) for intervention in that issue, so that concurrence could be granted. Hopefully by the next audit the SRSA was hoping it would have received a response to that concurrence. Mr Moemi had also gone ahead with signing off the draft HR plan so SRSA could start implementing some tenets of the plan although there was still no concurrence, so that SRSA would not be accused of having no HR plan.  

The SRSA was almost done finalizing the organisational review process where it had formally declared a dispute with Minister Chabane. The Public Service Act (PSA) and its regulations did not necessarily give Mr Chabane the power to have a final say in terms of the approval of the SRSA organisational structure.  Both laws simply said Minister Mbalula should consult Minister Chabane and that had been done, but there were still disagreements at that level of officials.  DPSA still wanted SRSA to believe that certain posts were more important for SRSA in its prioritisation versus SRSA itself, which knew where the pressures were. However DPSA had agreed that SRSA could start implementing the HR plan on issues where there were no disagreements. SRSA was currently recruiting very vigorously and filling vacancies. The PSC had agreed that it would assist the two Departments past that impasse.   

Office Accommodation
The additional R9 million which the NT had given to SRSA for Office Accommodation had been inadequate in comparison with the office spaces that the Department of Public Works (DPW) had found for SRSA so far. To that extent SRSA had also surrendered that money back to the NT and would only move after finding a cheaper alternative.

Accounting officer’s overview
SRSA had begun implementing in four areas out of the eight in which the NDP gave injunctions on sport. There were still the weekend leagues and other programmes outstanding, that the NDP required of SRSA. However the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KFW) and the Sports Trust had been putting about R6 million for every million that SRSA spent on the outdoor sporting facilities.

School Sport
SRSA still ring-fenced about 40% of provinces allocations, in terms of the Division of Revenue Act (DoRA) Grant to the school sport programme. The Department was currently putting about 13 new sport support practitioners in the programme so that it could better coordinate the district tournaments. 

There were about 22% of learners with disabilities or special needs out of the total 8000 participants in the South African Schools Sport Championship in 2014.

Recipients of the Ministerial School Sport Bursary would be receiving a total of R100 000 per year and would be placed in sport focus schools. SRSA had already accredited 14 such schools whereby the actual need was for about 870 focus schools to make the system work at optimal level. Accreditation of focus schools was a challenging issue as well in that the school governing body (SGB) had to agree and approve each sporting code being done at said school. Because the SA Schools Act gave SGBs the power to decide the codes played at schools, some SGBs never wanted to allow football. As a consequence for instance, there were schools were boys would be found playing football in the parking lot even though there were sporting grounds in the schools.

It had been a slow process to get SGBs to be support schools becoming sport focus schools even with the R250 000 per year that SRSA was using to get schools to agree to be focus schools. Even after a principal had initially shown interest earlier SGBs by virtue of the schools Act had the final say.

The issue of providing sport equipment and attire was the responsibility of the Department of Basic Education (DBE), even though SRSA was doing that for DBE. According to the Memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the two Departments, SRSA was supposed to enter the school sport system only at the level of the district tournaments and festivals. At the intra-school or inter-house levels; where children at grade nine played against each other to make up their schools team, every Wednesday was DBEs responsibility. SRSA was the Department being asked by parents why children were not doing sports on Wednesdays; moreover at interschool where different schools in the same locality played against each. That then culminated in local festival where schools in the same education circuit held athletics meetings twice a year to compete in both summer and winter sporting codes. That unfortunately was not happening and that resulted in many schools getting to participate for the first time at the district level whereas by SRSAs calculation, at that level it was supposed to be working with only about 25% of the schools. The SRSA had raised that issue with DBE because SRSA was currently being forced to go to lower grades. In Limpopo and Mpumalanga, SRSA with the provincial SRSAs of those provinces had had to go to the local festival and had to arrange the meetings themselves. In the three year history of the schools league championship, those meetings were happening for the first time in the two provinces and even though that was a breakthrough for SRSA it simply did not have the personnel or the resources to continue going that far low.        

As for the school that had not been playing any sport or the last 20 years, some of the teachers that had raised their hands saying they wanted to restart sport in their school; only wanted to play football. When SRSA went to do needs assessment at those schools it found that the schools did not have any type of sporting equipment. With many of those schools being no fee paying schools it became unreasonable for SRSA to expect those kinds of schools to ask parents to pay a sports levy. In that regard SRSA had decided that it would step in that gap without the DBE.

Of the 650 schools that had benefited from that commitment the need was much greater and even though the targets of SRSA were modest, they were simply representative of the resources available. Moreover SRSA had indicated to its provincial spheres that 60% of the schools that would be put on that programme going forward, had to be rural and no fee paying. The schools of course would have to have taken the initiative to register to play in the league as well.

CHAN 2014
Because the SA premier soccer league was considered one of the best in the continent SRSA had strongly believed that Bafana Bafana should have won the tournament but it had humbly learnt that having the best run league did not translate to the player attitudes being that of ambition and commitment to the country. Moreover it became apparent that the premier league was the best because of good infrastructure rather than commitment from players.

Nelson Mandela Sport and Culture Day
In 2013/14 the Springboks shared the stages with Bafana Bafana against foreign opponents where both National teams had won.

Boxing Indaba 2013
SRSA had implemented 14 of the 32 resolutions adopted at the Boxing Indaba in 2013.

SA Sports Awards
The SRSA now had to deal with athletes fighting over why some had not being nominated or won which spoke to how popular the brand had become with athletes. There was good progress as well, in terms of making the awards self-sustaining in the following five years.

Performance Information by Programme
The 2014 exhibition on Sport in the Struggle
The exhibition’s research was unearthing new yesteryear sportsmen and women that had not been recognised under apartheid. People like Elijah King Kong Mthimkhulu (boxing), David Samayi and Tshakile Nzimande (athletics) were being recognised and SRSA planned to publish a journal chronicling those heroes under the history of sport theme.

Sport Support Services
Programme management
The Eminent Persons Group (EPG) would be coming to brief the Committee on the progress made by the SRSA in pushing transformation in all the federations especially the big five: soccer, rugby, cricket, netball and athletics.  By the end of 2014 the SRSA would sign the transformation agreements on what all those five federations committed to do over the next five year period.  Those that were not complying with the transformation charter after signing had started to feel the pinch as they had been issued with forfeiture letters from the SRSA concerning their annual allocations from the Department.

By February 2015 SRSA would be issuing a new barometer with 16 sporting codes which would inform the Committee on how far those codes were in complying with the charter.

Club development and support
SRSA was running the pilot project in the Mopani district with football and netball to see over five years what changes would have occurred with its support. In KwaZulu- Natal (KZN) the pilot was being carried out in the eThekwini Metro with three codes which were athletics, netball and football. At the end of the five year SRSA would do a comparative analysis to see if the new club system in place was working or not. The SRSA was aware that the current system in the seven other provinces was not working which was why there was a pilot in the other two provinces.

Mass Participation
Even though the DG had been withholding money from the provinces which had not been compliant with school sport information submission prescripts the SRSA had been late in publishing the schedule of penalties with non-compliant provinces. In the next gazette, with the published schedule of penalties the Department would no longer just withhold money the one year and give it back the following year after compliance. For late compliance there would be a portion of the allocation taken away from each province and the Members of the Executive Council (MECs) would start charging the Heads of Department (HODs) and fortunately the HODs had agreed to sign the agreement which would bind all of them to delivering on that issue.

The SRSA was currently insisting on participants to register with Identity documents and register before playing during the sports promotion projects seeing that in the past it had always been challenging to convince AGSA that those projects were indeed happening.

International Liaison and Events
Of the 11 previous International agreements SRSA had really worked on the Mozambique hosting the 2011 All Africa Games; and so the approach had changed since then. The SRSA had looked at the National Sports and Recreation Plan (NSRP) for things that the country did not have, which had been found to be a deficiency in coaches. Compared to Australia which had a coach for every 24 participants, there was one technical official for every 817 participants in SA. That included referees, coaches and all such officials, but narrowing it down to coaches the ratio would be beyond 1000 to one in SA. Therefore in looking to where those coaches could be found, SRSA had found that Jamaica could supply the country with coaches in netball and track athletics. SRSA had then proposed an agreement with Jamaica which the President, Mr Jacob Zuma had agreed to and the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) had agreed to.  SRSA would see the first exchange of coaches from 2015 onwards because Jamaica had asked for coaches in cricket and rugby. Those new generation MOUs were meant for the country to look first at its own interests first and then how it could give back to the countries it was entering into agreements with.

Facilities Cooordination
SRSA was currently talking with the University of Pretoria to offer a bridging course for facilities managers in municipalities as many of those so called ‘caretakers’ were actually security guards with keys to the facilities.

The Department was now simply doing a facilities count instead of a full facilities audit because the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) geographic information system (GIS) for the audit would have cost too much over the five year period.  The six other Departments; Health, Police, DBE and others which had a consortium on a working GIS for SA were saying that SRSA should back pay how much they had paid to gain access to that system. In that regard SRSA was planning to declare an intergovernmental dispute with those Departments as government tools had to benefit the entire government.

Governance
The SRSA had requested state security to vet all staff working in supply chain management (SCM) and that exercise had about 80% of the staff already vetted. There was also a sample review of which companies had already done work with the state and to compare that with the names on the state security database.

SRSA had seconded a liaison member of its audit Committee to the BSA board and audit Committee. Additionally the working hours of the internal auditor of SRSA had been extended so that he could do tests and audits at BSA.

Financials
Revenue
The SRSA budget was contracting in terms of the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) over the next three years even though its responsibilities were increasing in terms of the NSRP.

Expenditure
The SRSA had saved very little if the DG took away the savings on commitments which were the invoices on hand by the end of the financial year which had not yet been processed, then very little was actually saved. If SRSA had had to pay everything it needed to by the end of the financial year it would have remained with a small deficit.

Venues and facilities
To hire the FNB stadium for the Nelson Mandela Sport and Culture Day had been about R4.4 million per day. For the Nelson Mandela Sport and Culture Day the SRSA had needed two days prior and after the vent to prepare and clean up afterwards, which spoke to the 26% increase in that project. 

Transfer Payments
SRSA was currently not transferring to the North West because the new premier had divided the provincial SRSA into two new Departments; DEB and Sport, and left Arts and Culture with Recreation. The DG was now faced with how and to whom he had to transfer to with the province suggesting that 70% should go to DBE and Sport, and 30% to Arts and Recreation and he had refused. SRSA could not deal with two Departments in one province.

Mass Participation Provincial Allocation
As indicated in the AGSA report, SRSA was having difficulty in collecting debts. When provinces remained with some change from their allocations they had to surrender that money to the DG and he had to surrender it to the National Revenue Fund (NRF). Provinces had not been doing that and that affected the provincial treasuries as well as the DG even though the treasuries were more responsible for those collections. Seeing that they were not assisting the DG in that regard he had chosen to first look at how much change a province was supposed to have given back to SRSA the previous year and would then subtract that from the new allocation and transfer the remainder. The NT had warned the DG and told him to leave that action to it.

Challenges
Mr Moemi said there was a myth in government that SRSA is performing and therefore the employees there are alright, that resulted in all other Departments poaching SRSA staff.  As the DG he could not start an on-going trend in Departments, where employees were counter offered by their original Departments to keep them from jumping ship to another Department, as SRSA simply did not have the resources to do that. SRSA was the Department recruiting young people in government since it had a very robust internship programme. Additionally, upward mobility at SRSA was quite narrow, which also possibly spoke to the high attrition rate at SRSA. On the exit interview report of staff Members, they said they would consider going back to SRSA if the salary would be higher and in a higher position.

SRSA would hold itself and federations with the South African Sport Council and Olympic Committee (SASCOC) to improve on their accountability. In that regard SRSA would compare notes with AGSA, and ensure that AGSA could select some federations whilst SRSA had chosen five already, where the internal audit unit at SRSA and AGSA would follow the money and its uses.

SRSA was more concerned with its impact in communities which was why it had focused on its performance information instead of financials accountability and compliance with legislation. The Human Science and Research Council (HSRC) would do an impact study on two SRSA programmes. The post-graduate development programme had a PhD student who had presented at the SASRECON conference. His work was on the impact of SRSAs school sport programme, where his findings reported that the programme was beginning to have an impact.

The Chairperson thanked the DG and said the Committee had ambitions for SRSA but wondered if it would manage in the few remaining months of the 2014/15 financial year. She then allowed the Committee to interrogate the SRSA presentation.

Mr Ralegoma welcomed the AR and asked about the MOU between SRSA and the DBE and whether the Committee could be provided with copies for themselves. Moreover he was interested in the audit report of facilities in municipalities as well. Where school sport was concerned he felt that the Committee needed a day with the SRSA to interrogate that programme apart from the 16 priority schools SRSA had reported on during the strategic workshop of the Committee.

He would also want a presentation on the transformation charter so that the Committee could be better be able to deal with the scorecard challenges.

Ms B Abrahams (ANC) asked if there would be a rotational beneficiation process for the school sport equipment and playing attire initiative, under the school sport programme. What was the criteria for the R250 000 grant per year that SRSA was using to get schools to agree to be focus schools? What other way was there for people in rural areas to get involved in the National Sports Volunteer Corps? Why could SRSA not utilise sport legends as facility managers as they had been involved in sport before rather than security guards. Who was responsible for the maintenance and security of the community outdoor gyms? What were the reasons behind the high vacancy rate? Could SRSA also speak to the sick leave challenge with senior managers?

Mr S Mmusi (ANC) asked as to what the shortcomings were, according to the research in the school sport programme. How was withholding the allocation of the North West going to affect sports lovers in that province? At what percentage had the SRSA budget increase to prior to CHAN 2014? Did SRSA hold exit interviews with BSA CEOs?

Having indicated that SRSA vetted staff Members for the SCM and the finance units, Mr Mmusi asked if that was related to any case that the DG could tell the Committee about.

Mr Moteka asked what criteria were being used to determine provincial allocations seeing that they were quite different. Was there a follow up strategy to check whether that money carried out the stated mandates in provinces? If the 16 priority schools were urban based then the SRSA would make no impact on the transformation agenda of sport. If school governing bodies were deciding which sporting codes were being played in schools: who was really responsible for overseeing sports in the country? He suggested that if schools were able to tell SRSA that they would not be playing soccer then they should fund themselves so that the resources could be taken to schools that were ready to transform and work together with the SRSA.

Ms D Manana (ANC) said there were certain schools participating and those that wanted to participate in school sports in Mpumalanga whereby the responsible official who was supposed to be carrying out the sport mandate in the province only went to schools where their former colleagues were based. Could the DG please look into that?
Mr Bergman asked that in the future when the Management Committee (MANCO) was planning meetings and workshops to please be culturally sensitive to religious holidays of all faiths as he had been absent from the strategic workshop because of such reasons. What had made the Bloemfontein week from the 06 to the 10 of October a successful sporting week? What could be used as a benchmark and how much had it all cost? In comparing the allocations between primary, high schools and professional athletes at the club league and the gap between all of them; would the club level development initiative plug that vacuum between those three institutions? Hopefully the club level development would afford a sporting chance for children that had not had the opportunities because of not being able to go to tertiary institutions. SRSA probably was supposed to be trying to level the playing field at the schools level instead of trying to introduce and ad hoc shot gun approach of supporting x and y schools. That was because if a child went to one school over another, he or she had a better chance of progressing professionally in a sport. SRSA was supposed to create that competitiveness that if a child went to a school that could not afford an x or y facility, then the SRSA should build that facility. That the Minister of Sport had had to take another Minister to a Chapter 9 institution for issues of concurrence in policies was surprising; how was it that the Committee was hearing about that now and how could it support the ministry in that regard?

Mr L Ntshayisa (AIC) said he thought that SRSA and DBE were supposed to work together because the giving of all the powers to SGBs through the SA Schools Act was quite worrying as the SGBs did not really represent the sentiments of the learners all the time. If some amendments could be made to the SA Schools Act that would involve consultations with all stakeholders including Unions when decisions of which sports were played at schools were taken that would certainly be a good idea because SGBs were not always trained even though they were the sole decision makers currently. Was there a separate plan for sports development in rural areas as the was nothing happening there currently? What kind of relationship had the SRSA with schools in terms of staff recruitment from there?

Mr Malatsi noted that since the vacancy for director for school sport had not been filled that possibly could have affected the delay in the roll out of that programme; when would that position be filled. Could the DG give a provincial breakdown of the actual beneficiaries of the Ministerial School Sport Bursary programme so that the Committee could see the spread of the beneficiation per province? Was there any fraction of funding coming from the National Lotteries Board (NLB) and the private sector for the Nelson Mandela Sports and Culture day and the Sports Awards since there would be reduced funding for that recognition of sporting excellence as indicated through the MTEF as part of the NT austerity measures? Could the DG also speak to the virements of R10 and R4 million as they were quite high in terms of NT regulations and what remedial action would be taken to curtail the need for such virements.

The Chairperson said she was also concerned about the schools sport plan (SPP) vis-à-vis the actual physical education on the ground. Was the MOU between the SRSA and DBE producing any results? How far had it been implemented? Moreover she would ask the MANCO to review the Committees programme and see if schools declaring that they would not offer particular codes when the pupils themselves had interest in those unoffered sporting codes could be visited without notification.

Mr Moemi replied that the SRSA would send through the copy of the MOU for Members’ interrogation and would also share some of the findings of the few facilities SRSA had audited in its facilities audit.

The Municipal Infrastructure Grant (MIG) remained the SRSAs biggest issue as the Department believed it was a big game changer because as long as it had not been given to SRSA and it had no say in how it was being used there was no way of rolling out the NSRP. Irrespective of what the Department of Cooperative Government and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) and other Departments might say the idea of keeping the MIG in municipalities in the current status quo had been shown to not be working. On the working group which Dr Van der Spuy and other colleagues sat in which had been set up to find another way of reprioritising the use of that MIG to ensure it achieved greater impact; six possible solutions had emerged. None of which addressed the fundamental questions SRSA had. One of the solutions that group was raising was that perhaps SRSA should participate in all the Infrastructure Development Plans (IDPs) of municipalities to ensure what it wanted would be incorporated into the IDPs. Of the 168 staff compliment of SRSA that would mean that during the IDP season SRSA would have to shut down and double themselves up to attend every municipalities IDP. That was practically impossible first of; secondly there was no guarantee that after such an exercise and insistence that IDPs carry the mandate of sport as specified by SRSA during IDPs that mandate would be completed.

Another solution from the working group was to get COGTA to keep the money and for it to allocate the money to municipalities, but if COGTA had the appetite to keep the money why could it not do the same and give SRSA the MIG so that SRSA could drive its own NSRP.    

One more thing the solutions were not answering was the fact that in the bigger districts and municipalities, the equitable share was so big. Inversely though, the municipalities that received the most money according to the equitable share had the most facilities and those that needed the facilities the most received the least money. That begged the question of why government continued to perpetuate that status quo of giving money to municipalities that did not really need it for facilities and vice versa for those that needed it the most. Harvesting the MIG would enable the SRSA to target the greatest need of shortages for specific facilities in the country. When SRSA realised it was not affordable to move offices it voluntarily surrendered the back to the NT that had been allocated for rental of new office space:  somehow managers in government had a tendency to believe that they needed to keep every unspent cent. The15% MIG alone when harvested into one grant amounted to R1.986 billion per year. That was already twice the SRSA current budget even with donor support, but SRSA had been the only institution rolling out facilities faster than the bigger metros. The current budget allocation would take SRSA 116 years to address 20% of the facilities backlog, but with the harvested MIG proposal that time would be brought down to 23 years and 80% of the backlog would be addressed.  SRSA felt it needed all the support when the mathematics and logic were speaking like that.

He would ask the Eminent Persons Group (EPG) to come present to the Committee so that the SRSA could answer more of the current questions.

The SRSA did not repeatedly support the same schools with the sport equipment and attire initiative. In the 2013/14 financial year SRSA had supported 470 schools whereas in the year under review it had become 650.

The R 250 000 was for sport focus schools which were schools that would have had a rich tradition of sport and already had facilities because SRSA would not to be able to build Olympic size swimming pools for all the schools in the country, even if NT tripled SRSAs budget it was impossible. Therefore SRSA targeted that it could build cheaper swimming pools and would pilot those with some schools. Then for children identified with those cheaper pools as talented swimmers could not be kept in those schools as the burden and backlog of teachers as qualified swimming coaches was similarly insurmountable. Therefore swimming schools would nurture that talent further and SRSA could certainly build up to 10 Olympic size pools as that was a targeted investment. To encourage such schools to accept being focus schools SRSA would offer R250 000. With that strategy SRSA had signed up 40 schools so far and actually needed 870 in total. Seeing that there was not all the money for all 870 the priority was two schools per province per code of the priority 16 codes as a start. The bulk of those schools would be taken by rugby for instance as it already had 50 of such schools without SRSA support. The South African Rugby Union (SARU) made sure it trained the teachers, supported them and gave them equipment. Cricket SA (CSA) had a similar structure and relationship with cricket tradition schools, which amounted to 40. SRSA was using that model for the other priority codes.  

On the lengthiness of the pilot program, the DG had learnt that short cuts did not work because FIFA had given SRSA above R100 million in advances to prepare team SA for the Soccer World Cup (SWC) in 2010. He could not disclose how much the then foreign coach of Bafana Bafana had been paid with the promise that he was a world cup winning coach. R100 million later SA was the first country to exit the SWC whilst hosting it. The investment of SRSA in club development was important and the country had to have a long term view about that as short cuts simply did not work.

The legends that were a supposed saving grace for SA and that the Committee was bringing up frequently were not actual volunteers because all of them wanted to get paid. During the Milo under-15 tournament that SA had won and was preparing the team to leave for the continental tournament in Ghana; SRSA had asked the class of 1996 Bafana Bafana players to come and motivate the youngsters. Players, Philemon Masinga, Doctor Khumalo and Mark Williams came to talk with the youngsters and the following day the SRSA received a bill of R10 000 for each player amongst the three. When SRSA refused to pay as that had never been part of the agreement there was a media frenzy that SRSA thought the players were a charity. Even with the AFCON and the CHAN and the promotion of football through coaching clinics those legends expected to be paid.

The advantage of facilities managers appointed by municipalities was that they were already being paid; all that SRSA would be doing would be broadening their scope of work so that the manager would work with the kids instead of just watching them.

In the SRSA proposal to the NT on the MIG it had included a mechanism to address what was called a ‘maintenance curse’. Not only was SRSA prosing new and wear resistant material for courts and facilities but it was rolling out surfaces that would need painting of lines every five years. CSIRs materials development unit was also working with SRSA to possibly roll out a concrete base with a rubberised latex layer on top to cushion the knees of children on the courts. Above all of that SRSA was saying that the funding for facilities in municipalities needed to be accompanied by a budget for maintenance as it was useless to give a poor municipality a facility without planning for its maintenance.

The research shortcomings were that the schools sport league was a league at the level of interschool’s competition, meaning schools in the same locality continuously playing each other throughout the year. That was not happening as already pointed out. SRSA was supposed to start at district level and upwards whereas DBE would be responsible for the local festivals, intra-school and downwards. The dilemma was that the lower levels were not as functional as they were supposed to be and SRSA as a partner to DBE was taking a share of the blame for that failure. Even if the DG wanted SRSA to start working that low, there was neither capacity nor the resources to do that at SRSA and that was where DBE had to come in. There were issues of policy that the research had highlighted as well. One was that the researcher found that when a tender was issued for transportation of learners from away distance from school, it was called Learner Transport Subsidy (LTS) which was done by the Department of Transport (DoT) on behalf of DBE. That tender stipulated that the transport had to collect learners at 13:00 and school sports Wednesdays needed to start at 14:00. Therefore those learners had to choose whether they stayed for sport and not have transport to go home so that they would walk 10 kilometres or more; or they got on the transport and did not play. Moreover many learners only brought food for the school break and not for after school sport sessions. Consequently the poorest children would be hungry by the time they had to play and even the feeding scheme was only offered for class hours. There was a list of shortcomings that the researcher had summarised as barriers to participation, which required additional support by government in the Schools Sport programme.      

The participants and lovers of sports in the North West would obviously suffer as a result of non-allocation to that province, but then was SRSA simply supposed to just irresponsibly transfer money even when there were no guarantees that the money would be used for its intended purposes. Section 34(j) of the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA) was saying that the DG as accounting officer had to ensure that the entity he was going to transfer to: had the requisite capacity to utilize the funds correctly, properly and to account for them: and that the money would be used for the intended purpose. When NT came with AGSA they wanted a personal warranty from the DG that if that regulation was not followed then the state had the right to recover the money from him. Until there was a designated person accountable for the money and the measuring and ensuring of the impact of SRSA programmes in communities he would not transfer.

Prior to CHAN the SRSA budget had increased significantly because of the SWC and from 2011/12 it had dropped significantly and had been on a spiral decrease since then. It was decreasing by 1% every year and the 2014/15 would be 1.3% decreased.

There were no exit interviews for boxing CEOs as exit interviews were for staff Members that were resigning. The two suspended boxing CEOs were in a process of being fired. SRSA actual wrote on the Personnel and Salary Information System (PERSAL) that they were dismissed for misconduct or fraud so that any other Departments that opened PERSAL would start by seeing that red block indicating that the person had been dismissed before.

Only staff in SCM, the DGs office, the Ministry, Internal Audit and finance was vetted because there were regulations that provided for that to happen and because staff in SCM were dealing with sensitive information, even though those really did not have to be vetted. The vetting had helped SRSA as it had found some wrong elements that were then moved to other units and to terminate others.

The criterion for determining how much provinces were allocated was a government wide issue that mainly emanated from the equitable share formula in the DoRA. It said those provinces that contributed more to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) should get more money and that if a province had a higher population density than others, there would be more people that needed to be serviced and therefore more money had to be allocated to such a province. Moreover the transferring Department had to look at the level of development a province was at, but that third factor had not by policy been infused into the DoRA.

The NT simply had then taken a short cut that since the other two criterion were taken care of it would develop two special grants that would then cover the factor of the level of development. Therefore as a poorer province, one would likely get a higher special or conditional grant, so that the poor in that province would get an elderly pension grant, child social grant and so forth.

SRSA had had a fight with the NT over that equitable share formula because had it agreed with NT the budget for the poorer provinces would certainly be different from what the AR stated. SRSA had sought the buy in of all provincial sport HODs to change that formula as given by the NT so that they would apply the so called ‘flat rate’ first. That meant that before SRSA started giving money through the formula the benchmark would be to give all the provinces R20 million each. After setting that money aside SRSA would then apply the formula for the first level of applications with whatever remained, from then on it would then move on to the National Priorities as criterion. Moreover it would look at what were SRSA priorities like the building of the National Training Center in Bloemfontein and so from the academies budget SRSA would take 5% from each province and put it into that Center. It would also ensure that Northern Cape (NC) had lesser money for National school sport participation and more for transportation of learners. Then it would request from Gauteng and KZN to surrender 1% each from their budgets and those percentages would be taken to the NC as the poorest province. That strategy had been in place for three years at that time and SRSA felt it had been working very well whilst NT had not wanted SRSA to do that. Even though Members could decry that seemingly the poor were getting poorer whilst the rich were getting richer, what was in the AR was already after SRSA intervention against the strict prescripts of the equitable share formula.

The Sport Awards and the Nelson Mandela Sports and Culture day with the United Nations Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAID) Campaign were two different events, with the latter being SRSAs core business. With the support of the President, Minister Mbalula had to execute that mandate on behalf of cabinet. The sport and culture day would include cycling and road running for the year under review with participants being the main focus and theme instead of spectators.  

The Sport Awards had been said to be too expensive. All countries including the poorest ones had those awards or something similar. The country also needed to compare the awards with similar events in other countries on a rand to rand basis to check how well it was doing. No one ever questioned artists in SA on how much they received as prize money with the South African Music Awards (SAMAS) or South African Film and Television Awards (SAFTAS) but sports people only had those Sports Awards. The DG then asked why it was so problematic in SA to celebrate the excellence of sporting people whom were contributing to social cohesion and nation building and why was it that they had to justify themselves at every turn. The SRSA was not spending R64 million on the Awards as alluded to in media. That was a gross untruth and it was saddening that the country was being misled like that. When a company like MTN came to SRSA and said weekly it would give a cellphone away if SRSA got people to vote using MTNs sms line and the Department was asked by Parliament how much it had spent on the awards? The R17.8 million spent on the Awards was not spent on the event itself alone, because there were many coaching clinics building up to the actual event that the nominees had to conduct. There were also preceding sporting events that were held in the build up to those awards as well that SRSA had to ensure were successful. The Committee had to consider that prize money for all the awards totalled only R6 million because the R1 million that the sports star of the year had won would be halved with the R500 000 going to a charity of their choice. Beyond the awards there was also a continuing programme for the sport star that involved work with children at schools. That was where all that money for the awards was going to. Moreover there were donors for the actual event itself as Glenlivet had sponsored all the alcohol at the 2013/14 Sports Awards and Carducci had sponsored all the formal apparel for the nominees.

If then the follow up question was how much everything had cost in totality because the DG had responded unsatisfactorily then SRSA would have to go to SuperSport to ask how much it would cost for the awards to be broadcast during primetime as they had not been broadcast at primetime and Supersport responded that it would be R13 million, the DG would have to record that. Going on to the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and it responded R18 million that would have to be recorded as well. If then the DG in total tallied all the sponsorships and responded at a press conference that the awards would have accumulated to R64 million had SRSA paid for it, the R17.8 million would no longer be the actual expenditure even though the former amount was clearly recorded as sponsorships and could be audited. 

The Chairperson asked Mr Moemi to try and summarise his responses. She understood that he was pre-empting some questions and she was concerned whether his other colleagues would have a chance to respond. She also understood that some of the issues were quite emotional for him.

Mr Moemi noted that in total the SRSA had responded to 23 questions on the awards in the past two years, which in effect were the same but phrased differently. That was why he had been talking for so long on that issue.

The Chairperson asked the Committee whether it was allowable for the rest of the SRSA delegation to continue responding or did it need the lunch pause.

Ms Manana proposed that SRSA should be allowed to continue.

Mr Malatsi seconded Ms Manana with the proviso that the Committee actually finished with all the proceedings of the day before the lunch pause.

The Chairperson then allowed SRSA to continue responding.

Mr Bernadus Van der Spuy, Chief Director (CD), Strategic Support, SRSA, said the SRSA had had challenges with the AGSA on reporting on the actual numbers of participants in the mass participation programme. The AGSA had insisted that the numbers SRSA was reporting had to be verifiable. SRSA had realised that in some of the events in rural areas there were no proper registrations and other methods of counting the actual participants and from the 2013/14 financial year had targeted more focus in that regard. SRSA had targeted specific programmes and included recreation as a key deliverable which it possibly had ignored in the past. The big walks, indigenous games, golden games, youth camps and school sport championships where SRSA had put participant recording measures. That was why the AR had reduced numbers of participants in the mass participation programme, but the difference was that those people could be verified. Moreover the verification was so that there could be follow ups especially when it came to the school sport programme and that participants could be linked to a talent identification programme. Regarding the importance of the club system the mass participation programme would be able to introduce participants to the club development programme.

The role that the mass participation programme could play in improving the health of citizens had also been highlighted in the NDP and looking at the latest statistics of the World Health Organisation (WHO) the NDP really had a point and therefore the SRSA believed that if it could increase the number of people participating in healthy activities SA would certainly be healthier. 

Looking back in history at the Ministerial Task team looking into the umbrella bodies responsible for club development in SA, which were seven at that time, the Committee would find that the sentiment had been that there was a lot of duplication and wasteful expenditure. That culminated in SRSA which focused on the sport development component and SASCOC which would look into high performance sport. In the development continuum after the mass participation, the link between that and high performance; SRSA was hoping to address with the club development system that vacuum.

On why the vacancy rate was so high, the Committee had to realise that that report was up to the end of March 2014. The DG had referred to the challenges that SRSA had in finalising its organogram. During the previous year the feeling had been that possibly SRSA should not quickly fill the positions so as to make sure that the vacancies that were being filled would be 100% aligned with the new organogram. After all those challenges had been overcome the SRSA had identified priority posts and had started to fill those positions and indeed the AR of the 2014//15 financial year would be different.

On the Committee that had looked at the evaluation of the applications it had approved a similar study for the Gauteng region and certainly it would be interesting to look at results of the different studies on the impact of the school sport programme in different regions.  

On monitoring of the allocations to provinces and whether they were actually being used for their intended purposes SRSA did that on a quarterly basis with the provinces reports on progress with achievement of their indicators. From AGSA the SRSA had learnt certain techniques in ways of reporting, because it was currently asking the provinces that although they were indicating that they had achieved A, B and C where was the evidence to prove that. To that extent the SRSA had even sent teams to validate those reports.

The relationship between DBE and SRSA possibly would have to be relooked at again, in terms of the school sport programme. How practical the MOU was and whether it needed revision so that it could be revised in the interests of both Departments.

On how successful physical education was in SA schools, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization UNESCO had raised the same question in 2013 because in 92% of the countries that had indicated that they had physical education in their schools; only half actually had effective physical education.  UNESCO had then put together a pilot programme for physical education in schools where SA was on the shortlist of being one of the countries were the pilot would be rolled out. SRSA had already agreed to assist UNESCO but were still waiting for DBE to respond to UNESCO as well. 

SRSA would also certainly supply the Committee with the list of documents that had been asked for.

Ms Noziphiwo Lubanga, Director, Internal Audit, SRSA said sick leave management was a very serious issue at SRSA in that all senior managers had leave as part of their key performance agreements. With sick leave that employees had not taken, Ms Lubanga had personally given an unpaid two days leave period for one of her units’ assistant directors.

It was 40% unused leave for level 9 to level 12 managers whereby 65 out of the 168 staff compliment of SRSA where in-between those two levels and therefore although it would seem 40% would be speaking to a lot of employees it was the inverse, because it was only that high because of the level of employment of those employees not taking leave.

From the internal audit perspective Ms Lubanga was officially currently in Western Cape (WC) for two weeks to audit the provincial SRSA quarterly report on its DoRA funds. When the audit Committee was not satisfied with the paperless exercise it also sampled particular areas as far as the indicators were claiming in the performance information of provinces.

SRSA had selected four provinces to audit DoRA funds at which were the WC, Limpopo, KZN and Mpumalanga. There as a standing agreement with AGSA that it would take two provinces for the year under review as that had occurred in the past. There was at least above 50% assurance of DoRA funds quarterly auditing.  AGSA also reported to SRSA on those audits and the management letter for SRSA from AGSA had minimal findings on the DoRA. In 2013/14 SRSA had serious challenges in the utilisation of the DoRA funds in was Mpumalanga in that it had overspent significantly and was not surrendering unused funds back to the SRSA.  The internal audit would be returning to Mpumalanga in the year under review and Limpopo had shown some improvement in the 2012/13 financial year in comparison to the 2011/12 financial year.  

The Chairperson noted that the Committee’s oversight basket was becoming quite full, the more the SRSA came to brief the Committee. The Committee was getting to know SRSA much better after that AR since it preferred briefings more than legacy reports and would invite all the entities to Parliament for briefings. Although the Committee had every right to ask questions it was also wise to not ask similar questions each time SRSA came to present. That was why she had interjected when the DG was responding and pre-empting that he should wrap-up as he seemed to be getting emotional at the time.

She then thanked AGSA again for its presentation as it gave support to the SRSA presentation.

Moreover there would be no transformation if the other Departments were not assisting SRSA. Those Departments needed to be invited to come and address the Committee as well.

The Committee Secretary relayed a few Committee announcements.

The Chairperson said some of the announcements from the secretary still needed to be processed by the MANCO as she was hearing them for the first time. She then allowed Members the lunch pause.

The Committee seemed to be at loggerheads over whether they were breaking up just for lunch and coming back or finishing for the day and then going for late lunch.

The Chairperson replied that she misunderstood as she had thought that the Committee had been proposing that SRSA could respond and then the Committee would pause for lunch. She said she was being advised that the Committee would not engage the content advisors presentation that day.

Mr Malatsi said there might have been a misunderstanding between him and the Chairperson over the motion he had supported from Ms Manana, because he had thought it was to finish everything and then to break away until the following week. Certainly if there was to a presentation that could not be interrogated, it possibly would be best to leave for a time when that could be done.

The Chairperson asked the Committee for a way forward.

Mr Moteka suggested that the Committee should break up for a slight pause.

The Chairperson said the Committee could break.

At the second session of the meeting the Chairperson gave the Committee Content Advisor an opportunity to brief the Committee.

Draft Budgetary Review and Recommendations Report of the Committee on the performance of the Department of Sport and Recreation for the 2014/15 financial year
Mr Teboho Thebehae, the Committee Content Advisor, said he was going to take the Members through the Committees draft Budgetary Review and Recommendations Report (BRRR). With the Committee having looked at the budget that had been proposed for the 2014/15 financial year and the AR of the 2013/14 financial year for SRSA what then would be the implications for the Department and its entities for 2015/16 going forward would be the purpose of that exercise. Moreover it would assist Members to make recommendations to the MTEF that the Minister of Finance would be tabling later in October and what would be allocated to the SRSA during the 2015/16 financial year.

What should have happened was that the researcher was supposed to have briefed the Committee on an analysis of the budget of SRSA before the AR, but because of time constraints that had not been done even though the document for that presentation had been circulated to the Committee. The contents of that were also contained in the BRRR that the Committee was currently busy with.

Important there was where and how was the money spent by SRSA.  With the explanation for that expenditure through the AR, the Committee would then recommend with its BRRR but it only would be adopted the following week.

Mr Thebehae would flag certain things in the report so that the Committee could speak to any additions and deletions it would want before the day of consideration and adoption.

Method
The Committee had considered the 2014 June State of the Nation Address (SONA), the SRSA 2014-2019 SP, the 2014/15 Estimates of National Expenditure (ENE) and the 2014 Annual Performance Plan (APP). Meetings with SRSA, SASCOC, BSA, the NLB, the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME) and the Local Organising Committee (LOC) for AFCON 2013 and CHAN 2014 were also considered. Finally the oversight visits to the entities and affiliates of SRSA with the strategic workshop had been also been considered in formulating the draft report.

Key government policy documents
The BRRR was guided by the SONA 2014, the Medium Term Strategic Framework (MTSF) 2014-2019, the NDP and the NSRP priorities. The Committee had realised that SRSA had aligned its programmes with the NSRP.

Outcome-based approach
The AR had outlined the following strategic outcomes in line with the APP. He then read the outcomes which included amongst others ensuring that more athletes achieved International success as a result of the support provided through high performance interventions; to oversee the transformation of the sport and recreation sector where 80% of the recognised National Federations (NFs)should meet the transformation targets by 2016.

The intention thereof was to see the performance of the SRSA versus those outcomes so that when the Committee made recommendations, looking at the performance of SRSA it could discern whether it was inline towards achieving those targets.

Overview of revised SP and APP
When the Committee looked at the SP and the APP the SP was presented with no situational analysis changes because it had been presented towards the end of the fourth Parliament and in the beginning of the fifth Parliament.

The key things in the APP that needed flagging was that there were Departmental flagship programmes to increase citizens’ participation in sport and recreation and those included the National School Sport Championships, the Indigenous Games and the National Youth Camp which would be rolled out over the three years of the medium term.

SAIDS had had to have its budget increased to enable it to comply with the new WADA code and testing protocols.

BSA had regressed from the gains it had acquired in the previous financial year.

With the name changes of programmes and addition of new programmes SRSA had been allocated R1.073.5 billion for the 2013/14 financial year whereas 2014/15 the budget had decreased to R970.4 million. The Committee had to also recall that the NSRP was still an unfunded mandate which would cost SRSA R10 billion if the country wanted it fully implemented. Some of the targeted achievements of the SRSA possibly would not materialise soon until the NSRP was fully funded.

Looking at the strategic goal of increasing citizens’ access to sport and recreation activities annually by 5% the Committee could see there was inconsistent performance from the SRSA. That could be attributed to the serious alignment of objectives that SRSA was supposed to have set versus what its capabilities were or it was supposed to have revised the monitoring tool that it was using according to the Committee’s recommendations. 

The decline in number of participants according to that outcome from 2012/13 which was 1 277 653 to 5.08 million in 2013/14 SRSA said that was because it had developed a proper monitoring tool for participants. The target of 25 000 would increase to 27 000 participants from 2013/14 to the year under review; and whether that was satisfactory considering that mass participation would take R615. 2 million of the 2014/15 budget would be something the Committee would have to interrogate.  

On overseeing the transformation of the sport and recreation sector where 80% of the recognised National Federations should meet the transformation targets by 2016
The SRSA had consistently met its target of assisting 60 NFs from 2012/13 - 2014/15 which was 80% of SASCOCs NFs. The SRSA said the NFs received guaranteed funding and conditional funding where compliance issues would be involved for the latter, as that was for the programmes that the NFs would be rolling out.

On athletes achieving International success by 10% in 2016
The SRSA had introduced the Ministerial Sport Bursary which was replacing the previous Athletes Support Programme which was being phased out. That sport bursary was currently supporting 28 from 2013/14 and would increase that to 40 in 2014/15 with only 45 athletes expected to be supported for 2015/16. The budget there had been reduced from R228. 8 million to R91.3 million because included was the R160 million for the CHAN for 2013/14 financial year, hence to decrease.

Enabling mechanisms to support the delivery of sport and recreation established and sustainable by 2016
This goal had a lot to do with the building of facilities and the Committee was aware that SRSA did not have the capacity or mandate to do this but it been innovative that from the little received from NT, it would provide facilities. The bulk of achieving this objective lay largely in SRSA managing to harvest and getting NT to hand over the MIG allocations. Important here was that one conduit the SRSA had been using to build facilities had been the Sports Trust where the previous Committee had actually toured the sites where the facilities had been built.

SRSA also provided about R7 million to SASCOC for distribution and support to provincial confederations (PCs). NT had agreed that 3% of the DoRA grant should also assist PCs and what the Committee had not thus far been able to do was to monitor whether that 5% was transferred to ensure that SRSA actually achieved goal number four.

On sport and recreation being used as a strategic toll to contribute directly to all five government priorities and two United Nations priorities by 2016
SRSA by being signatory to outcome goal 12(b) in Government priorities, being part of UNESCO and the WADA through SAIDS had been contributing to social cohesion and advancing the UN priorities. Important for the Committee was that there had to be strategic partnerships with  International Political Science Association (IPSA), Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) and the African continent when it came to all those International related goals was concerned. Moreover the oversight of the implementation of those agreements needed strengthening.

Implementation of internal processes and procedures to ensure that SRSA annually received unqualified audits
As indicated by AGSA in 2013/14 SRSA had received a clean audit without any matters which was a first and was commendable.  The Committee would have to see to it that status quo remained.

SAIDS
The introduction of the new WADA code in 2015 would have significant impact on the financial resources of SAIDS and the findings by AGSA that SAIDS needed more oversight needed the Committee’s attention as education around drug-free sport across all NFs was SAIDS core business.

Boxing SA
Although it had achieved much many of its objectives could not be completed as 60% of its budget had gone into compensation of employees and litigation. The entity also continued to be marred by governance challenges.

Overview and Assessment of Financial and Service Delivery Perfomance
The mass participation programme accounted for about 53% of the SRSA budget and important was that 87% of that had already been transferred to provinces leaving SRSA with very little to complete the rest of its priorities. Moreover R160 million was transferred to NFs and the two entities adding the CHAN transfer which left SRSA with just above R120 million for its administrative purposes.   

Public Entities
There had been very little increase for the two entities in the year under review except for the additional funding for SAIDS to do new testing protocols. The Committee would decide on a better way forward in getting the entities to better manage their finances.

Financial Performance 2013/14
Administration
Salient were the transfers taking place between subprograms which though well managed certainly did not speak to plans versus outputs: was SRSA able to allocate resources equitably to achieve the stated outcomes such that there was no interference fund transfers. The virement of 9% out of the compensation of employees in this programme, while NT regulations only allowed 8% of funds to be moved between programmes was caused by the non-filling of certain posts.

Sport Support Services
The major part of the expenditure was from the increment which went to the scientific support subprogram and the transfers for SASCOC even though SASCOC was unable to account for that R7 million transferred from SRSA. The Committee could request a breakdown of that transfer from SRSA so that SASCOC could be interrogated on the use of that money.

Seeing that the Committee did not know how the club development system pilot programme was unfolding, being funded and the total cost thereof SRSA could be asked to provide those details.

Mass participation
Since the SRSA said it was unable to train teachers for the school sport subprogram because of lack of cooperation from SASCOC and CATHSSETA the Committee would need to follow that up when looking at programs as to what had happened to the money allocated for that training. Important here as well was the overspending that had occurred in Mpumalanga and the Eastern Cape (EC) and how much of the remaining roll-overs had been surrendered back to SRSA to be put back with the NRF.

The successes were that 1100 people participated in the National Indigenous Games, 8000 participants for the Big Walk, 2500 young people attended the Youth Camp and so forth. Therefore monies were moved around as needed here where R 9.2 million was shifted into this programme to support such successes.

Facilities Coordination
The Departmental mandate in the year under review only was limited to coordination and not building of facilities hence the R4.8 million allocations out of the whole budget certainly would not be able to build a facility.    

The abandoning of the GIS which was to assist SRSA establish a database of the National sports facilities in SA showed how changes and lack of budgets impacted on the programmes of SRSA and on the NSRP.

SAIDS financial performance 2013/14
The fact that SAIDS was technically insolvent and that there remained irregular expenditure as matters of emphasis from AGSA audit findings showed a need for strengthening of governance and administration at that entity. An unclear explanation in its income statement was that the grant from the NLB had not been reflected.

Boxing SA financial performance 2013/14
If the Committee were to look at the end of 2012/13 BSA had reduced irregular expenditure from R714 944 to R101 767 but by end of 2013/14 that amount went back and beyond to R924 312 and that was apart from the accumulated irregular expenditure at the end of 2013/14 meaning that the latter amount was still to be added to the accumulated irregular for 2013/14. That situation needed serious remedial action.

Concluding comments on financial and service delivery performance
With the renaming, alignment and addition of new programmes SRSA was able to implement 42% of the mandate of the NSRP. The challenge remained though that the remaining 47% of that mandate remained unfunded. Having done the analysis, SRSA had targeted the MIG to supplement that mandate shortfall with collaboration from elsewhere. It had also reviewed its funding mechanism where proposals around tax levies, tickets purchase levies and other innovative ways to supplement revenue and to make up the shortfall for the NSRP. That then spoke to what other innovative ways could the Committee suggest in assisting SRSA to implement the NSRP.

Of course the monies spent on the active nation programme and whether the targets were matching the resources allocated were as concerning as whether there was any way of doing better possibly in data collection as opposed to just increasing the numbers. Mr Thebehae still believed that there could be other ways of increasing that 27 000 mass participation target for 2014/15 visa-vie approximately R650 million was simply not cost effective enough.

The previous structure had around 206 funded posts with 171 of those filled by the end of 2013/14. 15 employees had left SRSA by the end of the year 2013. A new structure had been adopted increasing the number of funded posts to 239, whereby there were about 77 vacant posts in total to date. The Committee had heard that 14 posts had been signed off the previous day with the report of how many posts had been filled in 2014/15 coming in September 2015. That issue was seriously concerning especially when posts were funded and there were virements from compensation of employees to other programmes.

That SAIDS had not appointed doping control officers for Mpumalanga and North West was also concerning.

Committees Observations and Responses
The Committee could certainly look into the SRSA and DBE MOU and further discussion with COGTA and the South African Local Government Association (SALGA) around the unlocking of the 15%of the MIG meant for the building of sport facilities.

The NFs supported by SRSA had to be able to account for that expenditure and provinces had to be monitored for compliance with the NSRP where the MIG was concerned so that reporting would be aligned in as far as transfers were concerned.   

Summary Of Reporting Requests
Mr Thebehae read the list of requests as outlined in that summary, which were based on the draft report above.

Recommendations
He read those draft recommendations successively. That SRSA spent 53% of its budget on mass participation, 17% towards entities and NFs, and just less than 15% towards administration and 0.2 towards capital assets: the Committee would realise that SRSA did not build facilities. However, through the Sports Trust, SRSA was innovatively able to build facilities in rural areas.

The Chairperson said she wished that Mr Thebehae’s presentation had been tabled before any of that day’s presentations seeing that it interrogated the AR but then again it would assist with the final BRRR adoption. She understood the draft to be a document to be deliberated the following week but would let Members interrogate it if they felt so.

Mr Mphumzi Mdekazi, Committee Researcher said the Committee needed to decide on how the NSRP would be funded because the Minister Mbalula had alluded to the R10 billion needed for its roll out but never said where it would come from. Secondly BSA’s legislative mandate was skewed as alluded to by the DG. How was the Committee with SRSA going to bring balance to that? The DG had also mentioned how challenging it was to reclaim ownership of the MIG from COGTA to SRSA and therefore for the Committee to ensure that its wish list was achieved it needed to ensure that there were adequate resources.

The Chairperson said though Mr Mdekazi had valid submissions she was concerned over the fact that BSA could not account properly for its expenditure. How was the Committee supposed to motivate for the allocation of more resources for it? If BSA’s new board could turn boxing around maybe she would start becoming sympathetic towards that entity.

Mr Mdekazi further added that the Committee was confronted with a problem of jurisdiction where SAIDS was concerned, whereby when it wanted to conduct testing in schools, in terms of school sport it could not do so. The obstruction was the SA Schools Act and central to the amendment of that law, the Committee had major role as legislators.   

Mr Ralegoma said concerning BSA and SAIDS the Committee could certainly push for the urgency in finalising the legislation that would allow a restructuring of the mandates and operations for both entities. Moreover the Committee had to look at the NT fiscal view on increases. Seeing that NT was not going to give in there, the Committee had to possibly reprioritise some programme in SRSA.

Mr Moteka said BSA had to prove its mettle first with the little it had before asking for more funding. He recalled that the Committee had once agreed to call the MECs and HODs of sport in provinces to come and account for what had been happening with the MIG funding in the past as there was no evidence of its utility.

Ms Manana concurred with Mr Moteka and also disagreed with the researcher over the skewed mandate of boxing.  There Committee had never seen anyone from the regulatory body in rural areas when there were tournaments and would certainly not be sympathetic towards BSA. Possibly she may have misunderstood but there seemed to be a contradiction between SRSA and the content advisor because SRSA had said the vacant posts had been filled but the advisor was talking of 77 unfilled funded posts.

Mr Bergman said the Committee had to understand that the old board of BSA had left it with an aeroplane without an engine and said they needed the Committee to take off for any destination. There ways of being innovative like pushing Minister Mbalula to start negotiating broadcasting rights for boxing just to sort out some of the issues facing BSA.

If the Committee was going to visit people injured in sport, there was a young lady fighting for her life after being injured in a boxing match. So when the boxing licencees did not pay monies over to BSA and the tournament was not compliant with the boxing Act those kinds of things happened. She certainly went to fight believing that there could be some relief from the poverty her family was experiencing.

Who was governing and monitoring the Sports Trust? How could it support SRSA further?

Learning that SAIDS was simply a cost center was there a way of possibly fining an athlete a financial penalty if and when he or she had been found doping, so that some form of revenue could be generated from testing.

Some of the goals and objectives were very worrying in the plans as they were measured in percentages all the time: Mr Ralegoma would remember back that in the days of the metro police they had targeted making 3400 arrests. If on the 29 of June, end of the financial year, the metro police had not met that target would they then go around and arrest 3400 people or if they had met their target earlier would they then stop arresting lawbreakers? Targets had to be measured in ways that were interpretable.

In terms of BSAs chronic breach of SCM regulations the Committee would possibly have to come up with a resolution in the BRRR that said until BSA had got its internal controls up to acceptable standards, then there should be some audit for instance each time it had to go to tender it possibly could bring in an external invigilator to adjudicate that tender.

It would also be very bad for the Committee to not enquire about how many coaches SASCOC was training halfway through the year because if the opportunity to get X amount of coaches trained was missed. That meant that the country would have missed a year of training coaches. Moreover SASCOC and CATHSSETA had to set similar target for coach training then and not by the end of the term.

Mr Mmusi said AGSA had mentioned that at a certain point when it had been auditing certain entities, it was found that those entities could not write financial statements forcing AGSA to first show those entities how to record their financial statements first and that was impressive. Then with the Committee at that time having to do oversight and Members talking to the BSA challenges he was thinking that when looking at boxing it was apparent that all was not well there. Therefore he agreed with the proposal that the Committee had to look at the legislative mandate of BSA as there possibly could be systemic hindrances in their operations that the Committee was no aware of. If the Committee then did not really give itself time to read through the documentation chronicling the history of boxing the problems there would simply recur.

Mr Moteka said according to his recall the BSA had asked the Committee to intervene in the challenges it had with the promoters since boxing had collapsed because both seemed to be working in silos. Moreover the entity had also asked the Committee’s assistance in trying to get the SABC to buy its broadcasting rights and the Committee could certainly help out there. 

Mr Adendorff added that AGSA had mentioned to the previous and current board of BSA that the Boxing Act had provided for the issuance of the rules and regulations for boxing which had never been actually written. Possibly the writing of those regulations to support the Act could assist in making boxing viable again but because of the senior management challenges at BSA none of that work was being completed.

The Chairperson reminded the Committee that when BSA presented it had been given timeframes that it had to sort out its in-house issues and the Committee would support it. As AGSA was still dissatisfied with the BSAs financial performance and the DGs assertion that it would take longer to settle things at BSA, she was not satisfied with the assertion that it possibly might take longer periods to settle things, when it was public funds that were being spent.  

What Mr Mmusi and Mr Mdekazi were saying about behind closed doors machinations at BSA, the Committee would not speculate over those if BSA was not going to be transparent. What did it expect the Committee to do as boxing belonged to the boxers and not BSA. The sympathy the Committee had shown during the presentation by BSA did not mean that it should not account.

Mr Thebehae said the staff would allow the Committee to go through the report so that the following week they could present the final version of the BRRR with the above inputs incorporated therein.

The Chairperson then took the Committee through the minutes.

Adoption of Committee Minutes
The Committee considered its minutes from 16 September 2014.

The Chairperson noted a grammatical error for correction. She also asked the secretary to explain the statement on recording or recommendations, resolution and inputs.

The Committee Secretary replied that the Committee had been unhappy that certain Members’ inputs had not been reflected, as if they had not been present at meetings when in fact they had.

Mr Ralegoma said he felt that sometimes when recording minutes it could be generalised that the Committee came to a particular resolution.

The Chairperson reiterated the statement for Members and asked whether that was how it had been phrased at the meeting.

Mr Moteka repeated what the Secretary had said in her reply.

Mr Malatsi said the actual contention of that discussion was that there had been inputs made by individuals that had been attributed to the Committee and vice versa whereby the decision then had been that the minutes should reflect motions as those could be contested and that decision could be captured as Committee agreements.

The Chairperson interjected that the Committee understood Mr Malatsi, but she had been asking what the last part of that statement had meant, to which Mr Moteka had responded succinctly.

Mr Ralegoma moved for the adoption of the minutes.

Mr Bergman seconded the motion.

The minutes were adopted with technical amendments.

The meeting was then adjourned.