Sport and Recreation Budget Review Recommendation Report; CGE report: consideration

Sport, Arts and Culture

20 October 2015
Chairperson: Ms B Dlulane (ANC)
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Meeting Summary

BRRR Archive: BRRR 2015-2010: Budgetary Review & Recommendations Reports

The Committee adopted its minutes for the 13 October 2015 and then deliberated on its proposed oversight visit to the Free State.

It agreed that in the Free State it would be interacting with federations across the board in instead of club development federations only. Furthermore, focus of the visit would be on:

  • Briefings by Provincial Departments of Basic Education and SRSA. The National Training Centre (NTC), Sport Focused Schools and provincial academies.
  • The Municipal infrastructure grants (MIG) and the Urban Settlement Development Grant (USDG) utility by municipalities.

It would also invite the South African National Boxing Organisation (SANABO) and amateur boxers to find out how useful the NTC was and what other challenges they faced.

It also considered its Budget Review Recommendations Report of Sport and Recreation South Africa (SRSA).

It advised that SRSA had to deal with the trend of fiscal dumping where most federations where receiving funding at the end of the financial year. It needed to increases the roll-out of the Club development programme to include more clubs and expand to other provinces. The Committee was also cognizant that 20% of the provincial transfers were dedicated to club development and therefore the clubs who received those funds had to be monitored.

It was of the view that issues mentioned previously and as ongoing by the Auditor-General SA (AGSA) had to be attended to as they were happening. As such it wanted to be given action plans timeously. SRSA had to look into the glaring absence of gender equality strategies and programmes by all federations that had come before the Committee. It was high time that the allocation of funding had to be attached to a clear programme of how and what federations would be doing in enhancing gender transformation equity including for persons with disabilities as both topics seemed peripheral.

The report was adopted with the Economic Freedom Fighters reserving their vote.
Minutes of Committee meeting held on 13 October 2015 were adopted without amendment.
 

Meeting report

The Chairperson asked the Committee to observe a moment of silence in remembrance of the recently deceased Mr Mvuzo Mbebe, Former 2013 African Cup of Nations (AFCON) and African Nations Championship (CHAN) Local Organising Committee CEO and SABC Executive. She also congratulated the recent wins by the Springbok, Banyana Banyana, and the Proteas.

CGE Report
The Committee adopted the report without any amendment.

Committee oversight visit reports
The Committee decided to shelve the draft report for a later meeting.

Draft proposal for oversight trip to the Free State
Mr Teboho Thebehae, Content advisor, said the staff proposed that the trip to the Free State would be similar to other trips. However; in the Free State the Committee would be interacting with federations across the board in that province instead of club development federations only. Further focus of the visit would be on:

  • Briefings by Provincial Departments of Basic Education and SRSA. The National Training Centre (NTC), Sport Focused Schools and provincial academies.
  • The Municipal infrastructure grants (MIG) and the USDG utility by municipalities. 

As the NTC for boxing was in Bloemfontein the Committee would also receive and deliberate with the SANABO.
After the first three days the Committee would move on to Welkom to do similar work as that that would have occurred in Bloemfontein.
For the last day there would be no programme for the Committee in preparation for return.

Discussion
The Chairperson asked whether boxers could be invited along with SANABO just to get a fuller picture of the challenges faced by both the regulatory body and participants in amateur boxing.

Mr S Malatsi (DA) supported the Chairperson’s proposal noting that sometimes the regulator was not very representative of boxers when briefing the Committee; therefore it could be wise to get boxers to speak for themselves.

Mr P Moteka (EFF) said in support of the Chairperson’s proposal a focus had to be placed on boxers from previously disadvantaged communities.

Mr M Filtane (UDM) suggested that all stakeholders in amateur boxing be invited as they spoke from different angles, and therefore the inclusion of promoters as well.

Mr Thebehae asked if it would not be better then to invite only SANABO and not other federations if the delegation would include all stakeholders of amateur boxing.

The Chairperson asked the Committee for input on Mr Thebehae’s proposal.

Mr S Ralegoma (ANC) said that since the original proposal was about the NTC and its use by SANABO, and the Committee still needed to meet with promoters and boxers separately to deal with their challenges; bringing all of them together had the potential to overshadow the purpose of dealing with SANABO specifically. 

Mr Moteka said that if there was concern about not achieving the purpose of meeting SANABO with its stakeholders, then the Committee had to choose between SANABO, South African Rugby Union (SARU) and The South African Football Association (SAFA) administrations only; or the second suggestion from the Chairperson.

Mr Malatsi saw no problem with scheduling two meetings for all the federations mentioned with SANABO stakeholders for one meeting and federations separately. All that was required was to schedule and plan accordingly as the longer postponement of that platform for boxers the longer the Committee would be shooting itself in the foot.

Ms D Manana (ANC) supported the invitation for SANABO with its stakeholders only for 24 November 2015 and SARU possibly!

Mr Filtane reiterated that if the Committee was to be dealing with a particular federation then it would be better to deal with all its stakeholders so that the Committee would come away with a comprehensive and global understanding of the issues affecting a particular sporting code.

The Chairperson said having all promoters in Bloemfontein was a separate question that she did not understand very well. However, because the Committee wanted a thorough deliberation for all three codes, the Committee could take SANABO and SARU on 24 November 2015 so that on Friday 27 November 2015, SAFA and any other federation could be engaged then.

Mr Moteka supported the Chairperson’s newer proposal.

Mr G Mmusi (ANC) also supported the Chairperson.

Mr Ralegoma asked if the boxers and promoters would be from the Free State only or nationwide. If it were a provincially based target group then he was in agreement with the Chairperson’s suggestion for invitations to stakeholders of SANABO.

Mr Thebehae said that the federations mentioned in the draft oversight proposal were all affiliated to SASCOC and BSA regulated all the promoters. Seeing that the brief was centred on SANABO, it was directed at development boxing which, was why promoters had not been included originally. All that meant was that because promoters would then be invited, it would also then be wise to have BSA present as well as it was the regulatory body over promoters. That then changed the brief completely seeing that the Committee was aware of tensions between BSA and SANABO, and tension between boxers and promoters. 
Alternatively the meeting could be held provided that the Committee received a full representation of other federations from the provincial sports confederation.

The Chairperson advised that the Committee could shelve a proposal by the Committee secretary to invite promoters to Parliament on 3 November 2015, where the Committee had scheduled University Sport South Africa (USSA).  It would be better to deliberate on SANABO and to also include promoters in the brief.

Mr Ralegoma reiterated that he had supported the initial sentiment of having SANABO only as he recalled that as far as boxers were concerned the Committee had promised boxers from the Eastern Cape a platform for their grievances though he had no great issue with SANABO. Attending to promoters, the Committee had to be specific about what would be contained in the brief and that had to be prepared for as the Committee was on the side of exploited boxers.

Mr Malatsi confirmed that for the meeting of 24 or 27 November 2015 in the Free State, the Committee could afford SANABO and amateur boxers a chance to engage the Committee as amateur boxers were recipients of funding for global competitions and as much as the Committee wanted to fix issues in boxing in total; the trend of focusing on professional boxing only because it was more visible had to be avoided as there were barriers in the movement from amateur to professional, and those had to be dealt with. However, the matters with the promoters could be made into a medium to long-term project.

Mr Moteka said that though Mr Thebehae’s warning was a reality the Committee could not set up separate meetings with promoters and the regulatory bodies of boxing in SA as it would continue getting separate stories. Therefore he supported the earlier suggestion of having BSA, SANABO, and boxers with promoters together in one meeting.

The Chairperson ruled that the Committee would stick with SANABO and amateur boxers for one of the days in the Free State oversight visit, so that on the second day the Committee could deal with other federations.

Mr Thebehae explained the reworked programme to deal with all the proposed federations in the manner the Committee had agreed on.

Budget Review Recommendations Report of Sport and Recreation South Africa (SRSA)
Mr Thebehae said the BRRR gave the Committee an overview of the performance and budgeting given by SRSA for the 2013/14; 2014/15 and the 2015/16 financial years.  He read through the draft report.

In terms of transformation funding: in May 2015, SRSA had signed agreements for transformation scorecards with the top 16 priority codes. The Committee would from then ensure that all federations submitted transformation plans whereupon the Committee would also be ensuring that federations adhered to their own set targets.
Aligned to that transformation was SRSA funding of 64 federations where for the past three years it had managed funding. The Committee would have to ask whether the remaining unfunded federations were the same throughout the previous three years or whether the non-funding was on a rotational basis with the 12 federations changing annually.

The Committee would also have to deal with the trend of fiscal dumping where most federations where receiving funding at the end of the financial year.

Achievement of international success
SRSA had to develop a way of better medal targeting so that large contingents being sent to international competitions had to represent the best chances of medalling as the Strategic Plan (SP) and Annual Performance Plan (APP) of SRSA had no concrete way of measuring that target except for world rankings.
Currently there were 54 athletes on the Ministerial bursary.

Enabling mechanisms to support the delivery of Sport and Recreation
Commendable, was that there were clear targets of how provincial transfers where to be used by provinces.

Sport and Recreation used as a strategic tool to support Government and Global priorities
In KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) during oversight, the Committee had had a chance to see how the Sport for Social change Programme that was supported by the Germans was assisting the country to ensure there was access to sport and that transformation was happening.
 
The Committee had also asked SRSA to bring along during the third quarter of the 2015/16 financial year all the reports and agreements it had submitted and signed with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) so that it could also have an understanding of SA’s commitments to global priorities.

In the current financial year SRSA had identified SANABO as the priority federation that would receive its annual R10 million allocation.
 
Recommendations
SRSA needed to increases the rollout of the Club development programme to include more clubs and expand to other provinces. The Committee was also cognisant that 20% of provincial transfers were dedicated to club development and therefore the clubs who received those funds had to be monitored. Moreover the Committee had not received an update on how the pilot club development model in Limpopo and KZN were doing. 

Mr D Bergman (DA) did not agree that SRSA deserved the 100% clean audit on service delivery performance given by the Committee. Rather he would agree with the Committee ‘appreciates the 100% clean audit’ but would require more in terms of achieving all SRSA’s deliverables.

In terms of the recommendations, the fact that the National Sport and Recreation Plan (NSRP) was unfunded meant the Department had to pick and choose what it would prioritise therein. Since transformation would be the current administrations legacy; SRSA had a budget to affect that, such that the equation had to be:  input= process=output. The whole budget was generally put into all those whereas the Committee could suggest to SRSA to prioritise one part of that equation financially so that hopefully whichever part it would be; it could translate to success in the other two. For example if money were heavily put into schools, communities, varsities and clubs, that could result in sports infrastructure being built and equipment being supplied so that transformation to provincial and national teams could happen.

Regarding BSA, if the administration could secure money so that those key positions like the CFO and the CEO could be filled so that at least a working structure could stabilise BSA competently without being hand held by SRSA.

The Committee simply had to carry on supporting South African Institute for Drug-Free Sport (SAIDS) but holding it accountable for the world standards it was working through.

Mr Ralegoma said that there were other positives that SRSA had achieved apart from a clean audit. Internationally the country was participating at all age groups and that needed acknowledgement.

The misuse of the MIG had to be impressed upon that if the status quo remained, then it was its stance that it should be given back to SRSA so that it could administer it directly.

On Action Plans; the Committee was of the view that issues mentioned previously and as ongoing by the Auditor-General SA (AGSA) had to be attended to as they happened. As such it wanted to be given action plans timeously.

Mr Malatsi noted some ambiguities that needed clarification, one of which was that holding stakeholder meetings could not be considered a milestone as it formed basic administration obligations. Possibly, a milestone could be the outcomes of meetings by the board and the impact measured by said meetings.

Recommendations had to include the glaring absence of gender equality strategies and programmes by all federations that had come before the Committee though funding and sponsorships received were not gender based but for the development of sport across gender. That was most notable from senior management staff right down to female athlete support and it was high time that funding allocation had to develop a clear programme of how and what federations would be doing in enhancing gender transformation equity including for persons with disabilities as both topics seemed peripheral to the point that other federations could not clearly articulate their programmes on gender.
 
The fact that only just over 50% of public schools participated in the school sport programme necessitated the urgency in the resolution of the impasse between SRSA and the Department of Basic Education (DBE) on issues of administration.

If interventions where not full scale on BSA the outcomes would always be partial success and he felt that even if the key administrative posts were filled, it would still take time for BSA to generate enough revenue to effectively run its programmes as there were legacy issues to contend with as well. Moreover the allocations it received from SRSA was not enough as filling of the needed posts had to attract highly competent persons to restore good governance and still run programmes because the Committee had seen already how that money was still going to salaries rather than programmes. In the medium term the Committee had to recommend that SRSA support had to be more substantive than it currently was as ultimately, the most vulnerable to the damage at BSA were the boxers. 

On the model SRSA was using in giving conditional funding to federations, the perception was that it was entrenching the concept that the more financially stable federations the more they would get in funding. A model of awarding the financially needy federation like SANABO over those like SARU and SAFA would not be a way to punish those big and well resourced federations for being compliant with the law in terms of their administration but simply making transformation a priority.

Mr Moteka recommended that the irregular expenditure by BSA in the 2014/15 financial year had to be followed with consequences for the responsible officials. The irregular application of Supply Chain Management (SCM) prescripts that resulted in the irregularities also had to be punished.
Similarly the irregularities at SAIDS had to have consequence management applied though the Committee commended the improvement in its unqualified audit opinion.

What was the Eminent Persons Group (EPG) delivering and at what cost so far if SARU and rugby as a whole remained so unchanged 21 years down the line. He recommended that the EPG had to develop an action plan with deliverables on how transformation could be affected.

When would SAFA empower female footballers in terms of equal remuneration and status as they represented the country equally, globally? SAFA had to account for that failure so far.

He would only appreciate a clean audit for SRSA when sports reached rural areas.

Ms Manana recommended that the EPG be summoned to account how far it was in naming and shaming non-transformed federations.

She agreed that sometime in the future the MIG would have to be returned to SRSA if the status quo at municipal expenditure continued to sideline sport infrastructure development.

There was a need for SRSA to plan accordingly and not to under plan in terms of the Active Nation programme so as to move away from over achieving on its targets.

Ms Mmusi said that irregular expenditure did not always amount to wasteful expenditure rather it was sometimes non-compliance with a certain law.

The EPG was not directly accounting to the Committee as it was advising the Minister of SRSA, therefore even if the Committee invited the EPG; it was the Minister that had to account for transformation in federations.

The Committee could not use a blanket recommendation for stagnation in some federations in terms of transformation as others had made progress in that regard.

The Chairperson disagreed with the recommendation on consequence management applications regarding the SMS at BSA, as the Committee was aware of how it had been applied to the ousted staff and not the current leadership. Similarly with transformation, the Committee could not recommend as if it was not aware of plans in addressing that.
She did not know how issues concerning female footballers and their remuneration could be included in the recommendation as there were uncertainties about the facts.

What else could be added to emphasise the frustration the Committee had with the impasse between SRSA and DBE.

Mr Malatsi said the Committee sat with an under funded SRSA sitting with a programme like school sports which had a possible ancillary role of the Department of Health (DoH) as the well-being of the nation also depended on that programme. The Committee needed to be bolder in its approach as the bilateral it held with the Committee on DBE had not changed the challenges SRSA faced. The issue simply spoke to attitudes and resourcing therefore the Committee could take the issue to where allocations happened. National Treasury (NT) had to be approached finally on why the DBE was funded more but was not budgeting for school sport and why the MIG was continually being given to the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) though it was not fulfilling its legislative obligations.

The Chairperson said that since there was a forthcoming meeting on the MIG with NT, COGTA, SRSA and SALGA some of the issues Mr Malatsi raised could be dealt with then. Possibly, the recommendation concerning DBE would have to be put to the Committee.

Mr Mmusi said, concerning DBE impasse, the language had to be strong so that whoever read the recommendation would feel the Committee’s frustration.

Ms Manana said the CGE recommendations could be added to the Committee’s BRRR, especially regarding the factualness of the inconsistencies in salaries between Banyana and Bafana players.

Mr Thebehae asked for clarification on the above remarks before he reworked the recommendations. He further elaborated on the consequence management referred to by Mr Moteka in terms of what the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA) provided for. The BRRR was a tool the Committee could use to address NT on the changes it wanted in funding so that SRSA could further its programmes. DBE had never said during the bilateral that it had not planned for school sport because of funding shortage therefore it would be disingenuous for the Committee to request NT to give DBE more money so that it could do schools sport, though DBE did not have a budget set aside to support SRSA with intra-schools league.

Mr Malatsi said the fact that the Committee had identified a possible obstacle in DBE fulfilling its role in schools sport did not mean it had to wait for DBE to speak up. What the Committee recognised was that schools sport was lacking and since SRSA had raised the matter that that was failing because DBE was not holding up its end of the MoU between the two Departments. Was it still wise then to continue allocating funding for a mandate where one of the two parties involved was not fulfilling?

Mr Mmusi said when the final recommendation was written it could not sound like it was begging for money for DBE but in a way that would be clear for NT to recognise the shortcomings and decide how it would further fund schools sport.

Mr Moteka said hopefully the second bilateral with the Committee on DBE would make them understand where the challenges were regarding sports at schools.

Regarding his recommendations, he maintained what he had said earlier.

The Chairperson also maintained that the Committee had been briefed on action taken against the ousted BSA leadership.

The recommendations by Mr Moteka were put to a vote and the Committee voted against them.

Mr Thebehae then read the reworded consensus recommendations that would go into the BRRR.

The Chairperson said some of the recommendations were still not aggressive enough to carry the message.

The Content Advisor reworked both the recommendations and observations.

The Chairperson asked Mr Bergman to explain his earlier statements concerning the equation analogy he had given.

Mr Bergman explained at length that what he meant by his equation was that SRSA did not need to give money to federations as they had to be self sustaining in the first place, SRSA was not supposed to have to pay for infrastructure, equipment and then still have to allocate money for mass participation by schools.  If money was given to one area which would be responsible for mass participation, sport infrastructure development and equipment then that was how the money could be stretched much further.

The Chairperson said that sounded different from when the NSRP was presented and the Committee had not raised those issues then, so it could be viewed as a surprise to SRSA to hear for the first time that the Committee had an alternative view on the application of the NSRP.

Mr Ralegoma said Mr Bergman's proposal could be difficult to implement as the implementation of the NSRP as was currently happening was such that federations and provinces could be monitored through the transformation scorecards and the conditional grants respectively. What could be done rather was to propose to SRSA to impress upon provinces to do as Mr Bergman was suggesting whilst they also increased their own budgeting for sports during their planning cycles at provincial level.

Ms Manana disagreed with the whole suggestion by Mr Bergman and suggested that it be deleted.

Mr Bergman disagreed that was the first time he was speaking as he had brought up the proposal repeatedly to resourced federations as well as the Department. Therefore he would propose only a rewording of his proposal so that more monitoring could occur at those levels, but no deletion was necessary.

Mr Ralegoma recommended that the EPG had to be further capacitated so that more people could do the one-on-one's that Dr Willie Basson did with federations. 

Mr Thebehae added Mr Ralegoma's recommendation merging it with the observation made by Mr Bergman.

Mr Malatsi had a concern that, as Mr Thebehae was reading the recommendation regarding the impasse with DBE, the frustration expressed by the Committee was an established fact but the ancillary that NT would now be approached was a measure reached because even the Minster of SRSA had failed to get DBE to come to the party.

The Chairperson said she needed clarity on what would be recommended that NT had to do exactly.

Mr Ralegoma said the Committee had to be cautious about making cross cutting recommendations, as the challenges with DBE were more than just funding for intra-schools league. His recommendation was that the Committee had to continue to interact with all the stakeholders in that regard, before recommending for other Committee's and Departments.

The Chairperson said the only thing remaining in that regard was that DBE had never spoken to schools sport when it had briefed the Committee. It had simply referred to physical education, which it said was being rolled out.

Ms Manana said NT did not need to be involved, what needed to occur was that DBE had to plan for schools sport as well.

Mr Moteka reiterated that another bilateral was needed with the Committee for DBE.

Mr Malatsi said that for the BRRR the recommendation could be kept as agreed without NT but for the Committees programming schedule, that it be noted that NT had to be invited so that funding for schools sport could be interrogated holistically in future.

The Chairperson said that proposal would be considered after the second bilateral with DBE and the work that the Committee would do on the MIG with NT, SRSA and COGTA. 

Staff tabled the report.

Mr Moteka said he was not in support of the report as all his recommendations were deleted.

The report was adopted with substantive amendments.

Adoption of minutes
Minutes of Committee meeting held on 13 October 2015 were adopted without any amendments. 

The meeting was then adjourned.

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