Volleyball SA: status report and SRSA on prioritisation for school support

Meeting report

The Chairperson welcomed all present and announced apologies from the Minister and Deputy Minister of who were attending a Cabinet meeting. She related the story and events that had led to the recent deaths of Members of Parliament (MP), Mr Timothy Khoza (ANC) and Mr John Bonhomme, also from the ANC. She said she was seeing new faces in the VSA delegation and was disappointed that there were no women amongst the people before of the Committee.

Volleyball South Africa (VSA) briefing

Mr Kamohelo Mokoena, President, VSA, introduced the VSA delegation announcing that there were three women serving on VSA’s executive committee. The matter of women representation at VSA’s main management committee was being addressed through amendments of VSA’s constitution. He said he was part of the sports council where amendments to VSA’s constitution would ensure that if the President was male the vice President would be female in future.

Mr Sello Makhubela, Secretary General, VSA, said to date VSA was unfortunate that it did not have sponsorship.

On key stakeholders and associate members, he said that these included the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), the Department of Correctional Services (DCS) South African Police Services (SAPS) and University Sport Association of South Africa (USSA).

Mr Makhubela said VSA had been struggling with its finances over the previous three years where it had recorded net losses mainly because of VSA’s dependence on grants from SRSA and the National Lotteries Commission. Though VSA had received grants over the previous three years, the monies had not been disbursed into the accounts of the federation. The monies had only been released into VSA’s accounts in July 2017; therefore the federation expected improvement in its financial position.

VSA’s Interventions based on MOA on Transformation

He said the current number of women in VSA leadership positions translated into 27% with a target of 50% representation by 2019 pending finalisation of the amendment of VSA’s constitution.

VSA had concluded the schools structure constitution together with the schools structures and said schools structures were going to elections to constitute their national volleyball body.  Currently Volleyball national teams participated in beach volleyball to date primarily, as it was cheaper though VSA did host national camps for indoor volleyball at junior level volleyball.

On support provincial affiliates, he said that VSA did capacity building programmes with affiliates including technical officiating, coaching and refereeing. In 2017 VSA had included administration of provincial volleyball as a part of the skills development roll-out at that level.

Resource support from SRSA had allowed VSA to send a team of under 18 girls to participate at the Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa (BRICS) games in China in 2017. It had become apparent at that tournament that SA still had some way to go in having a competitive national team.

Discussion

Mr T Mhlongo (DA) asked what strategies or plans there were at VSA for sourcing sponsorship. Seeing that there remained no diversity in VSAs governance structure, more concerning was the acknowledgment of the absence of females in the management structure of VSA. He wanted to know whether the 27% female representation was VSA’s benchmark for gender parity.

Unless he had understood wrong but the proposed National Volleyball League (NVL) would focus largely on males volleyball though the President of VSA had lamented and explained that VSA was looking into the gender skewness in the leadership of the federation. Even the composition of the VSA board seemed that it would be all male. How would it be constituted?

The proposed team names reflected an anglicised league as there were no vernacular named provincial teams; what had been the rational in naming the teams in English and after animals where that had occurred? Could the VSA elaborate further how the R10 million allocations would be used?

Ms B Abrahams (ANC) wanted to know how volleyball courts were laid out as at her constituency there had been an outside volleyball court installed. What type of sand and surface were used for those types of volleyball courts? What was the current marketing strategy at VSA? How was VSA linking schools volleyball with community and team volleyball outside the schools? Did VSA foresee installment of a volleyball court in every ward across all municipalities? Which was cheaper to install between indoor and outdoor beach volleyball courts; where the rules similar or different?

Ms D Manana (ANC) asked how many provinces had participated in the BRICS games and what criteria had been used in selecting the team that participated in those games?

Though VSA were intending and had mentioned that there was volleyball in rural areas, she said she was yet to see the sport being played in rural areas. VSA had presented its NVL proposal noting possible financial shortfalls. How certain were VSA that it would successfully launch the league accommodating all nine provincial teams? She accepted that the NVL would initially be hosted in big cities where there were facilities. When did VSA foresee its big events being taken to rural provinces like Limpopo and Mpumalanga?

The Chairperson interjected that she would allow the Director-General (DG) of SRSA an opportunity to brief the Committee on SRSA’s support towards VSA as she had omitted giving the DG an opportunity to give input before the discussion. She suspected that some of the question raised by the Committee would be answered.

Mr G Mmusi (ANC) asked VSA to elaborate how it intended to grow participation and excitement in volleyball in South Africa. He said that when briefing Committees it was helpful for presenters to explain abbreviations so that MPs would not struggle to follow presentations. If there was disabled volleyball in South Africa, could VSA speak about that? Was there something in SA’s constitution that barred female participation in volleyball?

The Chairperson echoed Mr Mmusi’s sentiments regarding the proposed amendment of a constitution as presented by VSA.

Mr Alec Moemi, DG, SRSA, replied that the National Sport and Recreation Act (NSRA) of SA discouraged SRSA from funding federations or sporting bodies that did not promote inclusivity, disability, representivity and diversity of South Africa. SRSA funding guidelines spoke to that and SRSA had also linked funding to the Eminent Persons Group (EPG) process where it evaluated, assessed and set targets with federations on issues including diversity and representation. SRSA had only started supporting VSA on the EPG process in 2016 and had only recently signed barometer agreements with VSA which was why VSA can state with certainty that by 2019 it has to have achieved 50% gender parity on female representation across all its structures, including non-elected structures like management and boards. That also included equity in terms of players in teams. The South African Constitution only spoke to gender equity without actually legislating and forcing bodies to do gender equity. The ANC had had to amend its own constitution to enforce a 50% gender representation across its structures. And even then during voting if male numbers were more women still would be promoted until gender parity was reached. In the Western Cape provincial government it had been easy for Premier Ms Helen Zille to appoint an all male except for herself team because it had not been illegal to do that according to law though it was inconsistent with what the Constitution envisaged regarding gender parity. VSA therefore had some way to go in that regard as it was not envisaged to simply prop-up people who were not from structures for wanting to exhibit gender parity. VSA was presenting on capacity building in provincial structures because training of technical officials and administrators would include women so that the women could go into VSA structures.

The amendment of VSA’s constitution was intended to put a mandatory condition that women ought to be represented on a 50% constituency across the board since there was no provision barring women in the first place and none enforcing gender parity as well.

VSA had historically had challenges with volleyball schools and there had been no proper alignment. SRSA had reported on VSA before to the Committee that volleyball schools had at some point qualified a team to go participate at the International Schools Volleyball Federation tournament but the old VSA structure had refused to fund the children then and SRSA had fought with that executive. VSA had a new executive to date which was cooperating with SRSA and a lot of progress was being made although the process was painful as the delegation before the Committees were all volunteers. The VSA had been as honest as possible and cooperative regarding compliance with the EPG process in assisting SRSA determine the state of affairs as they were. It was always better for the status report when presented to the Committee; nothing would be sugar coated. With the previous executive there was no way VSA could have attracted sponsors because sponsorships were targeted and sponsors wanted returns on their investment. The intervention SRSA were making in declaring VSA as a federation of the year would assist VSA in a similar manner SRSA had assisted Netball South Africa (NSA) turnaround its fortunes.

The Chairperson interjected welcoming the Minister, Mr Thulas Nxesi to the meeting.

Mr Moemi continued that SRSA was assisting VSA acquire a sponsor and possibly VSA would indeed acquire a broadcast sponsor as SRSA had already engaged SuperSport about the NVL which would generate revenue for the league which would alleviate the commitment that SRSA had made towards the NVL. Once a sporting code had television rights, then title sponsors and technical sponsors got on board as there was huge return on investment in that regard.  The DG was certain that SuperSport would be the broadcast sponsor but SRSA had asked VSA to allow SRSA to take the lead in negotiating the sponsorship for VSA so that SRSA could negotiate the best deal VSA could get.

The NVL would be established as a semi-professional league in its first iteration to ensure that it would be cheaper to run and establish. A footprint product of the league Durban was chosen because it was quite expensive to bring beach volleyball inland.

VSA brought truck loads of beach sand to communities for volleyball courts but then a little bit of silica was used to hold the sand in place as well. SRSA had done inland volleyball championships with VSA in Bloemfontein at the Rose Gardens but the cost of putting up the infrastructure at that time and to date was huge.  SRSA with VSA had decided to combine the two formats of volleyball into one which was a first; and because beach volleyball attracted more sponsors and grew faster than indoor volleyball the NVL had been conceptualised in the manner presented to the Committee. AB inBev was interested in becoming a headline sponsor of the NVL through either Corona or Flying Fish beverages but with the condition that VSA would be launching beach volleyball. Beach volleyball would then subsidise indoor volleyball in that way. The NVL would not be established without sponsorships and other agreements signed and committed to.

Mr Moemi said SRSA doubted that there would ever be volleyball courts in every ward of every municipality in the country since even the National Facilities Plan (NFP) of SRSA did not speak to that. Sports facilities were installed in a manner such that in a municipal cluster, different facilities would be situated in different wards so that users congregated in one place for a specific sporting code and another place for another code.

Beach volleyball courts were cheaper than indoor courts as they were generally situated at the beach. Inlaid courts or in schools where lines were drawn on hard surfaces the impact on players’ joints as they land after jumping was significantly adverse and even in clay courts there were similar challenges. The best surface for indoor volleyball was a wooden court which had cushioning underneath however, those courts were not cheap as they were not less than R800 000. The outside sport courts that SRSA did with the Sports Trust which was for multipurpose sports, endured the weather and the different codes played on them wore out the courts.

VSA did not look like it would ever be able to build internal marketing capacity and because of that SRSA had agreed on the outsourcing of the marketing of the NVL to established marketing houses. Because volleyball had been played across the racial spectrum, SRSA with VSA thought that with the NVL properly marketed the excitement around the sport would cater for children, promising players and spectators altogether in a similar fashion as SRSA had done with Hockey South Africa (HSA).

Mr Moemi said inclusion of women in the NVL at year three spoke to the currently ran development programme of VSA. Recently and to date there simply were no major women or girls volleyball teams post high school and tertiary level. The target of year three for VSA to have built sufficient women representation also gave SRSA an opportunity so that the broadcast rights sponsorship would have grown enough to have a two tier league system for women and men. Impressively though, women players were quite talented in beach volleyball which was why there were eight female beach volleyball teams and six male teams.

When SRSA launched the Hockey Premier League (HPL) the National Sport Tourism Strategy (NSTS) had just been finalised.  SRSA had then directed HSA to name the hockey teams after essential landmarks of SA. It was a global strategy to name teams around native animals and in SA specifically only in soccer was there a mismatch because rugby teams were named around animals. Therefore in terms of the NVL the names followed the fauna in the region of the country where the team would have been constituted from. The names were proposed names because the players would still decide on the names.

Mr Moemi said the BRICS games were between the countries which formed BRICS and the hosting country decided which sport code games were to be played. Therefore only national teams would have participated in the BRICS games and not provinces.

He then explained the abbreviations and concurred that those had to be explained fully so that MPs would not struggle.

There were no significant numbers of disabled volleyball players and teams to date and SRSA understood that for VSA that was an area for development as SRSA had issued a directive to VSA for a focus on development of disabled volleyball as advised through the EPG process.

Mr Moemi said the strategy was to not to use the entire R10 million in one year for the NVL but SRSA would finalise how that budget would be used closer to launching of the NVL and how much  VSA would sign on sponsorships especially broadcasting rights.  

The Chairperson said that gender parity at least was at 42% female representation according to numbers from the Southern African Democratic Economic Corridor (SADEC). Even the ANC constitution spoke to that gender parity though the ruling party was also struggling; therefore she understood the planning of VSA together with SRSA.  

Mr Mhlongo noted that possibly in future the DG had to respond at the end as Mr Mhlongo had wanted responses from the VSA delegation.

The Chairperson apologised that as she had earlier said that she had omitted allowing the DG to present immediately after the VSA as that would have probably curtailed some of the questions.

Mr Mhlongo continued that he wanted an explanation about what volunteering at VSA meant. How much had been spent for the BRICS games? He was still not satisfied about how the R10 million would be used as he had found no detailed plans about how the allocation would be used for the volleyball development. He also wanted an answer on how the VSA management measured its transformation targets.   

Ms Manana asked whether VSA had communicated to all the provinces to prepare in advance and anticipation of the establishment of the NVL, seeing that sponsorships seemed to be almost finalised.

Mr Mmusi said having heard about the expense of staging volleyball events inland he felt that the remaining infrastructure had to be maintained but wanted clarity whether the expense was for the upkeep or both transportation of the sand and maintenance?

Mr Mokoena replied that there were different rules for the two formats of volleyball. On the annexures VSA had submitted to the Committee, members would see how far volleyball development was in deep rural areas. The entire executive of VSA before the Committee had come through the ranks of volleyball in their respective provinces and indeed was volunteers. The executive was not paid for the administration of volleyball in SA because the money allocated to VSA was ring fenced for development of the sport.

Mr Makhubela said that VSA had duly informed the provincial structures and affiliates of the anticipated NVL that teams had to prepare to participate in that league.          

Mr Mokoena said that the sponsorship from flying fish had assisted VSA run semi-professional leagues across the country where VSA had established beach volleyball courts in at least seven provinces, inside tertiary institutions. 

Mr Kriba Reddy, Vice president, VSA, said that in 2014 VSA had held the international beach volleyball championship as alluded to by the DG earlier in the Free State. Though it had been expensive VSA had then donated the sand to schools in the Free State as well as the National Sports Academy in that province for preparation of teams and development.

Mr Moemi said maintenance of inland beach volleyball courts was not more expensive than transporting the sand, but the sheer amount of sand to be transported from the coastline inland was often quite limiting. Positive spin-off of that was that the number of beach volleyball players from inland had exceeded the number of players from the coast and to attest to that the current crop of top players of beach volleyball were from the Limpopo province.

SRSA had sent two teams consisting of volleyball and basketball to the BRICS games and the total cost all together including technical and management staff, accommodation and allowances, medical kits and attire had been R1.3 million. For the first time SRSA had also managed to pay men and women equal amounts for a week long tournament in China.    

As earlier alluded the R10 million was dedicated to the establishment of the NVL and nothing had been used from that money as no league had started as yet. Conceptualisation of the NVL had been done in partnership with VSA with SRSA using its internal resources. It was for that reason that SRSA would know for sure around end of September how the money would be used in year one. Normally with SuperSport SRSA scaled up how much leagues would attract in revenue from broadcasting rights so that title and technical sponsorships would account for the rest of the revenue and only when those deals were signed would SRSA be able to determine its risk exposure. As the figures had been presented for year one to the Committee, they excluded sponsorships which was why he could not tell the Committee exact numbers for the NVL. As he had alluded earlier SRSA had found a working model in supporting federations launch leagues that became self sufficient which started with identifying a federation of the year where the ring fenced inflation equivalent of R10 million would be allocated. To date the NSAs league had broken even for the first time in 2016 and the support given NSA had been diverted to HSA and the trend was continuing as VSA plans showed.

Comment by the Minister

Minister Nxesi said when chips were down at federations, SRSA was the first to be questioned and not federations therefore as SRSA set policy and funded federations. The DG had to know in detail what was happening in federations. To that extent he had spoken to the Auditor-General South Africa (AGSA) where AGSA had appreciated the nature of the output of the DG’s office as it was hands on across the board in the sports sector. It had to be appreciated that in small federations board and executive members were part-time or volunteers and in terms of accountability SRSA could not be separated from such federations, excluding the big five federations.

The Chairperson said she had been worried when leadership changed at SRSA because she had thought Mr Moemi would have left with Minister Fikile Mbalula. She asked for guidance on whether the Committee wanted to continue with the agenda.

Mr Mhlongo said there was an agenda item that had also been omitted.

Ms Manana proposed that the agenda item the Chairperson wanted guidance on be postponed for a future meeting.

The Chairperson thanked VSA for coming before the Committee and allowed the DG to present an update on prioritization for school sport support.

Prioritisation for School Sport Support

Mr Moemi said SRSA had engaged the Department of Basic Education (DBE) to iron out issues around the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).

From 2018 SRSA would be introducing a new epic schools sport championship model which was akin to the Olympics spread across three seasons. The format would concentrate on talented youths from different schools in specific schools circuits. The circuit team from different schools would compete where the best schools across circuits would constitute a district representative team which would also compete in the next level until national level. The format was largely to ensure talent identification over a two year period. In the third year the championships would end at provincial levels with selection camps for international schools championship and therefore in the final and third year there would be no national championship. The money for the national championship in the third year would fund athletes selected from provincial camps for participation in the international schools championship. Year four of the cycle would return to the top schools format so that year five would restart the three year Olympic-like format. Both DBE and SRSA had ratified that cycle. The preliminary estimate for the national schools sport budget would increase from 40 to 48% of SRSA’s total budget. For provincial allocations for sport expenditure the increase would be from 50 to 53% as estimated by SRSA for schools sport.      

Minister Nxesi had also instructed that SRSA downscale significantly downwards on the Sports Awards content and prize money though the categories would remain so that the monies could be redirected to other key programmes. Having done that, that accounted would continue doing so on the increase in the budget for schools sport.

Mr D Bergman (DA) said he had received an invitation for the national schools championship and perhaps the dates were wrong because the invite had said there would be prize giving on the Friday and when he had attended that event no such prize giving had occurred. In his interaction with attendees from Engen as a title sponsor, he had been told that there could be more collaboration from the private sector regarding the national schools sport and youth activities. Worrying him was that since DBE did not account to the Committee he thought it about time that a joint meeting be held with the Committee on DBE on the updates as presented by the DG.

Mr Mhlongo asked if SRSA would remain with its timelines as presented in its schedule.

Ms Abrahams asked whether SRSA had managed to meet with all the Student Governing Bodies (SGBs) as outlined in the update presented to the Committee on policy matters and roles. She appreciated the scaling down on the awards whilst keeping the sports awards.

Mr S Ralegoma (ANC) asked if DBE had been finally willing to review the policy on physical education being a standalone subject.

Ms Manana asked to what extent SRSA and DBE had deliberated on the issue of teacher unions wanting teachers to get paid overtime for schools sport activities or physical education with learners.

The Chairperson said that though the Committee had been unable to sit jointly with the Committee on DBE the Management Committee (MANCO) had finally managed to organise that sitting for the whole day on 12 September 2017.

The DG apologised to Mr Bergman and committed to following up what had happened with the invite. He said SRSA was quite vociferous and were sticking to its timelines though sometimes DBE was difficult. SRSA maintained sticking to the timelines as the worry was that the current MOU could not end without there being and Memorandum of Agreement (MOA). Furthermore SRSA wanted to brief Cabinet in January 2018 on the new MOA with DBE so that deadlines could be met. 

There were two main SGB associations across the 25 000 schools in South Africa. There was the organised one which was predominantly dominated by historically white and model C schools which SRSA found to be somewhat resisting the policy review and issues affecting them in the basic education general amendment laws as envisaged by SRSA. That consultation had to occur and that in effect did not mean there had to be consensus but there had to have been considered views when a final determination was made. The second SGB association lacked capacity but had more schools and SRSA would meet both main associations and even smaller ones for private schools and the catholic diocese schools conference as some though not state owned received state funding however small that was.

The attitudes at DBE were changing regarding physical education as the new DG there was of the view that sport policy had to be determined by SRSA. To that extent that DG had even addressed his own Heads of Departments across provinces that SRSA would determine schools sports. In 2014, from the 89 news schools built on the Accelerated School Infrastructure Delivery Initiative (ASIDI) programme SRSA had done a run to see how many schools had been built with the gazette norms and standards in 2013 as those had had SRSA input. From those standards the schools had to at least have a netball court and soccer field. SRSA had found through the assessment that only 13 of the 89 newly built ASIDI schools had sport facilities in 2014 and SRSA raised a big concern about that issue then. SRSA had done another assessment early in 2017 regarding the 2016 build and found that only two schools out of 27 built in 2016 were without sport facilities and therefore there was improvement. In Cullinan, DBE had gone beyond the norms and standards specification in catering for sports.

DBE would no longer be an obstacle, but the South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU) would remain a challenge that needed to be resolved. Fortunately Minister Nxesi was a former secretary of SADTU and the DG of DBE was a former national executive member of SADTU as well. The relations were warmer than they had ever been and the engagement was around SADTU voluntarily mandating its members to dedicate three hours per week to sport activities and physical education with learners outside the curriculum.

DBE’s biggest concern about physical education as a separate subject was that every Minister that had ever headed DBE tempered with the curriculum such that there was curriculum fatigue with SADTU refusing tempering of the curriculum as the curriculum development process was inducing fatigue amongst teachers. Ideally SRSA and DBE were trying creative ways to circumvent opening the curriculum up to tempering as physical education teachers were ready and would certainly lead the Wednesdays three hour session as SADTU had offered to mandate its members.

The Chairperson thanked SRSA for coming before the Committee and appreciated the assessment that SRSA ran on the ASIDI schools programme as the Committee could never manage to oversee all new schools as to whether they were built with sport facilities or not.

The meeting was then adjourned.