Officials from the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture (DSAC) were heavily scrutinised in parliament on Tuesday over the controversial decision to take R62m from already financially strained sports federations to fund Minister Gayton McKenzie’s Video Assistant Referee (VAR) project.
Although the National Treasury recently blocked the full reallocation, approving only R20m for the VAR project and ensuring the rest returns to the sports bodies, members of the Portfolio Committee for Sport, Arts and Culture demanded substantive reasons for the initial grant cuts.
Minister McKenzie, who was not present at the committee meeting, had previously cited poor governance by sports bodies and promised a new funding model for sport when justifying the cuts.
However, Leah Potgieter, a committee member, stated that the explanations offered by DSAC managers on Tuesday were vague and failed to explain the cuts, especially considering DSAC had provided an additional R5m to the South African Football Association (Safa) when it struggled to pay salaries.
“What I would like from the department are the substantive reasons for the request to reallocate the money originally,” Potgieter said.
When asked about the financial controls of the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc), DSAC CFO Israel Mokgwamme replied that there were no issues with Sascoc’s financial reporting. He also revealed that the minister’s promised new funding model was not yet 50% complete.
Potgieter insisted the CFO’s answers were unsatisfactory, arguing that the reallocation was clearly intended to fund the VAR project, making the department’s earlier claims of federation non-compliance misleading.
“The department doesn’t seem able to provide substantive reasons for the reallocation, and it’s very clear that that reallocation was done in order to fund something else,” she stated.
She further criticised the move, saying: “So here we have… defunding of federations in order to fund the VAR, which I understand is something that will make the sport better. But it’s being done at the expense of other federations.”
Potgieter concluded that the saga demonstrated a lack of a holistic funding strategy for sport, insisting there was no reason to cut funding other than to secure the VAR project.
“What we’re trying to do is move money around for nice-to-have issues instead of ensuring that we are developing sport within the country and I don’t think it’s acceptable.”
