South African Sports Governing Bodies An Excuse To Steal And Abuse

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The warning was October last year and has taken an ultimatum to get the head of SA Athletics removed this week.

This week we had the axing of the Athletics South Africa president who was using the federations credit card for his own personal use and not for business. Reports suggest this was more like a slush fund card and World Athletics gave the ASA an ultimatum to fire their head or face an international ban.

The madness is this had to be pointed out to the ASA Board back in October 2025 when he was suspended and even then they were reluctant to take any steps. The problem with dealing with people who are uneducated is that they cannot see that this is not normal behavior and believe this is part of the perks of holding such a position. Imagine having your head of sport suspended for 1 year and still not firing them. No wonder World Athletics gave them this ultimatum otherwise he would still remain in charge.

The world body has given them 6 months to clean things up and rewrite their policies for South African athletics. Only now are they taking this seriously as nothing had been done for months and the president has now been fired. Normally in SA they like to suspend their officials keeping them on full pay and why there are no funds for these sports.

When you look back over the years there is always some sporting body in trouble with internal corruption because these are government ministers or friends of the government being given these leading roles. They all know no different and stealing is what they do.

April 19th 2020 SASCOC - South African Sport Confederation and Olympic Committee suspended a board member for the first time after interfering with elections. Unbelievable depending on how you see this as then he went on to win those elections. He was suspended for the second time last month for underhand dealings not conclusive of the code of conduct. Guaranteed this is all monetary related and the full story will come out as it always does.

SA Football Association president charged with fraud and unbelievably still won reelection with fraud charges still in place. He is a former Mayor of Port Elizabeth and has been running football in SA for 13 years. Not surprisingly SA Football is basically bankrupt and only qualifying for the World Cup did receiving large cash payments from FIFA are they staying afloat for the time being. A totally corrupt organization, but then so is FIFA so he is their perfect candidate.

SA Netball president suspended and removed by World Netball for financial irregularities. This again is having the world body step in to remove a corrupt person in charge of a sport as the local governing board would never do that.

Swimming SA had to remove their leadership as they were found guilty of abuse of power and forging documents for various swimmers. This at least was not monetary, but this was still illegal. They also head back prize money owed to swimmers after one swimmer was using Speedo instead of Arena and according to them breached the sponsorship deal. They eventually had to pay the prize money and interest owed on that prize money which they were trying to keep. Other sporting bodies would have just spent that money.

I have never forgotten my wife's Uncle who was the President of Clairwood Racecourse in Durban for many years. Two prominent black officials asked them how they could become the president of the racecourse and he told them it was voluntary and voted on by the members. They asked how much he was paid and when he mentioned it was voluntary with no pay they were no longer interested. Obviously for networking this type of role or position would be very lucrative and not paying a salary is short sighted.

The bigger sports like Rugby and Cricket seem to be above board because they have not had financial difficulty and only when sports run into trouble are the books open for everyone to see. Cricket I do think will be the next sport in the spotlight in SA as those running the sport are not cricket people so what could possibly go wrong.