Officials grilled for taking money from federations for VAR

Sport, arts and culture minister Gayton McKenzie’s officials were taken to task in parliament on Tuesday over the decision to take R62m from cash-strapped sports federations for the video assistant referee (VAR) project.

National Treasury recently blocked McKenzie’s planned reallocation, meaning money will go back to the sports bodies, though it approved R20m for the video project, for which McKenzie had budgeted R82m.

But some members of the sport, arts and culture portfolio committee grilled department managers, with one common theme of questions centring on the reason for initially cutting grants to federations.

They pointed out that at the time McKenzie referred to poor governance by bodies, and he promised a new funding model for sport.

DA MP Leah Potgieter said the explanations offered on Tuesday were vague, adding the department had been unable to explain the cuts.

Yet it had helped the South African Football Association with an additional R5m allocation when it couldn’t pay salaries.

“And yet we’re defunding federations on sort of vague general ideas across the entire sector. What I would like from the department are the substantive reasons for the request to reallocate the money originally.”

Potgieter asked the department’s CFO, Israel Mokgwamme, what financial controls the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) had lacked to have received no funding from government.

The CFO replied there were no issues with Sascoc’s financial reporting.

Azwihangwisi Muthambi of the ANC asked how far along the minister’s new funding model was, and Mokgwamme replied it wasn’t even at 50%.

What we’re trying to do is move money around for nice-to-have issues instead of ensuring that we are developing sport in the country, and I don’t think it’s acceptable.

—  Leah Potgieter, DA MP

Potgieter insisted the CFO’s answers were unsatisfactory.

“The department doesn’t seem able to provide substantive reasons for the reallocation, and it’s clear that that reallocation was done to fund something else,” she said.

“And to me, to make that [the reallocation] then about the fact that there’s been noncompliance or that funding was withdrawn because federations aren’t performing is completely outside what actually happened.

“So here we have defunding of federations 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.”