PORTFOLIO COMMITTEE ON SPORT AND RECREATION SOUTH AFRICAN SPORTS COMMISSION ACT REPEAL BILL BACKGROUND INFORMATION 20 May 2005 Cape Town DenverJ

PORTFOLIO COMMITTEE ON SPORT AND RECREATION SOUTH AFRICAN SPORTS COMMISSION ACT REPEAL BILL BACKGROUND INFORMATION 20 May 2005 Cape Town DenverJ. Hendricks

1.On 25 June 2003, Cabinet endorsed the recommendations of the Ministerial Task Team (MTT) into High Performance Sport.

2.It recommended, amongst others, that the Sports Commission Act be repealed. The previous Executive Authority interacted with the Minister of Public Service and Administration on the matter at the time requesting that the decision be implemented immediately.

3.Sport and Recreation South Africa (SRSA) advised him that it would simplify the process if the implementation were to coincide with the start of a new financial year. It was, accordingly, agreed to implement the decision by I April 2005.

4. Appropriate planning proceeded, including the consideration, from a budgetary perspective, for the diversion of resources that would have been allocated to the South African Sports Commission (SASC) from I April 2005 onwards to, amongst others, the proposed, new SportsCo that subsequently became known as the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC). No budgetary provision was, therefore, made in the 2003-04 MTEF budget already, for the continued existence of the SASC after I April 2005. That was clearly reflected in the Estimates of National Expenditure (ENE) that was enacted by Parliament and was freely available as a public document.

5.Provision has since been made for all the staff of the SASC to be accommodated in SRSA while SASCOC was being established.

6. High performance programmes that would be the domain of SportsCo will be transferred from the SASC to the new structure while mass participation activities would be transferred to the Department.

7.If by 1 April 2005 SportsCo was not ready to start operating the staff of the SASC dealing with high performance activities would continue working on the projects concerned from the Department, but report to the CEO of SportsCo, who would have been appointed at the end of January 2005, on the basis of a full-time secondment. It was envisaged by the Steering Committee, however, that the SportsCo would start to operate from February 2005 in preparation for its official opening on I April 2005. This has taken place.

8. It was, furthermore, envisaged that the SportsCo would advertise all its positions in the open market. It was resolved that "best efforts" would be made to accommodate the high performance project staff members of the SASC, as well as employees from the National Olympic Committee (NOCSA), the South African Commonwealth Games Association (SACGA), Disability Sport South Africa (DISSA), the United School Sports Association (USSASA) and the South African Student Sport Union (SASSU) in SASCOC.

9.The Steering Committee and the Monitoring Committee, the latter chaired by the EA, concurred with the above- mentioned processes. In the timetable of action drafted by the Steering Committee, it was envisaged that the structures involved in the process should submit plans for closing down their activities by 31 September 2004, in anticipation of the start-up of the SASCOC by I April 2005, with the understanding that their affairs would be wrapped up completely by December 2005.

10. Since the SASC is required to submit its financial statements to the Auditor General two months after the end of the financial year (31 March 2005) and has to present its annual report to the Executive Authority by 31 August 2005, it was envisaged that it should be able to meet the stipulated deadlines comfortably. Since the annual report of the SASC has to be tabled in Parliament by 30 September 2005, it was foreseen that all the activities of the SASC would be wrapped up by that date. The contract of the CEO of the SASC that expired on 31 March 2005, was extended to 30 September 2005 to enable him to oversee the dissolution of the organisation by that date.

11. The process of integrating the SASC into SRSA was handed over to the Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) who presented the Minister with an organogram of the expanded SRSA who signed it off for implementation on 1 March 2005. The organogram comprised 187 posts in comparison with the existing establishment of SRSA of 68 posts and that of the SASC of 90 posts. Because of the moratorium on the filling of posts at SRSA and the SASC during the MTT implementation process, the full-time staff compliment of SRSA fell to below 30 and that of the SASC to 63. The rest of the positions were filled by contracted staff members who came and left as they found more permanent positions. This has contributed to instability at SRSA and has compromised its capacity to deliver on its mandate.

12. The new organogram, accommodates all the staff of the SASC and SRSA comfortably and allows room for promotion in many instances.

13. A Repeal Bill was drafted to facilitate the dissolution of the SASC. The Bill was submitted to Cabinet after wide- ranging deliberations with all the stakeholders concerned. Cabinet approved the Bill on 8 March 2005 but recommended that it be promulgated on I October 2005, to coincide with the tabling in Parliament of the last Annual Report of the SASC at the end of September 2005.

14. The fact that the Repeal Bill was not promulgated by the end of March 2005 posed new challenges that compromised the integration process. It was only certified by the State Law Advisers on 24 April 2005. Staff have been temporarily matched on the organogram of the SRSA as presented by the DPSA on the understanding that their final positions will be determined on the basis of a formal matching and placement process that would take into consideration their skills and experience. At the same time all personnel of SRSA and the SASC were guaranteed that their jobs would not be threatened and that they would not be worse off relative to their positions prior to the integration process. The personnel of the SASC would be transferred to SRSA under the provisions of Section 197 of the Labour Relations Act that provided this security.

15. A vehicle must, in the meantime, be found to temporarily transfer the personnel of the SASC that is currently paralysed because it has no funds, to SRSA that is also paralysed because it does not have the human resource capacity to do its work.

16. The DPSA has, accordingly, proposed that the personnel of the SASC be seconded to SRSA, and that they continue to be remunerated by the SASC on the basis of claims made to SRSA for services rendered. This has meant that the SASC has commenced with a new financial year that will, once again, have to be reported on. It has, however, been decided that an audit of the new financial year and the report thereon will be concluded as soon as the Repeal Bill has been promulgated and that these will be reported in the Annual Report of SRSA in 2006.

17. To date, none of the personnel of SASC have been transferred to SRSA as a result of lengthy negotiations with the Unions on the terms of such temporary transfer or secondment. This has rendered SRSA dysfunctional because of the lack of human resource capacity to manage its expanded mandate, while the personnel of the SASC effectively have no work to do as they have no approved business plans or a budget with which to operate.

18. It is, therefore, imperative that the Repeal Bill be promulgated as soon as possible, hence the urgency of the Executive Authority to see it being dealt with.

19. The revision of the governance structures for sport and recreation has been consulted widely and thoroughly through the MTT, Steering Committee and Monitoring Committee processes that has now seen the establishment of SASCOC through the incorporation of the other governance structures. It is imperative that the Repeal Bill be promulgated to facilitate the delivery by SRSA of sport and recreation products to communities at the grassroots level where they are needed most urgently. From my own vantage point, I am acutely aware that the SRSA staff are not coping and are becoming more and more demoralised as we move from one delay to the next in the process of integrating personnel from the SASC into the Department. Only the promulgation of the Repeal can speed up matters.

20. In the meantime SRSA is in the process of acquiring new premises that will be able to accommodate the expanded establishment. A building in the Pretoria CBD has been identified and is currently being procured with the assistance of the Department of Public Works.

21. Mr. Gideon Boshoff will now take you through the Bill.