SOUTH AFRICAN SPORTS COMMISSION ACT REPEAL BILL
INTRODUCTION TO THE BILL
After South Africa’s less than satisfactory performance in the Olympic Games in Sydney in 2000, it was decided to investigate the impediments to higher levels of achievements by our country’s athletes and representative teams. A report with wide-ranging recommendations was produced, many of which required significant resources to implement.
A recurring theme throughout the report concerned the dysfunctional fragmentation of governance structures in sport and recreation in South Africa that contributed to the duplication and replication of functions with concomitant, wasteful expenditure, dysfunction and confusion for athletes who had to troop from one regimen to the next as they prepared for participation in various international sporting events. It recommended that the sports governance structures be rationalised, a proposal that aligned very well with the first priority in the policy document of Sport and Recreation South Africa (SRSA), the "White Paper on Sport and Recreation".
Cabinet endorsed the recommendations on 25 June 2003 that proposed the establishment of only two governance structures for sport and recreation in South Africa, namely, an expanded Department of Sport and Recreation and a new, non-governmental umbrella structure. A Steering Committee was appointed to implement the Cabinet decision and a Monitoring Committee, chaired by the Minister of Sport and Recreation, was appointed to oversee its work. The Committees consulted widely and inclusively and the decision to implement the Cabinet decision was supported unanimously to establish the new structure in two General Assemblies. The non-governmental structure has since been incarnated in the form of the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC). SASCOC will take responsibility for South Africa’s high performance sports programme, while the expanded Department will take responsibility, primarily, for grassroots, mass-based, community-oriented sport and recreation activities upon which it has already embarked.
SASCOC has been established and launched, its Board and Chairperson have been elected, and its CEO has been appointed. It is in the process, currently, of recruiting staff. The expanded SRSA has to do the same in order to fulfil its expanded mandate, hence the need for the Repeal Bill to be passed.
The SASC Act Repeal Bill is intended to facilitate the incorporation of the functions and staff of the SASC into the expanded SRSA. The functions and staff of the SASC can only be transferred once the SASC Act has been repealed and the governance of sport and recreation can be regularised.