Cabinet is studying a report on a possible South African bid for the 2036 or 2040 Olympics, South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) president Barry Hendricks says.
“The [sport] minister has presented a document to the cabinet and we will await the response in order to move forward,” he told the parliamentary portfolio committee for sport during Sascoc’s virtual presentation on Friday.
“There are about 11 countries vying for the Olympics in 2036 and the option of 2040 is also open.”
Hendricks said a South African bid would likely be multi-city and could incorporate the Paris Olympics strategy of using temporary facilities. “[Paris] built temporary facilities around its iconic venues and was able to dismantle it afterwards, saving a huge amount of finances, as well as not being forced to maintain the facility afterwards. Those are strategies that we can use. Don’t forget also, we can use more than one city or peripheral towns around the city.”
Hendricks spoke about how Sascoc, since he and his board were first elected in 2020, had turned a R13m deficit into a surplus of nearly R21.5m. But they were still heavily underfunded, compounded by the fact that they were paying for events and functions that weren’t originally in their budget, like the government-organised African Games.
“There’s one thing I need to speak about and that’s our unfunded mandate that Sascoc is now obliged to fund. And because of this evolution and progression of the work that Sascoc is doing, we need to implore government and the portfolio committee to increase the funding.”
Hendricks also pointed out that the investment in preparation for the 2028 Los Angeles Games was far smaller than in many other countries, like Britain, which had earmarked £249m (R5.6bn).
Government’s contribution to Sascoc for 2024/25 was R11.72m, nearly R6m less than the previous year, and even less than the R20.2m given in 2020/21.
Its biggest contribution for 2024/25 of R39.4m came from the Lottery, followed by R22.4m from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and R17m from Bidvest, which sponsors the Operation Excellence funding programme for Olympic and Paralympic hopefuls.
The only portion that went to administrative costs was from the IOC and the International Paralympic Committee (IPC).
“All the sponsorships that we get go into athletes. The lottery, [to] athletes… The money that we use to sustain Sascoc comes from the Olympic Committee and Paralympic Committee …
“That is why we are always imploring the portfolio committee to assist us to ensure that sports get a better and bigger budget so that we can plough that back into the athletes … We need further funding and we’ve spoken to the national lottery.”
Sascoc high performance manager Leon Fleiser said Sascoc delivered South African teams to 18 multi-coded events every four years.
Hendricks expressed concern that Sascoc was the only structure mandated by the Sports and Recreation Act to take multi-coded teams to international events, yet they had no oversight over school teams. “A review is needed urgently to provide us with a further mandate in this regard.”
He added that a legal opinion on the validity of Swimming South Africa’s (SSA) election last year had been completed and would soon be made public. SSA’s ballot last year was criticised in some quarters because four executive members, including president Alan Fritz, were re-elected, breaching the constitution which stipulates a maximum of three terms.
The body’s CEO, Shaun Adriaanse, had said the clause limiting directors to three terms was introduced only in 2018 and therefore kicked in only then, not retrospectively.
A complaint was lodged with Sascoc which referred the matter to its judicial body, an independent legal arm. “That legal opinion has just arrived on our table, I think two days ago, with regards to the elections in SSA.”
He said he could share the opinion with the committee “confidentially, until we make an announcement to SSA in this regard, and to the person who raised the dispute”.
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