13/09/2026
WHO WATCHES THE WATCHDOG?
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SASCOC occupies an extraordinarily powerful position in South African sport. It is the umbrella organisation expected to provide leadership, governance oversight and accountability across our national sporting federations. When a federation loses its way, athletes, coaches and administrators are supposed to be able to look upwards to SASCOC for intervention and protection. That arrangement only works, however, if the watchdog itself is properly governed, transparent and accountable.
The uncomfortable reality is that SASCOC’s own history raises serious questions about whether it has ever met that standard.
In October 2017, government appointed an independent Ministerial Committee of Inquiry, chaired by retired Judge Ralph Zulman and including Dr Ali Bacher and labour lawyer Shamima Gaibie, to investigate irregularities and malpractice in the governance and management of SASCOC. Its findings should have been a watershed for South African sport.
The inquiry described the SASCOC-up board as “essentially dysfunctional” and found that there was a failure to comply with basic principles of ethics, transparency, accountability and good governance. It criticised Gideon Sam’s “dictatorial” management style and, importantly, found that the board had failed to exercise adequate oversight over him.
But buried within those governance findings was another extraordinary issue: what South African sport was paying its administrators, and what it was receiving in return.
Evidence before the inquiry showed that approximately R2.2 million a year was being spent on “stipends” for SASCOC board members. Board members attending events such as the Rio Olympics could receive daily allowances of R3,500, while spouses could receive R2,400 per day, this while athletes were expected to fund their own participation. The inquiry also heard that SASCOC paid for board members to attend major international sporting events regardless of whether they had any involvement in the high-performance sports being showcased there.
Then-president Gideon Sam himself was reported to receive a monthly stipend of approximately R21,000, in addition to travel and accommodation, with a daily travel allowance reportedly reaching R6,000. When questioned about the R2.2 million annual allowances, Sam reportedly characterised the amount as “small money”.
The issue, however, was never simply whether SASCOC could afford the allowances. It was what value South African sport received for them.
The Zulman Inquiry described the amount of time board members devoted to their governance responsibilities as “minuscule” and “wholly inadequate.” Evidence presented during the hearings indicated that the board met four times a year and the council twice a year for approximately four hours at a time, despite SASCOC then representing 76 sporting federations and nine provincial confederations. Dr Ali Bacher questioned whether this could possibly provide enough time to deal properly with the affairs of South African sport.
Even more revealing was what those meetings apparently discussed. After examining board minutes submitted to the inquiry, committee member, Shamima Gaibie, estimated that less than 10% of the matters discussed related to core sporting issues. Much of the board’s attention appeared instead to have been consumed by internal structures, committee positions, constitutional disputes and board politics.
This creates an uncomfortable picture: millions of rand in stipends and benefits, international travel and long-serving administrators occupying powerful positions, while an independent inquiry concluded that the actual time devoted to governance was wholly inadequate.
Some board members had indeed been there for a very long time. The inquiry record noted, for example, that board member Archibald Marais had served since 2006, twelve years by the time Zulman reported. The inquiry consequently recommended stronger term limits, including a proposal that board members should serve no more than two four-year terms in their respective positions. Parliament subsequently recorded that this recommendation, along with proposed constitutional and legislative changes, remained among the matters on which SASCOC and government had not fully agreed.
That is where the phrase “along for the ride” becomes difficult to avoid. Not because every individual who served on the board necessarily failed, but because the governance model allowed people to remain embedded in the system for years while receiving allowances and benefits, attending international events and presiding over an organisation an independent judicial inquiry eventually described as dysfunctional.
The recommendations were supposed to change that. Zulman did not simply diagnose the disease. The inquiry prescribed treatment.
It recommended substantial constitutional reform, clearer separation of responsibilities between government and SASCOC, stronger eligibility requirements for board members, term limitations, tighter conflict-of-interest provisions, reform of travel benefits and allowances, and a comprehensive audit of financial transactions, procurement, travel and potentially irregular or wasteful expenditure.
The recommendations were accepted in principle and government expected implementation during 2019. Yet by 2020, Parliament was again confronting SASCOC over its governance.
Members complained about inadequate financial and performance information, unnecessary expenditure on litigation and an overdue board transition. Committee chair Beauty Dlulane described the board’s overstay as unacceptable, while another MP said bluntly: “This board is dysfunctional.” Another asked how SASCOC could possibly manage South African sport when it could not resolve its own governance problems.
In other words, barely two years after Zulman, Parliament was asking essentially the same questions. Then came the SIU
The next chapter moved beyond governance reviews into the investigation of public money. The Special Investigating Unit investigated National Lotteries Commission funding involving SASCOC and a 2016 application connected to the Mshandukani Foundation. That investigation ultimately resulted in the June 2026 Special Tribunal decision setting aside approximately R24.98 million in NLC funding as unlawful, with repayment orders following.
This matters because the recurring theme had moved from poor governance and inadequate oversight to a judicial outcome involving the handling of public funds. 2026: the watchdog investigates itself, again. Then came another extraordinary development.
Anonymous complaints were made against SASCOC president Barry Hendricks, and retired Judge Basheer Waglay was appointed to investigate alleged breaches of SASCOC’s Safeguarding Policy and Codes Handbook.
Judge Waglay has now concluded that there is prima facie evidence sufficient to warrant referral of the complaints to SASCOC’s Judicial Body, and Hendricks was suspended on 9 September 2026. That suspension is not a finding of guilt, and he is entitled to due process.
But Hendricks’ history adds another uncomfortable dimension. This is his second suspension within SASCOC. He was suspended before the 2020 elections over allegations relating to attempts to prevent rivals from contesting; he denied the allegations, was subsequently cleared, won the presidency and was re-elected unopposed in 2024 for a term intended to run beyond the 2028 Olympics.
So nearly a decade after Zulman recommended addressing entrenched governance, terms of office and board accountability, South African sport once again finds itself watching the organisation responsible for policing everybody else’s governance dealing with a governance crisis at its very top.
And then there is Swimming South Africa. This history becomes particularly relevant when SASCOC’s performance as a watchdog is measured against the crisis engulfing Swimming South Africa.
Water polo stakeholders appealed for intervention. Governance concerns accumulated. Litigation followed. Parliament became involved. The relationship between substantial sections of the water polo community and Swimming SA effectively collapsed.
Yet decisive action against Swimming SA’s leadership eventually came not from SASCOC but from the international Aquatics Integrity Unit, which on 24 August 2026 provisionally suspended SSA President Alan Fritz and CEO Shaun Adriaanse over alleged Integrity Code violations including abuse of power and providing false information or fake documents.
Only weeks later, SASCOC’s own president was suspended pending its judicial process. The irony is difficult to escape. The organisation expected to police governance failures within South African federations has spent much of the past decade repeatedly confronting governance questions of its own.
So what actually changed after Zulman? That, rather than another inquiry, should now be the question put to SASCOC and the Minister of Sport.
The 2018 report contained identifiable recommendations. Government accepted recommendations. Implementation deadlines were discussed. Parliament undertook to monitor progress. SASCOC itself subsequently reported implementing at least some reforms, including independent board members with legal and financial expertise.
What South African sport has never been given, in a sufficiently transparent and accessible form, is the scorecard.
SASCOC and the Department of Sport should therefore publish a recommendation-by-recommendation account of the Zulman Inquiry: what was implemented, what was only partially implemented, what was rejected, what remains outstanding, when each change occurred and who was responsible for ensuring compliance.
They should also disclose what happened to recommendations concerning the audit of historical expenditure, board benefits and travel, conflicts of interest, constitutional reform and term limits.
And Parliament should ask a very simple value-for-money question: what are SASCOC board members currently paid in stipends, allowances, travel and other benefits; how frequently does the board meet; what do the minutes demonstrate about the work actually performed; and what measurable improvement in federation governance has South African sport received in return?
Because this is ultimately about a system in which administrators can become fixtures, investigations can come and go, recommendations can be accepted and then fade from public view, and years later the same words, governance, accountability, transparency, safeguarding and consequence management appear in yet another report.
The Zulman Inquiry was supposed to change SASCOC. Eight years later, the burden should no longer be on athletes and sporting codes to prove that something is wrong.
The burden should be on SASCOC to show us what actually changed. And until it can do that convincingly, the question remains:
WHO WATCHES THE WATCHDOG?
