About time rugby transforms: Mbalula

The Department of Sport and Recreation together with SASCOC are intensifying the transformation talk in South African sport and uncooperative federations could face the music. Minister of Sport Fikile Mbalula met Presidents and CEO’s of SA Rugby, SAFA, Cricket SA, Netball SA and Athletics SA yesterday as a follow up to the recently released transformation report by the Eminent Persons Group. The main purpose was to engage with the federations on how they are going to implement the findings of the EPG report. And Mbalula has picked on rugby to be honest with itself after a strong debate in a meeting… During the PowerPoint presentation that was done by Dr Willie Basson a member of the EPG, a leading sports administrator from one of the top three federations was overheard as saying “he’s talking nonsense”. Basson had been going through the slides that showed that this particular federation was falling behind in certain sections when it came to transformation. And Mbalula hasn’t taken kindly to these comments… There have also been a lot of reports about the 60 to 40 percent targets of representation in the national teams. Mbalula has also blamed the media on what he calls selective reporting and distortion of facts for narrow interests… Mbalula has also denied that there will be a relaxation of the 60-40 percent transformation target when it comes to rugby but revealed that they are prepared to meet SA rugby and hear their side of the story if there’s a need to… Rugby had been identified as being one of the best performers in the EPG report overall including governance matters but performed poorly when it came to transformation. SARU CEO Jurie Roux says they are satisfied with yesterday’s session… SABC Sport understands that the Ministry of sport is very happy with the progress that is being made at Cricket SA regarding transformation and CSA President Chris Nenzani says they are merely being judged on the data they’ve provided… Football doesn’t have challenges when it comes to representation but scored very low overall when matters of governance were included. This was also due to a lack of proper structures at provincial level something that SAFA President Danny Jordaan says they are addressing…Journalist: Velile Mbuli