11 September 2024
The U18 African Basketball Championship is underway in Pretoria after the Department of Sports, Arts and Culture intervened at the last minute to ensure that the tournament goes ahead. Archive photo: Silver Sibiya
The Department of Sports, Arts and Culture intervened at the eleventh hour to save the U18 African Basketball Championship, says Cassiday Rangata-Jacobs, spokesperson for sports minister Gayton McKenzie.
“The department, under direction from the minister, stepped in by treating the matter as an emergency,” he told GroundUp.
The U18 African Basketball Championship, officially known as the U18 Afrobasket, is underway in Pretoria with teams from 12 different countries competing. The tournament started on 2 September, a day late. The competition is set to finish on Saturday 14 September.
Initially, Basketball South Africa (BSA), the local governing body for the sport, was in charge of organising the whole event. Two weeks before the tournament was to kick off, GroundUp reported that BSA had still not announced the national boys’ and girls’ teams, their coaches or the official venue.
Minister McKenzie then posted a comment on social media linked to our article, promising that his office would look into the issues and report back the next day. The findings have still not been made public.
He tweeted: “This morning was the first time I heard about this, this is wrong & embarrassing for SA. We will never allow this circus to continue. We shall report back tomorrow (Friday) with our findings and action to be taken to remedy the situation.”
Asked when the minister’s feedback would be made public as indicated by his tweet, Rangata-Jacobs said that while the minister’s duties do not include being a “forensic investigator,” he made queries about the troubled event and how it could be saved.
To salvage the event, the department hired a service provider to “urgently deal with all the preparatory and logistical arrangements, and to ensure timeous payments,” said Rangata-Jacobs.
In the days leading up to the tournament, he said, “logistical hiccups” resulted in less time for the organisers to prepare. But so far the event has proceeded successfully, he added.
“It was important to the Minister to safeguard South Africa’s reputation as a credible destination for international sporting events, and we have largely achieved that.”
According to Rangata-Jacobs, the budget allocated by the department to BSA for the current financial year was R1.2-million, but no extra funds were given to BSA to organise this year’s U18 Afrobasket.
Rangata-Jacobs added that the “plans they [BSA] were relying on [to fund the tournament] didn’t pan out”.
Despite GroundUp’s attempts to probe this, no further explanation was given. We have also not been able to find any financial records for BSA. The department referred our questions to the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC), which referred us to BSA.
GroundUp first sent questions to BSA about the tournament on 20 August and again on 4 September. To which we are yet to get a response.