Athletics South Africa (ASA) will continue its bid to centralise power by contracting the country’s top athletes to the governing body’s own club.
ASA chief Banele Sindani says the plan to set up ASA’s new club was approved at the organisation’s general meeting two weeks ago. And Sindani is not disguising one of the motives behind its creation: ‘The club is a vehicle which will enable us to have direct control of the athletes.â€
According to the club’s official launch document: ‘The Superclub is an ASA invention to serve as a vehicle for the nurturing and protection of identified talent until it reaches full bloom, and beyond.â€
Most aficionados with a genuine love of the sport and care for the welfare of athletes — particularly those from less-privileged backgrounds — will agree that such an initiative is long overdue. But the manner of its implementation is also bound to attract criticism that the club is merely part of ASA’s strategy to extend its sphere of influence and strengthen its grip on the sport.
The launch document says: ‘Whilst the development squads served the purpose for which they were meant, they still had serious shortcomings in that they did not provide a mechanism for the protection of identified talent from unscrupulous agents whose primary objective is simply to use the young uninitiated athletes to make money.â€
That’s a sentiment that has been expressed countless times before in Africa where the magnificence of the continent’s athletes is rarely matched by the competence and professionalism of its national federations.
The best example is Kenya where, for years, a handful of athletes’ agents have been at loggerheads with the Kenyan federation. Men like Kim McDonald and John Bicourt, both of whom are, or in McDonald’s case were, based in London, have for years provided accommodation and regular earnings in return for the athletes’ services on the European circuit.
Presumably, the fact that the athletes go back to the same agents year after year suggests that they are on the whole pleased with the rewards they are offered.
But the argument the national federations would advance is that the athletes are naive and easily influenced by the lure of the dollar, which is why the stories of African athletes withdrawing from national teams one day only to pop up in fine fettle the following week at European Grand Prix meets have become the stuff of legend.
The federations believe that to function efficiently themselves they must have more control over their greatest assets, the athletes.
By contracting the athletes directly to South Africa’s governing body,
Sindani seems bent on cutting out the middlemen.
In fact, depending on the nature of the specific contracts Sindani agrees with the athletes, either he, or the person Sindani appoints to run the club, could become the middleman himself. It’s a scenario littered with possible conflicts of interest.
After all, even allowing for the authenticity of Sindani’s altruism, he acknowledges himself that ‘power†and ‘control†also fit into the picture. And there is sufficient prevalence of the abuse of that among South Africa’s new sporting and political elite to set alarm bells ringing.
So where are the possible areas of conflict? Here are two of them. Where will the club manager’s loyalites be placed when Sindani, as is his prerogative, tells his manager that the success of an ASA meeting is dependent on the appearance of a club member who is struggling with a niggling injury? Under those circumstances can the athlete be sure of getting impartial advice? Of course not.
Then there’s the selection of national teams. How can a governing body be seen to be impartial in the selection of teams when it represents a significant number of the candidates? It can’t.
At the core of Sindani’s plan are some real challenges that he must be congratulated for addressing. However, the manner of its implementation has fundamental flaws.