Fidentia carnage grows

The Fidentia scandal looms large in South Africa, and its carnage is strewn as far as the eye can see.

Some of the casualties have been sports teams who were recipients of large sponsorship deals signed with the asset management company.

Fidentia’s ambitious sponsorship plan saw it sign agreements with the Boland Rugby Union, the Eastern Cape Warriors cricket franchise and Mvela Golden League football side Fidentia Rangers (formerly Manning Rangers).

Fidentia also got involved in sponsoring the South African Youth Choir and in setting up or purchasing cricket and rugby development academies.

As the Fidentia money has dried up, these cultural and sporting bodies are scrambling to survive.

Boland Rugby Union

Boland Rugby Union is in a shambles following the termination of its five-year R60-million sponsorship deal, which it signed with Fidentia last year.

This week Boland announced that it was retrenching 26 of the 56-strong squad of players, including Springbok players Quinton Davids and Hanyani Shimange.

It also announced that former Springbok assistant coach Rudy Joubert, who joined the union as the director of rugby, was being let go.

Shimange, Davids and Joubert were part of a massive recruitment drive last year by Boland, after it signed the Fidentia sponsorship deal, which saw it rack up a wage bill of R1,3-million.

However, its 56-strong squad of players and 11-strong coaching team was under threat following statements made by Fidentia curator Dines Gihwala that Fidentia’s sponsorship agreements would be ‘at the back of the queue”.

Speaking to the Mail & Guardian, Gihwala insisted that Boland would not be receiving any further money from Fidentia and said he was currently in negotiations with the rugby union to get a refund for some of the Fidentia money given to the union.

‘I have met with the Boland rugby people and I have conveyed in the simplest possible language that there is no prospect of receiving any money from the curatorship,” said Gihwala.

South African Rugby Player’s Association CEO Piet Heymans told the M&G that SA Rugby had agreed to assist Boland with short-term funding in the form of an advance on the money it gets from SA Rugby every year.

SA Rugby spokesperson Vusi Kama said SA Rugby was currently searching for a new sponsor for the South African Rugby Union’s Club Championships, which were sponsored by Fidentia.

Fidentia Rangers Football Club

The retrenchment fears for 14 players from the Fidentia Rangers have been allayed following a compromise reached by the union, the curator and the players this week.

The team was bought by Fidentia Holdings for an estimated R2,5-million­ during the 2005/06 off-season and renamed from Manning Rangers to Fidentia Rangers.

Cappy Matutoane, the South African Football Players Union national organiser, acted as the chief negotiator for the players.

‘There will be no retrenchments and the players’ contracts will be adhered to. So the team will fulfil their duties until the end of the season,” said Matutoane.

He insisted when approached by the M&G that Fidentia was still paying the salaries of the players, but he later backtracked on this statement claiming that he did not know where the money to pay salaries would come from. ‘The issue of salaries, you will have to take up with the curators because I do not know where they will be getting the money to pay players,” said Matutoane.

Fidentia Warriors Cricket Franchise

Last year the Eastern Cape-based Warriors cricket franchise signed a R4,92-million-a-year sponsorship deal with Fidentia, which was set to last for two and a half years.

The sponsorship allowed the Warriors to go on a massive recruitment drive, poaching top players Zander de Bruyn (Titans), HD Ackerman (Cape Cobras) and Mornantau Hayward (Dolphins).

They also signed ex-Proteas opening batsmen Gary Kirsten and West Indian all-rounder Eldine Baptiste to their coaching team.

Dave Emslie, the chief executive of Cricket Eastern Cape, insists that the Warriors have received all their sponsorship money for the year from Fidentia. Emslie said he was meeting with the Fidentia curators next week.

It has been reported that all Warriors players salaries have been paid up to date.

A source close to the Warriors told the M&G that the Fidentia sponsorship was broken up into three parts. There was a payment of R1,7-million a year to cover salaries, R800 000 to cover high-performance programmes and a R1-million discretionary fund for specific projects.

The Alan Zondagh Rugby Performance Academy

Another victim of the Fidentia scandal is the rugby performance academy run by former Western Province and Saracens coach Alan Zondagh.

A bitterly disappointed Zondagh told the M&G he had spent the whole week meeting with the young rugby players that attend his academy and their parents to try to place them with universities and provincial unions.

‘My passion and vision has been destroyed,” said Zondagh.

He said he had to find R2,7-million in two to three days to pay all the outstanding debts and to keep the academy running until the end of the year, but had to take the decision to close it.

Zondagh had been financing the academy himself for two years when Fidentia approached him in the middle of last year. He said Fidentia had told him that it wanted to start up development academies for rugby, soccer and cricket and so it offered to buy his academy.

‘It seemed quite interesting,” said Zondagh. ‘They had the money so it looked like a good deal which would take the financial pressure off of me.”

Zondagh said when Fidentia did not make the payment on November 1 last year as stipulated in the sale agreement, he realised he was in for a struggle. ‘From that day onwards it was a fight. The excuses were amazing, ‘it is in the system, it will be in the bank tomorrow’. For two years I ran it on my own and everything ran smoothly.”

Zondagh said two weeks before the Financial Services Board report was heard in court his lawyers had given Fidentia 14 days to settle all debts. When the report came out he started looking for a new sponsor.

South African Youth Choir

The Fidentia South African Youth Choir sent out a desperate plea for sponsorship last week, after its monthly payments from Fidentia dried up.

Fidentia founded the choir in 2004, with an agreed R5-million sponsorship, which pays for full scholarships for all 80-choir members at Stellenberg High School.

The choir’s spokesperson, Charl van Heyningen, said unless the choir could secure a new sponsor by the end of March, it would have to disband.

‘We are literally going from day to day, using donations,” said Heyningen, adding that the hostel, which houses 66 of the choir members, costs R200 000 a month to run.

Heyningen says the 80 children in the choir, aged between 13 and 18, come from all over South Africa and have all signed contracts with Fidentia promising them a fully paid school career.