You would expect Sello Maduma, South Africa’s fencing hope at the Olympics, to be at his happiest. But the 21-year-old athlete is a worried man. He is already looking beyond the Olympics and what he sees is bleak. ”I’m worried about life after the Olympics,” he says.
The South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) has dissolved the executive committee of Basketball South Africa (BSA) and appointed an interim committee. This follows allegations that Vusi Mgobhozi and Eric Nkosi — who were respectively president and treasurer of BSA until Sascoc’s move — are guilty of financial mismanagement.
Come May 6, officials from Nelson Mandela Bay municipality are confident that they will leave the South African Football Association smiling after world football governing body Fifa and the 2010 local organising committee agree that their stadium will be able to host matches for the 2009 Confederations Cup.
The South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee will this weekend probe allegations of financial mismanagement at Basketball South Africa (BSA). The probe follows complaints by Gauteng basketball officials, who have accused the national federation’s president, Vusi Mgobhozi, and treasurer Eric Nkosi of turning BSA into their personal bank account.
Leonard Chuene will have the last laugh on Sunday over his number-one enemy, the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc), when he is re-elected as president of Athletics South Africa. No one is standing against him. In the run-up to the elections, Chuene has been under pressure to resign.
”Prodigious” is the only word that can describe the performance of Kgothatso Montjane, the South African female wheelchair tennis champion. Unlike many sporting personalities who started playing sport at an early age, the 21-year-old, who hails from Seshego, Polokwane, has only been playing wheelchair tennis since 2005.
Do religion and sport mix? Some sports people evidently think so. Players who believe in God often show it openly — some saying a prayer on the field after scoring or missing a goal, others showing off T-shirts underneath their kit bearing religious messages.
Tim Modise’s days at the 2010 local organising committee (LOC) are numbered and the only questions are whether he will fall on his own sword or be axed, say informed sources close to the LOC and in the government. The sources told the Mail & Guardian the one-time star broadcaster is struggling with his role as chief officer of communications and marketing.
The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) has had enough of the 2010 stadium labour disputes and has now asked Fifa president Sepp Blatter to intervene. There have been a number of strikes over wage disputes by construction workers working on the Green Point stadium in Cape Town, Durban’s Moses Mabhida stadium and the Mbombela stadium in Nelspruit.
Running on a track filled with stones, while simultaneously ducking footballs and learner drivers, are some of the daily challenges the sensational middle-distance runners, Lebogang and Lebo Phalula, face in their bid for the 2008 Beijing Olympics this August.