South Africa Government banned four federations to host International tournaments

South Africa sports minister Fikile Mbalula on 25 April 2016 imposed the sanctions on Cricket South Africa (CSA) along with other three federations, which disallow them to host or bid for any major international tournaments.

Along with Cricket South Africa (CSA), the same punishment was meted out to the rugby, athletics and netball federations, and the decision will be reviewed in 2017.

The sanction effectively means CSA cannot lobby or express interest in any other tournaments until Mbalula clears them.

The sanctions were imposed after receiving the annual transformation report from a ministerially appointed independent committee of eminent persons group (EPG). The report stated that these sports bodies failed to meet the transformation guidelines.

What were transformation guidelines?

Cricket is one of the five South African sporting federations that signed a memorandum of understanding with the sports ministry in May 2015 underlining a five-year strategic plan and commitment to change. The major ones are:

• Each federation was given a target of achieving a general 60 percent players-of-colour target across national representative men's teams.

• It was also demanded for both a moral and strategic need to increase black African representation

• All the sports federations in South Africa were asked to have transformation committees. Earlier only CSA and South Africa Rugby Union were having these committees.

• Federations who fail to meet the transformation targets can face sanctions that also include suspension of government funding, withdrawing government recognition of the federation as a national federation and withdrawing political support for endorsements and sponsorships.

What the report stated?

• While in CSA 55% percent of the team is made up of players of colour as against 45 percent white players.

• Further, as against 84 percent of the country's under-18 population being black African, CSA only had 9% black African representation in the national team.

• The report also covered coaching structures and administrative positions and found that across all platforms, the rate of transformation in South African sport remained too slow.

• The report praised the CSA for being one of the forerunners of transformation data collection along with rugby. They have assigned dedicated resources to transformations data while many other codes are doing it on a part-time basis.

The process of reviewing transformation started in 2013 and it is now in its third year. It will continue to be undertaken until South African teams are considered adequately representative.

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