GOVT TO PULL THE PLUG ON COUNCIL FUNDING

MBABANE – The Swaziland National Sports Council (SNSC) might have won the battle against government, but the latter is looking at winning the war.

After losing the dragging court case when Justice Stanley Maphalala took his time to deliberate and came back with a verdict favouring the SNSC last month, the Ministry of Sports, Culture and Youth Affairs is strongly considering withdrawing government funding to the council.

Government is planning on achieving this by withdrawing from the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) which it entered into with the SNSC back in August 2010, and it has since been gathered that this was also communicated to its lawyer, Vusi Kunene. This agreement allowed government to pump-in funds to council while a government official from the Ministry of Finance is permitted to sit in the Executive Board to advocate proper handling and use of government funds.

Ironically, this is the same agreement which proved to be the ‘match winner’ for the SNSC in its case against government and other defendants as the judge stated that it prevented any interference from government in terms of the Sports Minister having and exercising total power over the organisation.

Meanwhile, in as much as government’s allocation to the SNSC, which houses about 32 member sports associations, is viewed as insufficient as it stands at E7.1 million, this is a decision that has the potential to cripple local sport, but the ministry is planning around it.
But government indeed has the power to terminate the MOU at any time it deems necessary, just like the SNSC has same as provided for by a certain clause, but this would have to also be decided by the court of law by considering the weight of the reasons for either party to request an order granting withdrawal from the agreement.

Principal Secretary in the affected ministry, Sicelo Dlamini, confirmed the matter and even revealed that they had communicated such to SNSC. “We have not taken the final decision on this issue but it was indeed one of the options we discussed in a meeting (held after the verdict was issued), and we informed the Sports Council that we might just have to go back to court to get the agreement (MOU) cancelled. For now it is a consideration and the most strongest and probable of all options we have at our disposal,” he said.

The ministry has still not released the SNSC’s quarterly grant of about E1.2 million which was withheld during the case and that on its own, a meagre an amount as it might be, has halted progress and projects such as planned national sports awards.

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