The president of the South African Sport Confederation and Olympic Committee, Gideon Sam, has admitted that there is a lot of division within the Olympic body, and that it caused a lot of problems within the organisation.
Sam, who was implicated by several other people at the inquiry, was giving evidence on the last day of the Zulman Committee of Inquiry into Sascoc’s governance matters.
Over 30 witnesses have already taken the stand since the inquiry started in February. However many have described Sam as a conflicted leader.
But Sam dismissed allegations of having a conflict of interest within the organisation, because he’s not a full time employee of Sascoc.
The former Swimming South Africa president was at times not happy with the line of questioning by Judge Ralph Zulman and the other two panelists.
And he responded to a question whether increasing the daily allowance for ordinary board members during the 2016 Rio Olympic Games from 200 to 300 dollars a day wasn’t exorbitant?
“Well if I look at the dollar and the rand exchange was then that’s small money. They couldn’t even travel from the hotel remember, they did not stay where the activities were they had to come all the way in a taxi pay.”
“It was not free because they didn’t get free cars; they have to get onto taxis. When they g back there’s no food in the hotel, they must go to a little restaurant and get food. I wouldn’t say that was excessive, maybe I don’t understand money.”
As president of Sascoc, Sam’s daily allowance is 500 dollars a day.
Sam admitted that running an organisation, which is an umbrella body of 70 federations in South Africa, has its own challenges.
Gideon Sam says:”We do not own federations, federations are independent and I have over the eight years been president and trying to explain to the South African public any athlete whether it’s a Caster Semenya, whether it’s a Luvo they don’t belong to Sascoc, they belong to a federation.”
The 69 year-old Sam, who was re-elected as president for a third term in 2016, says he will vacate his position when he turns 70 next year as stipulated by Sascoc’s constitution.
The Zulman Commission of Inquiry will submit a report to the Sports Minister in the next few weeks.
