South African Sports Minister bans federations from bidding

South Africa’s sports minister has banned the Rugby, Athletics, Netball and Athletics federations from bidding for major international tournaments.

The country’s five major sports agreed on targets for transformation but only the country’s football federation met it’s target.

In a statement he said this was after they failed to create enough opportunities for black players.

South African Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula said: “I have resolved to revoke the privilege of Athletics South Africa (ASA), Cricket South Africa (CSA), Netball South Africa (NSA) and South African Rugby (SARU) to host and bid for major and mega international tournaments in the Republic of South Africa, as a consequence of the aforementioned federations not meeting their own set transformation targets, with immediate effect,”

“I will review this decision when considering the results of the 2016/2017 Transformation Barometer.”

The SARU released a statement in response to the news just hours after it was made public

Jurie Roux, CEO of SA Rugby said: “We understand and support the Minister’s urgency in addressing the issue of transformation,” 

“There is no question that we have more work to do and we could be moving faster, but our sport has undergone a major overhaul in how we do business and how we measure ourselves in the past two or three years and we have definitely made great progress.

“Transformation is a key strategic imperative for SA Rugby to remain competitive and to survive in the sports landscape in our country.

“Our barometre for 2015 shows that we have achieved our target in 11 out of 13 dimensions as agreed with government.”

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