Canoeing South Africa challenges funding model changes
In the case of Canoeing South Africa, funding for High Performance programmes from Lotto has been slashed to zero, while the grants from the Department of Sport and Recreation have also plummeted.
CANOEING South Africa is appealing to the national government to relook at its funding model to national federations as High Performance and development programmes continue to be slashed to deal with drastic cuts in funding from the national Department of Sport and Recreation and the National Lottery Commission to sporting bodies.
In the case of Canoeing South Africa, funding for High Performance programmes from Lotto has been slashed to zero, while the grants from the Department of Sport and Recreation have also plummeted.
The administration grant has been cut altogether and the support for development and transformation projects has dropped steady over the years, slipping backwards 45 per cent since 2012. In total, the national federation will receive R390 000 for the 2018 financial year.
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“We are an Olympic code, with a bronze medal from the London 2012 Olympics, and through our affiliation with the International Canoe Federation we contest World Championships and World Cups in the disciplines of sprints, marathon, slalom, canoe polo, waveski, and surfski,” explained Canoeing South Africa president Kim Pople.
“We are major players at an international level, particularly in marathon and surfski, where we have dominated the international events in recent years and have several current world champions in both marathon and surfski. What makes this particularly notable is the fact that these successes have come despite the enormous logistical and financial obstacles to competing, often far away, having to freight our craft and equipment to these venues,” she explained.
Pople pointed out that the lack of support was leading to a talent drain as top-end athletes like Jean van der Westhuyzen, Stephen Bird and Murray Stewart have all been head-hunted by other nations.
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“Right now we are killing High Performance sport,” she said. “It gets particularly frustrating when allocations and grants are made against the prospect of medals, or a world top five ranking, when we are actually getting very, very little support in developing men and women to this level,” she added.
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