endently are faced with countless hurdles from the mother body Basketball South Africa (BSA). As a result, we end up sending teams and coaches to international competitions to fail because we don’t equip them with the tools to succeed.

After the publication of the article yesterday, we received a response from BSA challenging most of these allegations. I have posted their response to the article in green.

False dawn…

When the current BSA regime was “elected” into power it gave them an opportunity to distance themselves from the past and set the sport of basketball in South Africa on a new path to recovery. They had a chance to prepare the ground for the future of the game by setting up the structures and by having a plan of action to help the sport move forward but instead we are still at the same stage we were when they took power.

Lotto monies

Where is the money?

Lotto has been giving BSA money on a regular basis for a long time but we don’t see any end product. According to the figures released by BSA themselves at their recent AGM, they received around R8 Million rand from the Lotto Board in 2009 but if we look back at last year there were cancelled interprovincial tournaments, players didn’t get paid for camps and tournaments on time and we still don’t see any deliverables. How do you keep funding a federation that only cares about what happens in one province, when it is supposed to govern Basketball in the whole country?

Instead of trying to send teams to international events, BSA should focus on getting their house in order by having an office (ideally have a presence in every province), an administrator and putting the building blocks together for the future at grass roots level.

What BSA did recently is send the team that went to the African Champs a post dated contract and decided to pay the Mens team (Maybe a tactic to keep them calm and quiet because of their influence) while the girls teams are still to receive their dues (rumours has it they will be boycotting the next camp if they are not paid). And considering that most of the ladies on the team are still students, I would think that a bit of money would come in handy.

BSA’s response: Lotto prescribed to BSA how the money they were given should be used. They are against Corruption and nepotism and will investigate where this is happening. As far as the players being paid is concerned, all relevant parties were aware of the situation and that once the money from the Lotto was available all parties would be paid their dues. And up to date BSA has only received R1.6million of the said R8million.

1. Financial statement

After the AGM of the weekend of the 11 and 12^th of September 2010, Mybasketball obtained the financial statements that were released during the event.

BSA financial statement 2010 (Document)

Financial Report 2010 breakdown (Document)

Upon closer inspection you realise that there isn’t anything concrete that comes out of the document. The spending of the money is more general than anything else, some of the items in the document are confusing. So the question should be where is the money going?

The “Independence” of the auditors is questionable considering that Zanele Ngwenya (BSA treasurer general) is still listed on the company’s website as one of their employees.

Link Sithole Incorporated CA (SA) Profile and Zanele Ngwenya (Document)

If you scroll down to page 29 of the document above you will see:

“Key Contacts per Division

BSA is basically run by the few people…

Let’s take a quick look at some of the people involved in BSA and some of the links:

Mr. Malesela Maleka – President of BSA (had an association with VUT in the past.)

Mr. Zanele Ngwenya – Treasurer General of BSA (VUT ladies coach)

Mr. Florsheim Mlungisi Ngwenya – National Team coach (VUT men’s coach)

Mr. Tsepo Nyewe – National Administrator (Involved with VUT as their manager at one stage)

You might say that this list of people is different to the people on the board but as a matter of fact these are the people making the basketball decisions in South Africa, the rest are puppets or just followers. As you can see the common link here is VUT.

Let me give you an example: Mr. Monwabisi Planga – BSA board menber, was elected onto the board as a representative for the Western Cape region; he has since been removed from his position in the province by his own structures during the WCBA (Western Cape Basketball Association) AGM and doesn’t play a major role in any committee in the province. He is still a member of the BSA board and therefore still has an influence on decision that will impact a province that don’t support him.

The president of BSA, Malesela Maleka, doesn’t seem to really know what is going on with Basketball in South Africa. He knows what Zanele Ngwenya and Tsepo Nyewe tell him is going on but he might be too busy to go on the ground and speak to the real stakeholders of the game.

BSA is run by a small group of people that seem to have forgotten that they are a national federation not a University Committee. If we look at the BSA board that was elected, you will find that most of the other board members are not even involved in the game anymore and some have been banned by the Department of Sports in their respective provinces.

Most of these members resurface when the time comes for elections, AGM and meetings that abound to nothing since we see no progress… I guess a free ride (hotel, food, flights to the meeting) for some is better than the fate of a whole nation.

BSA’s response: It’s not the first time that the link between VUT and BSA is made, the President was involved in basketball before going to VUT and Tsepo Nyewe was employed in BSA before the current committee was voted in by people that were not from VUT.

As far as Mr Planga is concerned, nobody is elected into the BSA board to represent a region of his/her constituency. The board is accountable to provinces of BSA so you cannot account to yourself by being in the board of Provinces.

Unrealistic Calendar

Here is the calendar that was released by BSA at their AGM:

BSA calendar (document)

Looking at this “ideal” calendar, 80% of the events on it will not take place, will be cancelled or postponed or if they do take place we will be informed a day before they happen and it will end up being disorganised.

BSA’s response: BSA only cancelled the U18s IPTs last year, They have just concluded the U13, U16 and U18 Wheelchair tournament this year; they have had a coaching seminar and have set up a coaching task team. BSA held a Woman’s camp for the first time this year that was attended by close to 90 officials. Therefore Mybasketball prediction of failure cannot be backed by what has already happened this year.

Lack of planning

Youth Olympics

South Africa recently took part in the Youth Olympics and with the basketball tournament being of a 3 on 3 format, the results showed that whether we play the full 5 on 5 format or the new format we are still behind when it comes to development. Schools, coaches, parents and players are doing their best to keep the sport going but without any form of unified vision and/or guidance all these efforts are in vain.

World Student Games, African Champs, etc…

If you know anything about basketball in South Africa, you would know that most of the senior teams were and are picked telephonically. The national men team coach Florsh will dispute that fact but most of the people in the know will tell you that it is still happening. When was the last time you saw a selection camp in your province to pick the best players? When was the last time you saw the national team coach at your university tournament to see if there is an emerging talent that could be groomed to take over the reigns from the “golden” generation. Coaches say that they don’t have a choice but to stick with the players they know and that because of  the lack of development their option are limited. The question remains, why don’t the coaches make BSA accountable or come up with a union strong enough to question the motherbody on the issue of development?

The development of coaches, players, officials, etc.. should be a priority in order to get the game off the ground again . For example, USSA (University Sports South Africa) has a role to play in the development of sport considering that they have the facilities and can create academies to nurture the upcoming talent. It is a vicious circle, USSA requires to take players to the World Student Games but with the lack of development at grassroots, you have a lack of talent and with no infrastructure in place to create that environment they have to rely on what they have coming out of high schools.

Here is the latest list of players to attend the next camp from the 9th to the 17th of october 2010:

A lot of the old guard remain and I know they are very proud to represent the country by wearing the green and gold but you can’t help but wonder how long they will be call upon to mask the deficiencies of our sport by giving us a performance on the international scene.

Now with that in mind, what are the chances of ever discovering another Chili Nephawe? Slim to say the least and as long as the status quo remains then change will not happen any time soon.

National coach to Europe…

Our national team coach, Florsh Ngwenya,  spent a few months in Europe on a basketball development course last year and at the time BSA was saying that he would come back and impart the knowledge gained on the local coaches but it has yet to materialize. By now all that was learned is probably irrelevant or forgotten and the trip looks like a nice little holiday getaway. Florsh probably remains the only coach on the books of BSA with a monthly salary and the perks of the job while some of the other coaches at grassroots are doing it for the love of the game. We still don’t have a championship of any sort to talk about and we see no progress in how our national teams are run from the juniors all the way to the seniors.

BSA’s response: Contrary to Mybasketball statement, Mr Florsh Ngwenya doesn’t earn a monthly salary from BSA.

BWB and NBA office…

Basketball Without Borders graced our shores for a few years and instead of using it to develop the game in the country from a strategic point of view, we enjoyed the freebies that came along with it and in the end it departed without any concrete lessons learned. Let’s hope Africa can benefit from it and use it to create a few more Dikembe Mutombo and Hakeem “the dream” Olajuwon.

The NBA recently showed that they hadn’t completely given up on SA by opening it’s offices in Johannesburg and hopefully it will be a wake up call for BSA to use this opportunity or lose it again without gaining from it.

Article by Victor Shakineza

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NEW YORK, Jan. 13, 2010 – Amadou Gallo Fall is joining the NBA on January 25 to serve as Vice President of Development for the NBA in Africa it was announced today by Heidi Ueberroth, President, NBA International.

Fall will be responsible for leading the NBA’s efforts to help grow the game and participation in Africa working with the local federations and basketball entities.  He will oversee the NBA’s grassroots events and its partnerships with marketing, media and consumer products companies.  Fall will start in the NBA’s New York office and then relocate to Johannesburg, South Africa this spring. 

Fall previously worked for the Dallas Mavericks as Director of Player Personnel and Vice President of International Affairs.  Fall served as the team’s goodwill ambassador internationally and oversaw their scouting assignments.  For the past five years, Fall has traveled to Africa as an integral part of the NBA’s Basketball without Borders program, the NBA and FIBA’s global elite basketball development program that also uses the sport to create positive social change in the areas of education, health and wellness.  Prior to his 12 years with the Mavericks, the Senegal native worked for the Senegalese Ministry of Youth and Sports and the Senegalese Basketball Federation.  The national team he assembled won the 1997 African Championship and participated in the 1998 World Championships in Greece.

“We’re pleased to have Amadou join the NBA and expect him to be a valuable contributor to the league’s international growth,” said Ueberroth.  “Amadou’s deep knowledge of basketball in Africa coupled with his 12 years of NBA experience provides a unique combination that will further develop the sport and our business in the region.”

Fall is a magna cum laude graduate of the University of the District of Columbia where he played center on the basketball team.

About the NBA

The NBA, founded in 1946, is a professional sports league and global business that features 30 teams in the United States and Canada.  During the 2009-10 season, NBA games will reach 215 countries and territories in 41 languages.  The league’s worldwide reach is also displayed in the 80 international players from 35 countries and territories on NBA rosters.  NBA merchandise is sold in more than 100,000 stores in 100 countries on six continents.  NBA.com averages more than 26 million page views per day, with more than 50 percent of the site’s visitors coming from outside of North America.  Through NBA Cares, the league, its teams and players have donated more than $115 million to charity, provided more than one million hours of hands-on service to communities around the world, and created more than 440 places where kids and families can live, learn, or play.

Information provided by Michael Finley

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With BSA being in office for almost a year, there have been a lot of positive to come out of this new regime and other things that have remained the same or gotten worse. With everyone waiting to see what structures and plans that they would put in place to lift the sport from it’s smouldering ashes, I feel that they might have missed an opportunity to engage the various stake holders and get the help that they need.

Anyway I would like to focus on the men national teams that have had a rough time of late. If there is a positive to come out of the new regime, it is the amount of games that the various national teams have participated in. From the U16s competing in Zimbabwe with dignity to our ladies senior team qualifying outright for the African Championship later this year and the Men senior team going to represent the country in Libya.

That’s was quite the busy program for the teams but the thing that BSA didn’t look at is the finer details, it’s all good to say that we are taking part in competitions all over the world but if you don’t take care of how the teams will prepare leading up to such events or how they will get to those events and be treated then they might as well not enter and save everyone the headache involved. This is why I believe that instead of jumping onto all these tournaments, BSA would have been better served making sure that the various structures within the national setup are ready for international competition. I am sure that the players and coaches would have been ok to wait another year without competition if they knew that when it eventually came back it was going to be worth it.SA men’s senior team

“When you send your child to a school outing, you expect that the school will be responsible of their well being, same thing applies with any national team. When we sent these gentleman to represent the country at an international event we expected the federation (in basketball’s case BSA) to look after their well being so that they would only have to worry about events on the court, unfortunately it turned out to be a scandalous rollercoaster for our boys”

While other teams had been preparing for this event for months, the boys got together a week before the tournament and then they were expected to go out there and produce miracles… BSA said that this was due to finances or something along those lines (I did enquire about this via email but couldn’t get official comment on this). The team went to Libya where they were pitted against the hosts Libya, and 2 African powerhouses in Nigeria and Cote D’Ivoire who would go on to make the finals against eventual winners Angola.

The experience in Libya wasn’t as rosy as it might have sounded with obstacles on and off the court to put it mildly. When the team sought out some help from BSA officials, they were no where to be found with the usual cellphone being off method the order of the day. Some of the people that made the trip up north said that it was probably one of the worst experiences that they had on tour with a South African team…

Just to give you an idea of what the team had to go through in Libya and please note I got this information from various people (media, spectators, and people that went to the Libya event etc…) so it is true.

Among the degrading experiences that the team had to endure in Libya:

1. Team couldn’t get a translator to help them during the tournament, because BSA hadn’t paid the tournament fees.
2. How can you have a five day camp for a national team? The minimum team training camp was 3 weeks.
3. Coaches ended up being psychologist instead of coaching because the morale was low
4. Team had to endure daily evictions threat (due to non payment of competition fees $16000).
5. No allowances payment to players, medics, physiotherapist and coaches (Congo the last team in the competition earned R20000)
6. All the other eliminated teams figured a way to departed home, Team SA stayed six days (only sleeping and eating), players morale was so low they only watch games from TV even though the match venue was 5 minutes away.
7. There was a lack of transparency and communication, BSA had switch of their phones. When the team was nearly thrown in the street the Embassy had to intervene.
8. To avoid us running their passports were confiscated (making it even more personal)
9. Team could not even go sightseeing, first the federation would not release the bus due to unpaid fees and secondly they didn’t have their travel documents because they had been confiscated (there was road block every way)
10. Back home players were dropped at Park station; they could not even pay their way home after that.

Absolutely everyone in that team was broken and degraded somehow.

I have been sitting on this story for a few weeks now while I gathered as much information as possible and despite not getting any comment from the federation, the public needs to know how the team was treated and how they had to battle adversity on their travel to represent South Africa overseas. Let’s hope we learn that these gentlemen are representing a whole nation when they put on the national team jersey and incidents such as these reflect badly on brand South Africa and on the image we are trying to give our sport.

Article by Victor Shakineza

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But are we as ballers happy with the service we are getting? I mean when was the last time we watched a live SA game on the telly? Or how do we influence the powers that be so that we get more coverage of the game on the television?

Are you as ballers happy with the way basketball is represented on TV with Slamdunk and basketAfrica? How about this site, how do you improve these channels of information? Obviously big shows like Slamdunk and BasketAfrica have editorial lines to follow and budget constraints but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for improvement. What are your thoughts?

In case you don’t watch either program on SABC 1 or Dstv, please also tell us why.

As far as mybasketball is concerned we are busy evolving again so your input in the process is welcome, please leave your comments here or on The‘Hood (http://thehood.mybasketball.co.za).

Article by Victor Shakineza

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Agenda
1. Constitutional Reviewing and adoption as working Document
2. By Laws
3. Finance Policy
Annual General Meeting
Date : 22 March 2009
Venue : Wembley Stadium Board Room
Time : 09h00

Agenda
1. Opening and Welcome
2. Credentials
3. Address by Basketball SA Rep.
4. Chairpersons Comments
5. GBA
6. Audited Financials
7. Elections of the New GBA Executive Committee
8. Address by new Chairperson
9. Closure
Information from Bojan Palic

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The electors were all the nine Provincial Chairpersons and the Six Affiliated members of Basketball South Africa General Assembly.

The contact point for Basketball South Africa will be the President Mr Malesela Maleka and the National Administrator, Mr Tsepo Nyewe.

The BSA board members as elected on 26^th October 2008 at Olympic House:

* Please note that mybasketball is in possession of every board member contact details so if you require them send us an email at info@mybasketball.co.za and we will gladly forward them to you.

Information supplied by Tsepo Nyewe

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On a warm Saturday morning, Pretoria Boys High School played their 2^nd game of the term against arch rivals St Benedicts High School at home. With this being off season and most schools focusing on next year’s preparations, the coaches were bound to experiment. With the matrics busy preparing for their exams, the teams look a bit different and the rookies were keen to impress. In the first games of the morning, the U14A and U16A teams opened proceedings in front of a vocal crowd of parents and schoolmates.

In the U14A game, PBHS was too strong for their opponents. They looked more confident and took the game to their opponents with some good rebounding and some fastbreak basketball. In a very surprising move by their coach Sibusiso Ntombeni, PBHS played a zone defence throughout the game while St Benedicts went with a man on man defence. The zone defence and some dodgy calls seemed to frustrate St Benedict but PBHS looked eager to get the game over and done with by half time. They always had a lead to work with and in the end despite a late rally from the St Benedict team, it wasn’t enough. This was a second victory for the U14A. After the game, St Benedict coach, James Mtwetwa said that by next year his team would be ready and would overturn the result.

In the U16A game, St benedicts started strong and finished strong. St Benedict is a well balanced team with good posts and guards that made life difficult for the hosts. PBHS started nervously and were made to pay for their slow start. With the home team making numerous turnovers, it was layups after layups for the visitors. When PBHS managed to get past the speedy St Benedicts guards, they found resolute defence close to the basket from the posts that were not in a charitable mood and blocked most of the shots. In the 2^nd half, PBHS had their run capitalising on the complacency and some decisions in their favour to get the score to within 2 baskets. But with players exhausted and not enough depth on the bench; the home team had to look on as St Benedict deservedly beat them by 3 points.

Wednesday 9/10/2008 results: PBHS vs Jeppe High School

U14A  PBHS 20-9 Jeppe

U15A PBHS 18-19 Jeppe

1^st team PBHS 37-33 Jeppe

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Photo credit: Mark Dadswell/Getty Images

I wrote this piece on the eve of the Beijing Olympics.  The USA re-established their dominance as world leaders in basketball as both women and men’s teams won the ultimate athletic achievement, Olympic gold.  Asides from Mali’s butter fingered opposition to Lisa Leslie’s team USA in the women’s preliminaries, one of the most striking features of the competition were the unitards worn by team Australia.  How could any self-respecting women step out onto a basketball court with a wedgie??  After all basketball is one of those sports tied undeniably to the sub-culture of music, language, and clothing that marks the sport as an urban cultural phenomenon.  In South Africa we are no different in our expression of this sub-culture than our peers globally, but what really is the identity of women’s basketball in this country?

Let’s take a long hard stare in the mirror and identify the insecurities, the realities and the copycat fashion sense that could possibly explain the spectacular fall of SA women’s ball in the last decade.  Since the PBL folded into oblivion, the sport has generally experienced a significant decrease in national media attention, mass exodus of talented players and coaches, and shocking international performances.  Whilst BSA jostled with PBL owners for a moment in the sun, wheelchair basketball has experienced nothing short of a meteoric rise gaining critical sponsorship and support to compete (not just participate) on the world arena.  So if the PBL had nothing to do with us, why has women’s basketball been dragged through the mud?  I count one woman on the interim BSA executive, who I had truthfully never heard of until I attended a meeting at the Gauteng SASSU send-offs in June this year.  I count one women referee in Gauteng who has consistently officiated in national tournaments.  I count one woman coach who has dominated the national coaching position in the past 4 years (on those few occasions that we had a woman coaching a national team).  And I’m willing to bet good money that this situation is pretty similar at provincial level.  In June this year a voice rose up amongst the women raising critical questions about women’s leadership in SA basketball.  What are the criteria for coaches being chosen for the most coveted coaching job?  What are the criteria for players being selected for national duty?  Do we continue to be a sideshow to the men, or should we go it alone and establish a SA Women’s basketball federation?  Do men have a part to play in women’s basketball?  And if I was given half the chance I would have raised the question – do we ban unitards as a precautionary measure against the misguided quirks of future generations?  This is a critical conversation that is taking place within us, around us, about us that should propel us hopefully in the right direction if we could just stop talking all at once.  Let’s examine the facts:

Reality is – we compete with a growing opportunity set of sports that SA women can choose to participate in.  Netball has successfully established and maintained a professional league, Soccer and Rugby are growing in popularity amongst young women, and athletics already has a stranglehold on mass participation nationally.

We are not only competing for scarce financial and infrastructural support, we’re competing for better athletes.  Taller, faster, slimmer, and more self-aware individuals who have a hardened sense of the physical and mental discipline and dedication it takes to compete at an international level.

Most importantly we are also competing for fans, they love you, they hate you, they’re fickle at the worst of times, but they sure as hell can be a quick ticket to the big time!  And be honest – how often do you enjoy watching a women’s basketball game in SA?

What we need is nothing short of a basketball revolution.  How do we make more women WANT to play, coach, officiate, and manage basketball?  How do we transcribe this fantastic situation that our male counterparts have afforded us to take ownership of a very promising future?  How do we reinvent the SA basketball woman?  The ball is in your court as long as you leave the unitard in the changing room…..

Article written by K

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The game between “Mandeville Ou Toppie Giants” and “Falcons Seniors” in the 50 years and more category was a demonstration of fundamental basketball. Both team showed great patience to move the ball and find an open shot. At half time Mandeville were up by 7 points on the back of some amazing shooting from the perimeter. Mandeville were more mobile than the Falcons seniors and used their opportunities to score better. Falcons missed easy layups and during the 1st two quarters their shots were not falling. Watching these senior gentlemen play gave you inspiration to keep going. Vaios Kokkoris who had a great game and was running up and down the floor for the whole game, started playing in 1963 when he was still 15 years old and he could still mix it with the young bucks. Final score: Mandeville Ou Toppie Giants 48 – 34 Falcons Seniors

The final of the Men 40-49 years old between the defending champions “Kotas (Moz)” and “Falcons Green (RSA)” was a battle in every sense of the word. Players from both teams were questioning every call made by the officials, there was no control or discipline from the players and it ended up affecting Falcons Green more than their opponents. There were more technical fouls against both teams during this game than there were during the rest of the day. Falcons Green conceded 9 points from technical fouls against them and they had a player ejected for kicking an opponent. In the end Kotas defeated Falcons by 3 points. Final score: Kotas 34 – 31 Falcons Green

The final of the serious ladies between “TUKS University (RSA)” and “Pandas (Moz)” was fierce but fair. Tuks opened proceedings with a 3 pointer from Sibongile Maswanganye and running the break at every opportunity. Despite setting the early pace in the first half, TUKS were careless down the stretch and the number of chances they wasted came back to haunt them. Pandas played smart basketball throughout and after putting a halt to TUKS fast break they took their opportunities on the offensive end. They controlled the 2nd half and took high percentage shots. TUKS turned the ball over too many times to give themselves a chance to lift the trophy but it was a good game to watch. Knowing the likes of Nicki de Villiers and Sibongile, this unusual defeat will spur them on to set things right for next years’ tournament. Final score: TUKS 35 – 42 Pandas

The last game of the day felt like an interprovincial final of yesteryear. The contest between the defending champions “KZN Team Walrus (RSA)” and “VUT Alumni (RSA)” was intense from the first whistle. For VUT you had amongst others Flosh Ngwenya, Vusi Dlamini, Toka Motaung and Thabo Touch Mabulelong doing the business on the floor, while KZN had Darren Holcomb, Craig Gilchrist and Kurt Hold trying to maintain their unbeaten run in the competition. Toka was a willing runner throughout the game and he was doing the most damage to the KZN defence with his array of offensive moves. But this wasn’t a one way street, KZN were giving as good as they got, especially in the post position where Kurt Hold and Vusi Dlamini were having their own little duel. At half time KZN had a 3 point lead but this quickly evaporated as the 3rd quarter began. With Darren and Craig showing a full range of shots, KZN were always in this game. The quarter ended with the score even at 35 all.

The 4th quarter was a scrappy affair with both teams in foul trouble and VUT struggling to control the game without their normal PG Thabo who was in foul trouble. Kurt got a technical for man handling Vusi in the low post and Toka Motaung had to sit some of the game out with 4 fouls. With 10 seconds to go in the fourth, VUT were up by 4 points; KZN called a time out and came out of it with a play that saw Craig Gilchrist hit a 3 pointer to reduce the deficit to 1. With 6.7seconds left, Flosh got fouled and made his 2 pressure free throws. KZN called another time out and the crowd was silent in anticipation of a dramatic ending as a 3 pointer would tie the game. The KZN shooting guard made the 3 pointer but unfortunately he had stepped out of bounds so VUT got the ball back and closed the game out. What a game!!! Final score: KZN Team Walrus 43 – 46 VUT Alumni

Congratulations to all the teams that made this event the wonderful show that it was. KZN Team Walrus didn’t go home empty handed as they received the spirit of the games trophy for their on and off the court displays. Next year, the Masters will be in Cape Town so if you are over 30 years old start getting your team ready.

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The generic requirement to fix SA basketball is to improve and align the political, administrative and technical facets of the game at all levels – club, district, province & national.

All sport is governed by three fundamental aspects – the political, administrative and technical aspects. By political I refer to the policy making, decision-making, agenda setting and preference shaping dimensions – the power and context defining aspects. One who views sport predominantly through the politician’s eyes refers constantly to the constitution, always attends the AGMs, is au fait with the political climate of the country or their constituency and skillfully manipulates others to conform to a certain agenda, thus enhancing their power base.

Technical aspects in this instance refer to the on-field, practice courts, skills development and game specific strategic and tactical dimensions. The technician is solely concerned with just playing, reffing or coaching. Technicians are mainly the participants. In between the politics and the technical dimensions are the administrative functions. Administration does not just refer to sending out an e-mail reminding people of fixtures but is rather developing sustainable systems and relationships that ensure the long term wellbeing of the sport. The administrator sees the opportunities and seeks to take advantage through marketing, organizing leagues and tournaments and executing the policies that the politicians have drawn up. These are the people who ensure that secured sponsorships are correctly allocated, raise awareness of the game, etc. Whether you are involved with a small club, run a league or province or are involved with national structures, all of these fundamental aspects are part and parcel of your sporting life. What differs, according to the situation, the personalities involved and the prevalent circumstances, is the relative value placed on each aspect.

I grew up at a time when most black people used every dimension of life as a battle against apartheid. In a sporting context this meant that black-led sport was necessarily politicized. The majority of white people wanted sport depoliticized and emphasized the administrative and technical aspects of their sports. The political aspects of the sport were left to the government – something unacceptable to most black people. Even today strong remnants of those viewpoints remain. Sports such as rugby and cricket, predominantly emphasize the administrative and technical aspects. The political aspects are seen as things to do to appease the government’s more stringent requirements, and hence to many politicians are inadequate. However, in sports such as soccer and able-bodied basketball, the predominant focus is on the political aspects – the power battles, with a subsequent drop in the administrative and technical aspects. These sports are aligned with government’s representative policies but administratively and technically are not world class. Interestingly, basketball in SA has swung from being technically and administratively relatively well run with its politics being unacceptable to some, to its current state where politically it is acceptable to many but administratively and technically it is gravely in need of help. Wheelchair basketball differs somewhat from able-bodied basketball – it emphasizes admin and technical aspects more than the political.

So what are we to do in SA basketball? In a sense we are starting to do what needs to be done. Let me give you an example. In Gauteng the leaders of the provincial association, GBA, are predominantly politicians. Politically these leaders are excellent. However technically and administratively you can see that some rounding off is required. There is another group who have started a league, the LOP. This group is generally administratively excellent. They are the guys who we see on TV, have a voice on radio and market the game well. If you followed the interactions between LOP and GBA, you noticed that LOP needed rounding off on the sports politics front. I have heard that from 2009 GBA will be using the skills of LOP to run the league. This is exactly what is needed in all of SA – the politicians leading the bodies but delegating the running of the sport to the administrators. Both the administrators and politicians need to make the climate conducive for the technicians (the participants) to thrive. Congrats to GBA and LOP. However, this cannot be a once-off intervention but rather the development of a model of how to run our leagues.

Is this all that we need to do in SA? Obviously not. Just unpacking what it means to properly administer basketball in SA requires our best administrators (with a damn good facilitator) meeting regularly and thrashing out the fundamentals of administrating. Similarly our technical people need to do the same. Politically I would guess that the interim Basketball South Africa committee has been spending their time redeveloping the political aspects of the game. In the meantime we need to take advantage of all the low hanging fruit (things we could do easily). Examples:

• If BWB is always here, why don’t our SASSU men’s national team, or our U22 national team, or our senior Gauteng provincial teams, etc arrange a game against the BWB All-Stars? Record the game and let the BWB people critique the game with us as part of a coaching clinic? Imagine the growth for all of us.
• Did you know that Maxaquene and teams like that often used to come to SA to prepare for their leagues? Why aren’t our local teams scheduling and playing games against them? What about playing all these Angolan teams that go through SA when preparing for national or league tournaments?
• How about our senior national women’s team participating in the men’s section of the U18 tournaments as part and parcel of their preparation? If our women can win this tournament they can physically compete against Mali, Senegal etc. Seeing as we only have 9 provinces, the national team could be the 10th participant in the tournament.
• If asked I would be happy to co-ordinate coaching clinics at the upcoming senior inter-provincial tournament. The clinicians would be the national team coaches (past and present) that are available.

These are some examples of low hanging fruit but to make it all work requires political, technical and administrative cooperation.

Finally as one with a predominantly technical approach I was struck by the following comment made by Tim Noakes (a technocrat too) in the Financial Mail of 29 August 2008: “Exceptionally clever coaches will produce Olympic champions regardless of the quality of facilities at their disposal.” I agree with that. So, to all coaches working under trying conditions, frame this and let this be our goal – producing champions despite our circumstances. To the politicians and administrators, while the technicians are trying to create greatness in trying conditions let this nevertheless not be an excuse to better the trying conditions.

Comments? As a coach I have become a bedfellow with criticism – both positive and negative. I use it often and receive it often. It is not the critic that is important, but rather the validity of the criticism.

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