Mark Smit
19 December 2008
Johannesburg — SWIMMING SA was left largely unscathed yesterday when the long-awaited report by the Norman Arendse commission on mismanagement, intimidation, victimisation and racism within the organisation was released.
The report dropped a bombshell in finding the performances of the swimming team at the Beijing Olympics to have been exceptional.
However, it criticised Swimming SA's team manager at the Olympics, Rushdee Warley, for lack of sensitivity and diplomacy in his dealings with athletes.
The commission found that Swimming SA head coach Dirk Lange's request to stay outside the athletes' village so he could fulfil his duties as a Eurosport commentator should never have been agreed to between the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) and Swimming SA.
Sascoc, and especially its chef de mission to the Beijing Olympics, Hajera Kajee, came in for harsh criticism for the way it managed Team SA at the Games.
The commission felt the bad atmosphere within the team at the Olympics was probably the result of a catalogue of operational bungles.
These included uniforms that did not fit, incorrect listings of passport details on accreditation cards, inadequate transport in Beijing and the late arrival of kit.
The report found Sascoc was completely unprepared to handle the requirements of disabled swimmer Natalie du Toit at the able-bodied Games.
It said the commission was "amazed that Kajee had treated Du Toit the same as able-bodied competitors simply because Natalie had qualified to swim in the able-bodied open-water event".
Kajee was re-elected as vice-president of Sascoc last month.
The report found that neither Du Toit, her manager Anna-Rita Strydom nor Warley had been consulted about Du Toit's requirements and that Kajee had acted entirely unilaterally.
The fact that Du Toit had to find her own way to get around the Olympic village without assistance was listed as another example of Kajee's unilateral approach.
The commission also criticised the fact that Du Toit and her support team had to find their own way to a hotel closer to the venue outside Beijing for the open-water swimming event -- at their own expense.
The report said Kajee had acted improperly by listening to complaints from swimmers about their internal issues when she was supposed to be dealing with Olympic matters and not internal swimming matters.
An article written on August 31 in the Sunday Times by then sports editor Clinton van der Berg, which made allegations of racism, assault, victimisation and a climate of fear, was found by the commission to be largely unsubstantiated.
The commission concluded that the allegations "are in material respects not justified either in the article itself or in subsequent interviews with the key role players".
In its criticism of the Team SA management, the commission referred to a row between swimmers Roland Schoeman and Gerhard Zandberg over the pre-Olympic training camp in Daegu, South Korea.
The report said Sascoc had known well in advance about the tension between the two and that the issue should have been resolved before the Olympics.
The commission also found Warley at fault for his handling of a breach of dress code protocol by swimmers Suzaan van Biljon and Lize-Mari Retief.
It said the team manager "should have handled the incident much more diplomatically and sensitively especially since it was just before a race and Warley was aware of the breach because he had seen the swimmer at breakfast that morning and had done nothing about it".
The commission advised that no action should be taken against Van Biljon for her outburst when her coach, Karoly von Toros, was sent to complain on Warley's behalf about her dress-code transgression.
Van Biljon had taken exception to this and the commission found that Warley should have approached her personally and dealt with the issue diplomatically.
In its conclusion, the commission said the Sunday Times article was "sensational, misleading and inaccurate in material respects".
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