It's time for South African athletes to stand up for themselves and take on corrupt and incompetent officials, or risk having their dreams shattered.

How many times have you heard the phrase, "our athletes achieve in spite of their federations". We all have a chuckle, shake our heads, mumble about corruption, malfeasance and basic incompetence and then move on to other stories in the national discourse of corruption, incompetence and malfeasance.

Hardly a week goes by when we, at Daily Maverick Sport, aren't sent a tipoff about alleged corruption in South African sport.

Just this week we had a steer about alleged nefarious goings-on in squash.

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Another week it could be swimming, or water polo, cycling, diving, netball, athletics, road running and others.

The general theme of the claims is always the same. A handful of senior officials run the federation as their own personal fiefdom, allegedly freely spending the scant resources on overseas trips and other jollies, while often asking athletes to pay their own way to international events.

Daily Maverick has reported on many of these, while our limited resources mean we cannot cover them all.

Media pressure

Approaching the media is usually a last resort for frustrated athletes, but our reporting has occasionally had consequences for officials.

Swimming South Africa (SSA) recently apologised to Olympic champion Tatjana Smith at a briefing...