Gayton McKenzie
1Min
South Africa
Dec 2, 2025
Parliament criticised the Sport Department for shifting R62 million from struggling federations to fund VAR. MPs said the move lacked transparency and harmed grassroots sport, calling it a diversion of development money to a prestige project. Treasury later blocked the full transfer.
Officials from the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture came under heavy fire in Parliament as MPs demanded answers over the decision to redirect R62.7 million from national sports federations to fund the Video Assistant Referee rollout.
The reallocation, which has been closely associated with Sports Minister Gayton McKenzie, was described as careless, opaque and damaging to the country’s sporting ecosystem.
The department attempted to defend the decision, arguing that VAR would modernise South African football and align it with global standards. However, MPs rejected this reasoning, saying the funds had originally been allocated for athlete development, training and grassroots programmes that are already struggling due to chronic under-funding.
DSAC CFO Israel Mokgwamme conceded that the department’s long-promised new sports funding model was still at an early stage and could not explain why the federations were forced to absorb the financial blow. Committee members said this raised serious concerns about planning, financial discipline and the department’s understanding of its mandate.
Leah Potgieter, one of the more vocal MPs, dismissed the department’s justification outright. She argued that VAR was a luxury and should never have been prioritised over programmes that directly support athletes, coaches and youth participation. She said the move placed the future of several codes at risk.
Treasury later intervened, allowing only R20 million of the planned transfer to proceed. While this limited the financial damage, federations maintain that even the partial diversion has undermined their activities. The South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee warned earlier this year that unilateral budget cuts break funding agreements and could cripple athlete preparation for international competitions.
The incident has renewed debate about priorities in the sports sector. For many stakeholders, the VAR saga illustrates a widening gap between political ambition and the real needs of athletes on the ground. Federations argue that glossy, high-profile projects should never come at the expense of development pathways that sustain the country’s sporting future.
