Cunha’s Open Letter as Swimming SA faces Parliament after two suspensions and its champ calling her lawyers

South Africa’s swimmers came home from Glasgow with 22 medals. Their federation has rather less to show. Swimming SA’s president and CEO are provisionally suspended. The lottery grant for a R111m high performance centre is under SIU investigation. And Tatjana Smith, our most medalled Olympian ever, needed lawyers to collect her own prize money. Tomorrow, SSA faces Parliament’s sport portfolio committee. In this open letter to its members, international lawyer and BizNews tribe member John Cunha argues that the Minister’s claim that his hands are tied doesn’t survive a reading of the law. He has even written the playbook which is attached below. Public money comes with strings. So why isn’t anyone pulling them?.By John Cunha .Dear Chairperson McGluwa and Honourable Members of the Portfolio Committee on Sport, Arts and Culture,Twenty-two medals in the pool in Glasgow. Six swimmers are already holding Olympic A-times. And, above them, a federation whose president and chief executive stand provisionally suspended by the sport’s own integrity unit, a R111-million high performance centre whose lottery grant is under investigation by the Special Investigating Unit, and an Olympic champion, indeed, South Africa's most medalled Olympian of all time, Tatjana Smith, who was left with no other alternative but to turn to her attorneys to recover her own prize money.On Tuesday, all of it comes before you – in one room, on one day, in full public view.I write to commend you. By calling Swimming South Africa (SSA) before this Committee, you have moved this matter from the headlines to the one forum that can summon any person, demand any document and follow up until the work is done. And this Committee has already shown – not least in June, when it sent the Department’s delegation away for arriving without officials senior enough to account – that it holds the Ministry of Sport, Arts and Culture to the same standard as the federations it funds. That is leadership, and it matters far beyond swimming.It matters because of what the Ministry can do and, on the public record, has not yet done. In November 2025 the Minister said there was little he could do about troubled federations, because international federations frown on government intervention. With respect, the law says otherwise. His hands are tied in one place only: he may not interfere in team selection, the administration of sport, or the appointment or dismissal of a federation’s executive members (section 13(5)(b)(ii) of the National Sport and Recreation Act). Everywhere else, the law already puts real power in his hands.That is why, on Sunday, 4 October 2026, I published a strategic policy paper, “Cleaning Up Swimming SA: The Minister’s Playbook”, and shared it publicly. I attach it for Members ahead of Tuesday’s briefing, because I believe it will be of real value and use to the Committee. It relies only on public sources, treats every allegation as unproven, refers to people by their role rather than their name, and is written for the Minister as much as for Parliament: it shows him where his power lies and how to use it, lawfully, thoroughly and in full public view. Each of the three items on Tuesday’s agenda – the suspensions, athletes’ money and Franschhoek – is addressed in it, with the law and the public record set out.Among the things the paper shows:1. Money comes with strings, and they can be pulled now. Before the Department pays SSA a rand, the Public Finance Management Act requires it to obtain written assurance about SSA’s financial controls or to attach conditions (section 38(1)(j)). On my reading, money for SSA’s administration can wait until those conditions are met, while every rand for athletes continues.2. SSA’s own accounting officer must report to the Department, within 14 days, any failure by SSA to comply with its own constitution – a duty that overrides confidentiality (regulation 6(4) and (5) of the Recognition of Sport and Recreation Bodies Regulations, 2011).3. Those in positions of authority, in government and at SSA, are legally bound to report known or suspected corruption, theft or fraud involving R100 000 or more to the Hawks (section 34 of the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act).4. Sport’s own sanction is the strongest of all. World Aquatics can install a Stabilization Committee to run a federation, prepare constitutional reforms and organise fresh elections while protecting athletes’ participation, as it did in Tunisia in 2024 – and SSA’s constitution appears to fall short of World Aquatics’ own in at least four respects. The Minister’s task is to supply the evidence and to align public money with what World Aquatics requires.5. A hammer the Department cannot hold back. Once it becomes aware that a federation has broken a material provision of its own constitution, a compliance notice is compulsory, and recognition must be cancelled if the notice is not met (regulations 8 and 9). So public money and World Aquatics come first.The paper is equally clear about what the Minister must not do: try to fire anyone, take SSA over, or lead with derecognition. Those are the steps most likely to let World Aquatics suspend the federation for governmental interference, and it is the swimmers who would pay. Ghana learnt that lesson this year.For Tuesday, the paper’s ten steps double as questions the Committee may wish to put to the Department as well as to SSA. Has the Department obtained the assurance, or imposed the conditions, that the PFMA requires before it pays SSA? Which of the returns the Act already requires has SSA filed, and which has it not? Has anyone reported to the Hawks? Has the Department written to World Aquatics? And what has been done, since this Committee tasked the Department in April 2025 with intensifying its monitoring of SSA, to ring-fence the money that belongs to athletes?None of this is peculiar to swimming. Every lever in the paper – conditions on public money, a published compliance scorecard, athlete earnings paid within 14 days, protection for those who speak up – can be applied to every one of the roughly 60 federations the Minister has promised to fund this year “with strengthened compliance and governance requirements”. The paper closes with a short amendment Bill to make those standards law, and a word of caution about what Parliament should not legislate.Honourable Members, there are days when a committee room becomes larger than itself. Tuesday is one of them.Our swimmers have kept their side of the bargain. Through every headline they have trained in the dark and raced in the light, and they have come home with medals. They ask for little: to be paid what they win, to be told the truth, and to be led by people who serve them.So let no one in that room hide behind the word autonomy, for the Olympic Charter grants autonomy and, in the same breath, the duty of good governance – never a shield against accountability for public money. Let no question go unasked because it is uncomfortable, and no answer stand unchallenged because it is convenient. Demand the documents. Follow the money. Insist that every rand of public money, and every rand that belongs to an athlete, be accounted for in the open.Tuesday will not end this matter. But it can end the waiting. And when the story of South African swimming is told, let it be said that in October 2026, when our swimmers needed their Parliament, their Parliament did not look away. It stood up. It asked. And it did not stop asking until the work was done..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.

Cunha’s Open Letter as Swimming SA faces Parliament after two suspensions and its champ calling her lawyers

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