The Swimming SA saga in the words of those closest to it

Tatjana Smith won gold, then got a bill bigger than her prize money. That was only the start. Since September, an Olympic relay champion, a banned water polo administrator, a sponsor, an MP, a Comrades board member, a journalist, and a lawyer have taken the Swimming South Africa saga to BizNews. They describe a federation they say silenced athletes, and a Franschhoek pool nobody can swim in. Here is the full record, in their own words..BizNews Reporter.Carte Blanche's special with Tatjana Smith on 1 November brought the Swimming South Africa (SSA) saga back into the spotlight. On BizNews, it has been running since early September.The trigger came from Lausanne. On 24 August, World Aquatics' independent Aquatics Integrity Unit (AQIU) provisionally suspended SSA president Alan Fritz and CEO Shaun Adriaanse over potential violations of the World Aquatics Integrity Code, "including abuse of power and the provision of false information and fake documents". Both are barred from any role in the sport while the proceedings run. Neither has been found guilty of anything.What followed on BizNews was a run of athletes, an administrator, a journalist, a sponsor, a politician, a Comrades board member and a lawyer, each bringing a different angle. Here it is, in the order it ran..Gold, a swimsuit and a "management fee".Tatjana Smith sat down with BizNews editor Alec Hogg on 2 September 2026.South Africa's most decorated Olympian went first. Her story starts at the 2023 World Championships in Fukuoka, the night before she raced for a world title.."Just before that race, actually the night before, I got a message, or like an email, saying that if we were to not swim in the allocated swimwear that Swimming South Africa has a contract with, that is Arena, we will be fined.".Smith was sponsored by Speedo. "I only get paid by my sponsors," she said. "That's the only way, as swimmers, we financially get money." She swam in Speedo and won gold.."Upon arriving back in South Africa, I got an email with an invoicing – I owe €46,000 fine, and my winnings at that time was only $35,000, so my winnings wouldn't even cover the fine.".World Aquatics pays prize money through national federations, not to athletes. Smith's $35,000 sat with SSA for more than a year. She held back from a public fight for a reason:."At that time in the constitution said if any athlete takes legal representation, they can be suspended from being a member, which means I can't go and compete for my country if I got lawyers involved.".The money finally came through at the Paris Olympics, while she was in a press conference. The interest did not. According to Smith, when her husband and agent Joel Smith asked where it was, an SSA official said he "took it as management fee".."We don't deserve to sit in these broken systems and not do anything about it because this is what makes us resilient. That's nonsense."Tatjana Smith.The AQIU suspensions, she said, were the first time she felt safe to speak:."We've been fighting this battle in private. Not because I don't want to use my platform to speak about it openly, but I just never felt safe.".She announced the Lighthouse Sport Foundation, "a watchdog for athletes". Asked whether she would stand for SSA's leadership: "If people wanted me to, I'm happy to represent them."The interview passed 150,000 views within a week and a quarter of a million by mid-September..Tatjana Smith takes on shambolic Swimming SA.Twenty years of warnings.BizNews republished Olympic champion Roland Schoeman’s op-ed on 7 September 2026, and he spoke to BizNews editor Alec Hogg on 10 September..Five days later, a member of the 2004 Athens gold-medal relay team answered. Roland Schoeman's op-ed, first posted on his Facebook page, argued that the suspensions were a beginning, not an end.."For more than twenty years, athletes, parents, coaches and administrators have been warning that something is deeply wrong inside Swimming South Africa. We were ignored. We were dismissed. We were made to feel like we were the problem."."Nobody should pretend that removing two people suddenly fixes Swimming South Africa. They did not operate alone.".He went back through the record. In 2004, SSA's own strategic process "identified staff incompetence, weak budgeting and financial systems, poor communication, loose management, unclear responsibilities, poor implementation and a lack of accountability". In 2008, the Arendse Commission made 13 findings and 16 recommendations. Its last called for an audit of progress before SSA's 2009 AGM.."Where is that audit? Which recommendations were implemented? Who was responsible for implementing them? Who checked that the work had actually been done?".Then his own career. In 2002 SSA would not accept a US diagnosis of a stress fracture and flew him from Tucson to Johannesburg to see its own doctor, who found the same thing. In 2008, an Olympic year, his lawyers wrote to SSA after it told him his therapeutic use exemption for asthma medication had lapsed without warning. At the 2013 World Championships in Barcelona, he was threatened with discipline for wearing Mizuno instead of Arena.."This was how the organisation exercised power over athletes. Selection, funding, disciplinary procedures, equipment agreements and access to competition could all be used to bring athletes into line.".He pointed to Doha 2024, where artistic swimmers Jessica Hayes-Hill and Laura Strugnell were sent home from an Olympic qualifier. An appeal panel later found the process "had not been procedurally or substantively fair" and set the sanctions aside. The pair have since brought a R7.2m damages claim against SSA.."Publish the records. Trace the money. Identify who made and approved the decisions."Roland Schoeman.On air three days later, Schoeman told Alec Hogg he had been saying this since he started swimming for South Africa in 1997:."It was always to my detriment. I had seen the way we were treated, I'd seen the way that every athlete was treated by Swimming South Africa. I spoke out about it. Swimming South Africa victimised me, they punished me. The media called me a brat.".On why SSA flew him home just to confirm a diagnosis: "They want control. They've always wanted control." And on the Minister:."I spoke to Gayton McKenzie two years ago, or whenever he became Minister of Sport, and was like, please, we need to restructure swimming… 'Yep, don't worry, it's a priority on my list.' … If you've been promising for two plus years that this is something you're gonna look into, at what point does that just become lip service?".He described the messages he gets from swimmers still in the system:."We might not ever make a national team again. We might not represent South Africa. Our dream is to represent South Africa… They're weaponising dreams."Roland Schoeman.His fix: "A forensic audit of Swimming South Africa… We need a complete restructuring. Everybody that is there needs to be out. We need to get swimmers involved.".Roland Schoeman on Swimming SA's 20 year cover-up: Two suspensions are not reform."Two suspensions don't fix 20 years": Roland Schoeman joins the fight against Swimming SA.A high-performance centre for ducks and frogs.Brett Redelinghuys was interviewed by Alec Hogg on 7 September 2026.The same afternoon, BizNews spoke to Brett Redelinghuys, a water polo administrator SSA had banned for ten years. He had spent three years looking into SSA's planned High Performance Centre at a Franschhoek school.The project's projected cost was R111m. Redelinghuys put the money actually received far lower:."The number from their financials is closer to fifty million, forty-nine point something."."World Aquatics gave five hundred thousand US dollars at the start… That was about eight and a half million rand at the time. The Sports Trust put in six point two million, and the Lotto has put in over thirty-five million.".The Special Investigating Unit has confirmed it is investigating the process behind the National Lotteries Commission grant. The site itself, Redelinghuys said, was a school more than a hundred years old with a working pool, athletics track, rugby field, tennis and netball courts.."They built a fifty-metre pool next to the old twenty-five-metre pool, and redid the twenty-five-metre pool. But all of it is still completely unfinished and completely unusable."."No swimming happens except for the ducks and the frogs, and that's it."Brett Redelinghuys."There are kids who came to that school in grade eight and matriculated, and never had the ability to use their own facilities.".His main complaint was process. There was "no presentation to members. The executive made this decision", he said, and no risk analysis:."There was no plan for what happens if you put fifty million rand into somebody else's property and it goes pear-shaped.".The lease held by Train Camp, the company SSA partnered with at the school, was overturned in court in late August. Train Camp had been sequestrated the year before.Asked whether it was corruption or incompetence, Redelinghuys was careful:."Right now it's just incompetence, but what we're busy trying to do is get a PAIA application in, to get into the actual financials… If you look at the pool Swimming South Africa built in Pietermaritzburg recently, an indoor pool, done, covered, that cost just over fifty million, and it's functioning. So simple maths says the money wasn't spent in the right place.".Water polo walks out.Redelinghuys's ban came after he tried to change SSA from inside. In 2022 he organised water polo's provincial chairs to propose a constitutional amendment that would make water polo an associate member rather than an affiliate.."The night before nationals, where I was the manager of my team that was going to nationals, at ten thirty, when I was due to catch a flight at five a.m. the next morning, I received an email from Shaun Adriaanse informing me that I had been suspended.".Ten months later, he said, SSA gave four days' notice of a three-day online hearing. Neither he nor his lawyer could attend. "They went ahead with the meeting anyway, without us there… they found me guilty and banned me for ten years."Water polo's three big regions, KZN, Western Cape and Gauteng, then put it to members.."There's no way we can fix this from within… I think it was ninety-five, ninety-eight percent of members said, we vote to break away.".The new body, SA Water Polo, held its first AGM in October 2025. SSA's attempt to interdict it failed in the High Court, with costs. But SSA is still the body World Aquatics recognises, so only SSA can send national teams. By Redelinghuys's count, "less than five percent of the national-quality players are supporting Swimming South Africa".He described how South Africa's water polo teams missed Paris 2024. At the Doha World Championships, six months out, players were told on the pool deck they needed to finish 12th to go to the Olympics. After Doha:."They happened to look on social media and saw that South Africa had withdrawn both its teams, but they hadn't been told by Swimming South Africa. They found out by seeing Romania and Canada celebrating that they were going to the Olympics.".On term limits, SSA amended its constitution to cap executives at three four-year terms, in line with the King Code. Then, Redelinghuys said, "what they did was wipe the slate clean of the twenty years they'd already served, and say, right, you've got another twelve years, off you go". SASCOC accepted SSA's legal opinion on it.The AQIU suspensions, he said, followed complaints from water polo, artistic swimming, diving and individual swimmers. His own began two years earlier:."After two years of pushing, prodding, begging and pleading, they acted."."You can't cut these heads off and hope the heads that grow back are better, they're the same, or worse."Brett Redelinghuys.He fought Swimming SA for years. Finally the world body caught up.Four federations, four suspensions.On 9 September 2026, BizNews ran a statement from SASCOC (the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee) on the suspension of its president Barry Hendricks. On 10 September, Alec Hogg spoke to Graeme Joffe..Then the story outgrew swimming. On 9 September SASCOC suspended its own president, Barry Hendricks, after anonymous complaints alleging breaches of its safeguarding policy. A review by retired Judge Basheer Waglay found prima facie grounds to refer them to SASCOC's Judicial Body. SASCOC stressed that "the suspension does not constitute a finding of wrongdoing".The presidents of SASCOC, Athletics South Africa and Swimming South Africa had now all been suspended within weeks of each other, along with the executive of Karate South Africa. The next day BizNews reached Graeme Joffe in South Carolina. The former CNN sports anchor began investigating SA sports administration in 2012, was sued by SASCOC for R21m in 2013 and left the country in 2015.."The majority of sports administrators in South Africa have prioritised self-enrichment ahead of the athlete. And there's zero accountability.".He said he had dealt with SSA's CEO a decade ago:."Shaun Adriaanse has been the CEO of Swimming South Africa for I don't know how many years. I had a lot of dealings with him back in 2012, 2013… Never answered any of the questions that I used to send him. If you've got nothing to hide, why don't you just answer the questions?"."It's a deeply rooted cancer, the corruption in South African sport."Graeme Joffe.He questioned who was doing the policing:."Why is it taking international bodies to suspend the administrators from Swimming South Africa, Karate South Africa? SASCOC should be the ones that should be suspending these people.".And who pays to compete:."Very often in most sporting codes in South Africa, if you don't come from a wealthy family, it's very hard for you to represent South Africa because… the athletes have to pay their own way to compete.".He credited Smith with breaking the silence: "Athletes have been silenced by draconian codes of conduct… But here you have one of South Africa's most decorated swimmers or athletes speaking out against the system." His answer: "You need a sports watchdog and you need more athletes involved at the top of South African sport. Otherwise, nothing's ever gonna change.".SASCOC suspends president Barry Hendricks over safeguarding complaints.Four federations, four suspensions. Graeme Joffe says it's a "deeply rooted cancer".Follow the money: what a sponsor would do.BizNews editor Alec Hogg interviewed Brad Ross on 18 September 2026..Brad Ross ran sponsorship at Coca-Cola and now heads global partnerships at Bank of America. He spoke to BizNews in a personal capacity about how a sponsor's boardroom would read the SSA saga.."If I was in the position now, I would immediately freeze any funds that I had put on the table with Swimming South Africa. I think that is just a pure governance play… I would then audit and see what actually the reality is of the situation. And then probably pivot if the need requires.".Pivot, he said, meant finding a way to back the athletes directly, not walking away from them. "Long gone are the days of sponsors writing a blank cheque."On Smith's prize money:."The fact that it took more than a year for Tatjana to receive her money, and then also to be told that the interest was a management fee, just once again shows just poor judgment and poor governance.".On the Arena dispute, he said the fix already exists elsewhere:."You can have a coexistence contract. That is not rocket science. So a federation could have a deal with a certain brand, in this case Arena. But the swimmers themselves can and should have contracts with individual brands, in this case Speedo.".On Franschhoek, which drew money from World Aquatics, the Sports Trust and the Lottery: "Ultimately the buck stops with the person or the team that have taken that money. And it's their fiduciary duty to be able to show where the money has gone."."You want your national heroes to be treated as such and not as subordinates of a federation."Brad Ross.He called for an athletes' commission on SSA's board, as at the IOC, now led by Zimbabwean Olympian Kirsty Coventry. And he put a number on what is at stake: South Africa's sports economy is worth $5bn–$7bn, about 2% of GDP. If governance is fixed, he said, "the capital will flow"..Swimming SA saga: Officials suspended, champions unpaid, and sponsors watching closely.Are the Minister's hands tied?.BizNews republished a piece by Leah Potgieter, DA MP and the party’s spokesperson on sport, arts and culture, on 25 September 2026..By late September the question had turned to Sport Minister Gayton McKenzie. In January 2025 he had said of SSA: "As far as swimming is concerned, I'm coming there like a thunderstorm." He now told Parliament he wanted to amend the National Sport and Recreation Act so that responsibility for troubled federations did not rest so heavily on SASCOC.Potgieter argued that the Act already gives him tools. Section 13(5) provides for ministerial intervention in "any dispute, alleged mismanagement, or any other related matter" likely to bring a sport into disrepute. Previous ministers used it for the Nicholson Inquiry into Cricket South Africa and the Zulman Inquiry into SASCOC.."There may well be a case for strengthening the Act, but Minister McKenzie cannot use a future amendment to create the impression that the law currently leaves him powerless.".She went back to SSA's April 2025 appearance before Parliament's sport committee, where "CEO Shaun Adriaanse could not tell the Committee how many swimmers had travelled internationally without financial assistance from parents or outside funders". The committee then tasked the department with stepping up its oversight of federations.."So, what happened after that? What additional monitoring did the Department undertake? What governance risks were identified?".McKenzie's 2026/27 Budget Vote gave R118.1m to about 60 federations with "strengthened compliance and governance requirements".."Government cannot attach governance conditions when handing over taxpayer money and then treat governance as somebody else's problem when those conditions matter."."Legislative reform cannot become an alibi for inaction."Leah Potgieter.She also drew a line: the earlier term-limit dispute and the AQIU allegations "should not be conflated", and the suspensions do not mean the Minister could have prevented the conduct alleged. The DA wrote to the committee chair asking that SSA be called before Parliament..Swimming SA suspensions raise hard questions about McKenzie's oversight.How Comrades cleaned house.Rory Steyn sat down with Alec Hogg on 29 September 2026..Rory Steyn, Nelson Mandela's former bodyguard, sits on the Comrades Marathon Association board. In two years, Comrades members threw out a board accused of vote-buying and cut ties with KwaZulu-Natal Athletics and Athletics South Africa. At a special general meeting:."80% of whom said: Comrades first. Get away from those so-called sports administrators, who are nothing more than politicians dressed up as sports administrators, that add very little value, if any."."Politicians dressed up as sports administrators."Rory Steyn.Why could Comrades fix itself when SSA could not? Comrades is a membership body: you join by finishing the race or volunteering.."Swimming South Africa does not have a body of members that can call a special general meeting and hold a board to account.".He listed the suspensions piling up across SA sport: Athletics South Africa president James Moloi; SASCOC president Barry Hendricks; Fritz and Adriaanse at SSA; and Karate South Africa's executive, including president Sonny Pillay, suspended by the World Karate Federation in July. He also named former Netball South Africa president Cecilia Molokwane, suspended by World Netball in April 2025.On Smith: "How can you withhold her money for a year and then call the interest that you as an organisation scored a management fee? Where does that ever compute?" On Schoeman's flight home for a second scan: "Who does that to a human being?"His model was Cricket South Africa, which moved to a board with a majority of independent directors:."A structure where there is a majority of independent board members, overseers… Like Tatjana Smith would be the perfect one.".On the Minister, he said Schoeman had been promised action and "I don't think he has". But Steyn believed McKenzie had to work through SASCOC, "and SASCOC is itself compromised". He predicted sponsors would force the issue: "They want to know that if we associate our brand with this event or this federation, that it's clean.".Rory Steyn on who really runs South African sport.Public money comes with strings.BizNews published an open letter from John Cunha, an international lawyer and BizNews Tribe member, to Parliament’s sport committee on 12 October 2026..On the eve of SSA's 13 October appearance before Parliament's sport committee, Cunha wrote to its members.."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… who was left with no other alternative but to turn to her attorneys to recover her own prize money.".He took on the Minister's position directly:."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 policy paper, "Cleaning Up Swimming SA: The Minister's Playbook", published on 4 October, set out the levers he says already exist:Conditions on funding: the Public Finance Management Act requires the department to get written assurance on SSA's financial controls, or attach conditions, before paying it.A duty to report: SSA's accounting officer must report any breach of its own constitution to the department within 14 days.The Hawks: anyone in authority must report known or suspected corruption, theft or fraud of R100,000 or more.World Aquatics: it can install a stabilisation committee to run a federation and organise fresh elections, as it did in Tunisia in 2024.Compliance notices: once the department knows of a material breach of a federation's constitution, a notice is compulsory.He was just as clear on 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."."Demand the documents. Follow the money."John Cunha."Our swimmers have kept their side of the bargain… They ask for little: to be paid what they win, to be told the truth, and to be led by people who serve them.".Swimming SA's answer.SSA has said little in public, and Fritz and Adriaanse have not commented on the allegations. This is what is on the record from the federation, the regulators and the Minister.The suspensions. The AQIU says "the proceedings are ongoing" and that it "will make no further comment at this time". A provisional suspension is not a finding. On Hendricks, SASCOC said "everybody is presumed innocent until proven guilty in an appropriate forum".Smith's prize money. On 15 September Smith's lawyer, Wian Spies, told Daily Maverick: "There was some form of agreement in which all the interest will be paid." The SSA official Smith says made the "management fee" remark has denied keeping the money, according to Rapport.On 13 October, before Parliament's sport committee, SSA's acting president Zikie Molusi apologised to Smith, her management, her coach and the country. The matter, he said, "could have been better handled"..Franschhoek. In February, SSA blamed the delays on the National Lotteries Commission, calling them "a direct consequence of extended internal NLC administrative processes". It added: "SSA categorically places it on record that Swimming South Africa is not under investigation by the SIU." In Parliament on 13 October, Molusi said he expected the SIU investigation to conclude and the centre to be operational "at the latest by the end of 2027".MPs were not persuaded. ANC MP Matsholo Mmolotsane, who had visited the site, described a pool "full of frogs" and said SSA had "come here and lied".The Minister. McKenzie has argued that federations are autonomous and that intervention risks a suspension by World Aquatics. On 11 September, after the Hendricks suspension, he wrote on X:."This is a direct consequence of us changing things in sport. Gone are the days when wrongdoing goes unpunished; expect more suspensions soon. We will fix things and deal with those that saw themselves as untouchables.".What comes next.The AQIU case against Fritz and Adriaanse is still open. Smith is racing again: she came out of retirement at the SA Short Course Championships in Pietermaritzburg in late September and has been named in SSA's team for the World Short Course Championships in Beijing, 1–6 December.SSA's terms for that Beijing team, and what swimmers are being asked to pay and sign, are the subject of BizNews's interview with John Cunha next week. Look out for that discussion.Smith, on 2 September, on what accountability should look like:."Transparency and doing, following the right process… just having clear lines of what is right and what is not."Tatjana Smith

The Swimming SA saga in the words of those closest to it

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