Tourism Minister Lindiwe Sisulu is reportedly expected to pull the plug on SA Tourism’s nearly R1 billion sponsorship deal for English Premier League football club, Tottenham Hotspurs.
The Sunday Times reports that Sisulu will announce the decision to the nation on Sunday after she held a meeting with the SA Tourism board on Saturday.
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According to sources who spoke to the publication, the agency’s board informed the minister that it was misled by the management of SA Tourism over the proposed deal.
The board apparently claimed that both the acting chief executive officer (CEO), Themba Khumalo, and the chief financial officer (CFO), Johan van der Walt, did not tell them about any conflict of interest involving Van der Walt.
The CFO reportedly has ties to the agency named in original documents relating to the Spurs sponsorship deal.
“The board said the management lied to them,” an insider was quoted as saying.
Board resignations
Meanwhile, three SA Tourism board members resigned on Thursday amid outrage from South Africans over the deal with Tottenham Hotspurs.
Enver Duminy, Ravi Nadasen and Rosemary Anderson resigned from the board with immediate effect as they “disagreed with the proposal for various reasons”.
Khumalo, SA Tourism’s acting CEO, hit back at criticism of its planned sponsorship of the football club, saying it is not as tone-deaf as South Africans have accused it of being.
Speaking at a media briefing on Thursday, he said they were expecting to see a good return on that investment – more than 80 times its value – over a three-year period.
The CEO didn’t detail how the return on investment would total R88 billion. He explained that government had set SA Tourism a goal of achieving 21 million international tourist arrivals by 2030.
At the same time, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s spokesperson Vincent Magwenya said the Presidency had not been briefed on the sponsorship deal.
There was also no plan to include an announcement on this deal in the State of the Nation Address, said Magwenya.
“Even though we have not been briefed, we do not think that spending such an amount in this manner will be justifiable.”
Compiled by Thapelo Lekabe. Additional reporting by Reitumetse Makwea and Devina Haripersad.
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