EDITORIAL: Offside, Mr Khumalo

SA Tourism acting CEO Themba Khumalo’s “unreserved apology” to the public for his furious response to the outcry over the proposed R1bn Tottenham Hotspur sponsorship is welcome. If only all state officials — not to mention cabinet ministers — were as prepared to eat humble pie when they were so clearly out of order.          

But Khumalo’s roasting before parliament’s tourism portfolio committee yesterday, and the hullabaloo over tourism minister Lindiwe Sisulu’s apparent no-show, then a brief cameo appearance, are mere distractions from the real issue, which is the deeply flawed manner in which decisions concerning taxpayer money are so often made in SA.

It does not matter whether such sponsorships are ultimately a good or bad investment, although R1bn is an eye-wateringly large sum of money to throw at a foreign sports team when there are so many pressing social problems crying out for funding at home. 

It matters that the people making such decisions seem to believe they should be able to do so without being subjected to public and media scrutiny. As much as the SA tourism agency has scrambled to insist that nothing is cast in stone, it is clear that the intention was to push the button on the contract within days — until the story blew up.

For all Khumalo’s contrition over the way he responded to the public outcry, he does not appear to see anything wrong with the deal itself, insisting that such sponsorship deals are a viable marketing option “with guaranteed returns on investment”. That is a naive approach to doing business and, make no mistake, international tourism is a highly competitive business. There is no such thing as a guaranteed return on investment.

It is also clear that the board did not ask nearly enough questions about the origins of the deal, particularly concerning interim CFO Johan van der Walt’s links to the marketing agency that was — is? — set to receive a R31.5m upfront fee for “activating” the sponsorship. An investigation by the Daily Maverick, which broke the original story, subsequently revealed enough smoke to justify shouting “fire” merely by perusing SA company registration records. 

SA needs to do more to market itself as an international tourist destination, but throwing vast sums of taxpayer money at the issue and hoping for the best is not the way to go about it.