The DA welcomes the resolution to terminate the Maritzburg United sponsorship contract during full council held last week.
The ANC further resolved to look for another PSL team to sponsor which the DA strongly opposed. Should the municipality go ahead, we will approach National Treasury to ensure that this irregularity does not happen.
The relegation of Maritzburg United to Motsepe Foundation Championship automatically terminates the sponsorship from Msunduzi. Maritzburg United or any PSL club is neither a Public Benefit Organization (PBO) nor a Non-Profit Organization(NPO), therefore it is irregular to sponsor a profit making business with public funds.
Maritzburg United dully benefited with more than R50 million over years from Msunduzi municipality. It is a shame that we cannot still get a proper breakdown of how much the municipality is receiving as a return on investment, except the rhetorical utterances by the ANC that the tourism industry of our city benefits extensively from sponsorships of PSL clubs.
The ANC is unable to quantify the benefit of this sponsorship. The city cannot even show the benefits received by our sporting industry especially our local players and coaches. The recruitment of our local players to the Maritzburg United team was very minimum whereas our local coaches were not considered for any role in the Maritzburg United Technical team.
The municipality should instead supports the Local Sporting Federations, Non-profit Sport Clubs and Sport Development Programs. We are calling for the municipality to fully co-operate and support the Msunduzi Sport confederation. It is a shame that the ANC wants to give millions to PSL clubs when their own sports grounds are in substandard condition.
Instead of giving money to private sporting businesses we must utilize those funds to grow the lives of our young people. We need to utilize these funds to enhance service delivery issues that have reached rock bottom.
The DA will continue to fight for the lives our people without fear or favor.