Cape Town - South African Tourism (SAT) acting chief executive Themba Khumalo on Thursday defended the government entity’s proposed R1 billion sponsorship of English Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur and said they would be forging ahead with the bid.
At a news conference called to address the issue of the controversial deal, which made headlines after the leaking of a confidential proposal document, Khumalo said although SA Tourism had not yet signed a contract, it would do so after it had gone through the government processes.
“We obtained conditional board approval for the partnership on January 31. On February 1, we appraised our shareholder, the minister of tourism.
“What is now left in the process is to consult our tourism sector stakeholders and national Treasury, prior to finalising anything,” Khumalo said.
This week there was outrage over the reported three-year £42.5 million deal that SAT planned to sign with the London club in the hopes of attracting tourists to the country through advertising and marketing exposure.
Khumalo said the controversy generated by the sum of R1bn was unnecessary as the money would have been spent marketing South Africa overseas whether or not the proposal was signed.
“Money that is invested in tourism is not the same money that’s required for energy; it’s not the same amount of money that’s required for potholes.
“We are not asking for new money from the fiscus. This money is an aggregation of all the small little projects that we spend money on, gathered together for a high impact initiative.”
Khumalo said the sponsorship was not about the football team necessarily, but would help SAT to access the audience of the English Premier League, “so we can persuade them to travel to South Africa to spend pounds, euros and dollars”.
Speaking about the leaked document, Khumalo said the entity was carrying out investigations to find out who disclosed the information and said whoever was responsible for the leak of the sponsorship proposal was guilty of a breach of their conditions of employment.
“It is unfortunate that the information regarding the partnership was leaked ahead of time.”
Tottenham Hotspur Football and Athletic Company Ltd media spokesperson Rohan Johal told Cape Argus: “Unfortunately, we are unable to provide anything here as we do not comment on commercial matters.”
Reacting to Khumalo’s news briefing, DA finance spokesperson Dion George said the party would be writing to Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana to demand that the R1bn be immediately reallocated to buy diesel for Eskom to lower load shedding.
He said the National Treasury had repeatedly claimed that there was no additional money for diesel, but the fact that the ANC government had R1bn to spend on a foreign soccer sponsorship, contradicted that claim.
George said: “No spin and pontification can justify R1bn being spent on such a deal in a country with a 32.9% unemployment rate, a crippling energy crisis and thousands of South Africans going to bed hungry every night.”
Meanwhile, the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse has written to Minister Lindiwe Sisulu and to Khumalo asking for detailed information and transparency regarding the return on investment for the proposed sponsorship.